Scan barcode
A review by sarah1984
How to School your Scoundrel by Juliana Gray
3.0
SPOILERS THROUGHOUT!!
20/11 - What an outlandish plot (and this is a romance, so that's saying something)! Three princesses (this is the third in the series, featuring Luisa the oldest sister and future queen) in hiding after the murder of their father and husband (or brother-in-law). A rogue group of revolutionaries have run the princesses out of their tiny German principality and sent them into hiding in the houses of appropriately dangerous (and therefore protective) men. The two people who have been deemed to still be loyal to the royal family are Miss Dingleby (their governess) and their uncle (father's brother, I think *edit to say I was wrong, he's actually Luisa's mother's brother*) the Duke of Olympia (finally checked, just before I returned it to the library this morning). It seems Uncle (it seems he has no first name, he's just Uncle, Aunt Duke, or the Duke of Olympia) is some kind of spymaster and has 'agents', including (to my surprise considering this isn't a contemporary romance) Miss Dingleby, peppered throughout Europe (were there female spy agents in the 1890s?).
In order to stay disguised from those revolutionaries everyone needs to crossdress! Miss Dingleby becomes a Mister and so do all three of the princesses (breast-binding and fake whiskers abound), while Uncle becomes Aunt Duke from Battersea who wears lavish dresses and flamboyant, ostrich-plumed hats. Now, I've read a few 'girl needs to dress as man due to circumstances, then falls in love with man she's working with as a man' stories, but none of them have ever featured the storyline of 'loyal male family member becomes outrageous drag queen in order to continue protecting said girl'. That's a bit different and I'm having trouble believing that a man of that era would even consider, let alone be willing to, dress as a woman.
Women dressing as men due to necessity was common (if you take what fiction tells us at face value), even Shakespeare wrote about it, and that brings me to my favourite example of this subgenre - Seduced by Virginia Henley https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1150555.Seduced?ac=1, which is a retelling and reimagining of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. That's what I was hoping for when I picked this up, but unfortunately I don't feel the passion (there wasn't even a sexy 'she's a girl' reveal scene that this kind of book usually features), there have been no amusing 'she's a she, but he thinks she's a he and treats her accordingly' scenes, and I'm finding Somerton really abrasive. He's so bad-tempered, so vindictive that I don't feel comforted by his 'dangerousness' (that I think is meant to translate into protectiveness, but really doesn't), I just feel annoyed. I read in another review that he was the bad guy in another of Gray's books, and I can definitely feel that kind of vibe coming from him, but I don't think he's changed enough (or believably) for him to become this book's hero (maybe an anti-hero, but I don't think that's what the author was going for). Anyway, not quite finished yet, so I'll be back later to finish this up. To be continued...
21/11 - The lack of passion and love I mentioned before didn't get any less lacking in the last third of the book, even with Somerton (Leopold Somerton, I eventually learned) and Markham (as he continues to insist on calling her) getting married and spending two weeks doing it in every location and position imaginable (well, in those days at least), not that that is detailed, we're just told about it at the end of those two weeks when Olympia turns up to put an end to the conjugal bliss because it's time to make a play for her lost principality. I don't think it's particularly conducive to passion when the heroine calls her hero by his last name (so much so, that I don't think the reader knows his Christian name until after they're married) and the hero calls his heroine by her male alternate-identity's name. If either of the first two books appeared on the 'impulse borrowing' shelf (as I've begun calling my library's 'new and recently returned' shelf, due to my habit of impulse borrowing from it every time I go anywhere near it) I would get them, but I wouldn't bother to search them out or put them on hold.
20/11 - What an outlandish plot (and this is a romance, so that's saying something)! Three princesses (this is the third in the series, featuring Luisa the oldest sister and future queen) in hiding after the murder of their father and husband (or brother-in-law). A rogue group of revolutionaries have run the princesses out of their tiny German principality and sent them into hiding in the houses of appropriately dangerous (and therefore protective) men. The two people who have been deemed to still be loyal to the royal family are Miss Dingleby (their governess) and their uncle (father's brother, I think *edit to say I was wrong, he's actually Luisa's mother's brother*) the Duke of Olympia (finally checked, just before I returned it to the library this morning). It seems Uncle (it seems he has no first name, he's just Uncle, Aunt Duke, or the Duke of Olympia) is some kind of spymaster and has 'agents', including (to my surprise considering this isn't a contemporary romance) Miss Dingleby, peppered throughout Europe (were there female spy agents in the 1890s?).
In order to stay disguised from those revolutionaries everyone needs to crossdress! Miss Dingleby becomes a Mister and so do all three of the princesses (breast-binding and fake whiskers abound), while Uncle becomes Aunt Duke from Battersea who wears lavish dresses and flamboyant, ostrich-plumed hats. Now, I've read a few 'girl needs to dress as man due to circumstances, then falls in love with man she's working with as a man' stories, but none of them have ever featured the storyline of 'loyal male family member becomes outrageous drag queen in order to continue protecting said girl'. That's a bit different and I'm having trouble believing that a man of that era would even consider, let alone be willing to, dress as a woman.
Women dressing as men due to necessity was common (if you take what fiction tells us at face value), even Shakespeare wrote about it, and that brings me to my favourite example of this subgenre - Seduced by Virginia Henley https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1150555.Seduced?ac=1, which is a retelling and reimagining of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. That's what I was hoping for when I picked this up, but unfortunately I don't feel the passion (there wasn't even a sexy 'she's a girl' reveal scene that this kind of book usually features), there have been no amusing 'she's a she, but he thinks she's a he and treats her accordingly' scenes, and I'm finding Somerton really abrasive. He's so bad-tempered, so vindictive that I don't feel comforted by his 'dangerousness' (that I think is meant to translate into protectiveness, but really doesn't), I just feel annoyed. I read in another review that he was the bad guy in another of Gray's books, and I can definitely feel that kind of vibe coming from him, but I don't think he's changed enough (or believably) for him to become this book's hero (maybe an anti-hero, but I don't think that's what the author was going for). Anyway, not quite finished yet, so I'll be back later to finish this up. To be continued...
21/11 - The lack of passion and love I mentioned before didn't get any less lacking in the last third of the book, even with Somerton (Leopold Somerton, I eventually learned) and Markham (as he continues to insist on calling her) getting married and spending two weeks doing it in every location and position imaginable (well, in those days at least), not that that is detailed, we're just told about it at the end of those two weeks when Olympia turns up to put an end to the conjugal bliss because it's time to make a play for her lost principality. I don't think it's particularly conducive to passion when the heroine calls her hero by his last name (so much so, that I don't think the reader knows his Christian name until after they're married) and the hero calls his heroine by her male alternate-identity's name. If either of the first two books appeared on the 'impulse borrowing' shelf (as I've begun calling my library's 'new and recently returned' shelf, due to my habit of impulse borrowing from it every time I go anywhere near it) I would get them, but I wouldn't bother to search them out or put them on hold.