Review & Giveaway - - The Author's Guide to Murder

The Author's Guide to Murder

by Beatriz Williams, Lauren Willig, and Karen White

Publisher: William Morrow

Release Date: November 5, 2024

Reviewed by PJ

There’s been a sensational murder at historic Castle Kinloch, a gothic fantasy of grey granite on a remote island in the Highlands of Scotland. Literary superstar Brett Saffron Presley has been found dead—under bizarre circumstances—in the castle tower’s book-lined study. Years ago, Presley purchased the castle as a showpiece for his brand and to lure paying guests with a taste for writerly glamour. Now it seems, the castle has done him in…or, possibly, one of the castle’s guests has. Detective Chief Inspector Euan McIntosh, a local with no love for literary Americans, finds himself with the unenviable task of extracting statements from three American lady novelists. 

The prime suspects are Kat de Noir, a slinky erotica writer; Cassie Pringle, a Southern mom of six juggling multiple cozy mystery series; and Emma Endicott, a New England blue blood and author of critically acclaimed historical fiction. The women claim to be best friends writing a book together, but the authors’ stories about how they know Brett Saffron Presley don’t quite line up, and the detective is getting increasingly suspicious. 

Why did the authors really come to Castle Kinloch? And what really happened the night of the great Kinloch ceilidh, when Brett Saffron Presley skipped the folk dancing for a rendezvous with death? 

A crafty locked-room mystery, a pointed satire about the literary world, and a tale of unexpected friendship and romance—this novel has it all, as only three bestselling authors can tell it! 

PJ's Thoughts:

I call this book the tale of two halves. I found the first half a bit too easy to set aside, which I did, on several occasions. It's the stage-setting portion of the book and, while interesting, it's not exactly attention grabbing. At least, it wasn't for me. A number of characters were introduced, creating confusion as to who was who and what their roles were in the castle/community/story. It took me a while to get them all straight and settle into the story. It also took me a while to warm up to the three main characters - the American authors - in much the same way as it took them time to warm up to one another. The highlight of the first half for me was the Detective Chief Inspector, a character we only see (in the first half) through the dialogue of his interrogations. Kudos to the author(s) who wrote those lines!

Part two of the book was a completely different story (pun intended). This is where the action picked up, the tension heightened, and the characters began to unravel...then slowly rebuild into stronger, more authentic versions of themselves. This half I could not put down. In fact, I read it entirely in one sitting, through dinner, and well beyond my normal bedtime. The authors (the writing ones, not the characters) kept throwing in twists and turns that had me gasping with delight and guessing right up until the final reveal. In addition to that, the second half is where the characters really came alive. Their public personas were stripped away, allowing readers to see the authentic, complex women underneath and allowing them to forge the bonds of friendship that would carry into the future. We also learned how they were connected to the deceased Brett Saffron Presley and the traumatic impact he had on their lives. Suffice to say, the not-so-dearly departed was not a nice man. 

While there were tough topics discussed in this book (date rape being one), the overall tone was one of cheeky humor wrapped in gothic mystery with justice prevailing in the end, and women wronged who not only survived but thrived. Those three women with whom I could not connect in the first half of the book? By the time I turned the final page, they felt like dear friends and I could not have been happier for them. And that Detective Chief Inspector I couldn't get enough of in the first part of the book? Well...I'll let you find out what happens to him yourselves but let's just say he gets even better as does the unexpected happy ending awaiting him. 

~~~~~~~~~~

Have you read Williams, Willig, and White? 

Do you enjoy British/Scottish police procedurals  (either TV or book)?

Who else enjoys the twists and turns of a compelling Gothic romance?

One randomly chosen person who posts a comment before 11:00 PM, December 18 will receive a hardback copy of The Author's Guide to Murder. 

*U.S. only

*Must be 18

Review - - The Lure of the Moonflower

The Lure of the Moonflower

By Lauren Willig

Publisher: NAL

Release Date: August 4, 2015

The most recent assignment of Jane Wooliston, the English spy known as the Pink Carnation, leads her to French-occupied Portugal where her task is to locate Queen Maria. The Portuguese monarch was supposed to have been on a ship with others of the royal family on their way to Brazil. Instead she has disappeared. There are several possibilities as to who is behind the disappearance of the queen who, mad and violent though she may be, can still be a useful political tool. Jane knows that it is imperative that she find the queen before the French do.

Jane is working at a disadvantage because she no longer has her well-trained cadre of operatives to aid her. Moreover, her knowledge of Portuguese is limited to what she learned in a few weeks study. For the duration of this assignment, she is uncomfortably dependent upon the help of a single agent assigned to her, an agent as famous for his shifting allegiances and his reluctance to follow orders as for his formidable skills. The notorious Moonflower, former French agent, is definitely not an operative with whom Jane would have chosen to work.

The Moonflower, also known as Jack Reid, is in Rossio Square in Lisbon as instructed to meet his contact, but he is not expecting that contact to be a dark-haired courtesan wearing Paris fashions. When the courtesan discards her dark curls, greets him by name, and identifies herself as the Pink Carnation, Jack laughs. It seems impossible that this woman with her pure profile and steady eyes could be the spy who struck fear in the hearts of the French. Once he accepts that Jane is the Pink Carnation, he is skeptical of her mission. He advises her to “cut her losses and go home.”  Of course, Jane is not about to give up on an assignment, and with no small effort, she persuades Jack to do his part.

Soon the two are assuming various disguises and engaged in feats of derring-do as they complete their mission and see the Queen to safety. Other characters from the series make appearances, including the infamous French spymaster, the Gardener, and the indomitable Miss Gwen (now Mrs. Reid and stepmother to Jack). Jane’s story grows more poignant as her flaws and vulnerabilities are exposed, and Jack’s behavior becomes more comprehensible as his point of view is added to what others have revealed.

The parallel contemporary narrative of Eloise Kelly and Colin Selwick reaches its happily-ever-after ending as their wedding day approaches with all the dramatis personae present, accounted for, and true to character, but not before the twenty-first-century characters have an adventure of their own. No spoilers here since the novel opens with Eloise’s borrowing the words of another heroine:  “Reader, I married him.”

The Lure of the Moonflower concludes Willig’s popular Pink Carnation series. Before Willig wrote the first word of this novel, it was burdened with high expectations. While there are doubtless readers who have sampled a few books in the series, there is also a large core group of readers who have been invested in this series through more than a decade and a dozen books. As a member of this group, I can only say that the concluding book was everything I hoped it would be.

Although readers will find the tongue-in-cheek approach, the banter that delights, and the risky adventures that have characterized the series present in this book as well, they will also find a Jane seasoned by her experiences, less certain of who she is, and more aware of what her choices have cost her. In one moment of insight, Jane realizes that the game has changed: “But the game had turned darker somewhere along the way. It had gone from a game of wits to a struggle for survival, where there were no points for cleverness, only for results.”

Later she ponders the cost of the “game”:

Piece by piece, Jane felt herself washing away, like a pebble in a pond, smoothed into featurelessness by the successive waves that crashed over her, until there was nothing left there that was uniquely her own. She wondered dimly what the girl who had first come to Paris five years before would think of the woman she had become. Would she be proud of her achievements? And would she long after all that had been lost? So very, very much lost. Lost ideas, lost ideals, lost comrades.

Jack is her match precisely because he does understand Jane’s confusing mix of emotions. Beginning as opposites, she the idealist motivated by a noble purpose and he a pragmatist who sells his skills, they find they are remarkably similar in their defiance of labels (she as woman, he as a mixed race bastard) and in their lostness and loneliness. Jack is also that rare male who can accept Jane as an equal. “I’m not asking you to be an ornament. Or stand on a pedestal. I’m asking you to slog through the mud with me, blisters and all. If you’ll have me.”

She does indeed have him, and Willig assures us that their life after marriage continues to be extraordinary. Eloise and Colin’s HEA completes the picture. No loose threads to tease and taunt in this one. Mark me one deliciously satisfied reader, albeit one mourning the end of the series. 

If you have enjoyed other Pink Carnation books, add this one to your TBR immediately. If you have not read any of the other Pink Carnation books, I recommend the full series. Although The Passion of the Purple Plumeria (Book 10) is my top favorite with The Mischief of the Mistletoe a close second, all twelve books are keepers. I know I’ll be rereading them, and I’ll also remind myself that Willig has not ruled out The Return of the Pink Carnation.

~Janga

Guest Review - - The Passion of the Purple Plumeria

The Passion of the Purple Plumeria

By Lauren Willig

Publisher: NAL

Release Date: August 6, 2013

Eloise Kelly knows that her time in England is drawing to an end. Her research on the Pink Carnation has hit a dead end. Search as diligently as she can, she cannot uncover any reference to Miss Jane Wooliston or Miss Gwendolyn Meadows after 1805. She only hopes that her romance with Colin Selwick is not coming to a dead end as well. They have grown very comfortable together during the months she has lived with him at Selwick Hall, his ancestral estate, but Colin has said nothing to suggest permanence, and Eloise is committed to a full teaching schedule at Harvard for the coming year. With two months left, she needs some answers for the good of her thesis and her heart.

Eloise will eventually learn that in 1805, Jane Wooliston returned to England because her younger sister Agnes and a schoolmate had disappeared from Miss Climpson’s Select Seminary, their Bath boarding school, and Jane fears that Agnes may have been kidnapped because of her. She feels compelled to leave France and return to England, and where Jane goes, there too goes her prickly, occasionally proper, frequently parasol-bearing chaperone and fellow agent, Miss Gwen.

Jane and Miss Gwen have barely begun their investigation in Bath when Colonel William Reid, the father of the other missing girl, turns up, understandably surprised and concerned that his daughter Lizzy is not where he expected her to be and no one knows where she is. (Faithful followers of the Pink Carnation series will remember Agnes and the redoubtable Lizzy from The Mischief of the Mistletoe and Colonel Reid as the father of Alex Reid, the hero of The Betrayal of the Blood Lily, 2010). Colonel Reid has left India, where he has spent the greater part of his life building a military career, to spend more time with the two daughters he sent to England almost a decade ago. He is determined that he will be involved in the search for his daughter,

Miss Gwen knows he will be trouble for her and for the Pink Carnation, but none of the warnings her instincts are sounding comes with instructions for ridding herself of the handsome colonel. The two set out to find the missing girls. Instead they find that the colonel’s older daughter Kit is not where he thought she was either, and she has not seen her younger sister. When the two are attacked as they leave Kit, the colonel discovers that the Miss Gwen’s parasol disguises a sword as effectively as any gentleman’s cane, and Miss Gwen discovers that the man she has declared a rogue is just the kind of fellow one wants to have at one’s back in a tough fight. Together they defeat their thuggish attackers, but the colonel is wounded. Nursing an injured soldier may not fit well with Miss Gwen’s image, but she does it very well. And the experience tears down some barriers between the two that will not, cannot be rebuilt.

By the time the missing girls are found, the Pink Carnation and company have fought a major battle, solved the mystery of a sultan’s fortune in jewels, and set the lives of Jane Wooliston and Miss Gwen in new directions. Generations later, those same jewels, supposedly hidden on the Selwick estate, add to the tensions between Colin and his cousin/step-father, the repellent Jeremy Selwick-Alderly. When the two are ordered to work together by the old lady, Colin’s great-aunt and Jeremy’s grandmother, who loves and intimidates them both, they do so and, with the help of a centuries-old book, The Convent of Orsino by A Lady, find not only a fortune but a degree of harmony and information Eloise desperately needs for her research.

Each time I read a new Pink Carnation book, I am persuaded that it is my favorite in the series, but I think this one may prove to be the lasting best. From the opening sentence when Eloise tells Colin, “I seriously doubt that the lost jewels of Berar are under your bath mat” to the final three words “Yes, we have,” I loved this book. I loved the events of the frame story, but the story of Gwendolyn Meadows and William Reid delighted this reader’s heart on at least four levels.

1.      I loved their banter.

“I’ve always been one for Mozart myself, “said Colonel Reid. “There’s a nice bounce to his music, and it all always comes out right in the end.”

“Hardly realistic,” Gwen shot back.

“Neither is singing out one’s woes at the top of one’s lungs,” countered Colonel Reid. He grinned, “When was the last time you’ve done that? With an orchestra to follow one about, no less.”

“Most of the orchestras I’ve encountered,” said Gwen, “are remarkably stationary.”

The lines at the corners of Colonel Reid’s eyes crinkled. “Do you ever allow anyone else the last word, Miss Meadows?” 

“Not if they haven’t wit enough to seize it,” said Gwen.

“That,” said Colonel Reid, ‘sounds remarkably like a challenge.”

2.      I loved that this is a love story between two people over the age of forty, multi-dimensional people who have their share of baggage, who have made their share of mistakes, and who have developed quite effective personae that allow the world to see only what they want seen. I love that their romance is sweet and funny and passionate.

3.      I love that Lauren Willig succeeds superlatively well at her stated purpose of revealing the Gwen that lives within the Miss Gwen who has charmed and entertained readers through many books. (And the pair of interviews in the bonus material just may be my favorite book bonus ever.)

4.      Finally, I love that a beloved series that might well have ended with this book has turned in new directions that will yield more stories. The Mark of the Midnight Manzanilla will be released in August 2014, followed by the as yet untitled Pink XII, which, according to Willig, “will probably be out at some point in 2015.” I hope there will be more. I figure the Reid offspring alone deserve at least three. There’s Kat, whose story Willig has already mentioned; Jack is such an intriguing character that his story cries to be told; and surely Lizzy with her promised ten parasols with swords will prove to be a worthy heiress to the traditions of her stepmother.

Just in case it’s not clear by now, I highly recommend this book. If you are a Pink fan, you’ve probably already read it or have it waiting on your TBR stack or on reserve at your local library. If you have never read a Pink book, I promise if you like books with wit and warmth, if you like books that are rich in historical details, if you like books that give you historical and contemporary tales under one title, if you like books that offer unforgettable characters engaged in history, romance, mystery, and adventure, you’ll love this book. In fact, you’ll love this series.

~Janga
http://justjanga.blogspot.com

Guest Review - - The Garden Intrigue

The Garden Intrigue

By Lauren Willig

Publisher: NAL Trade (Reprint of hardcover)

Release Date: December 31, 2012

  

Emma Delgardie is a young American widow who has charmed the most socially prominent people in Paris with her vivacity and “naturalness.” Emma eloped at fifteen with an older Frenchman, resulting in a temporary estrangement from her family. Hortense Beauharnais, a friend from their days at Madam Campan’s School for Young Ladies, and her mother, the wife of Napoleon Bonaparte, stood by Emma when her own family did not. Emma has made Paris her home since she was widowed at nineteen. The fashionable world sees her as a merry widow, unaware of the grief that lies below the polished surface.

Augustus Whittlesby is a poet, quite a bad poet. He is a fixture at court, proclaiming his execrable verse and parading his poetic temperament to the amusement and sometimes outright mockery of the crowd. What few know is that Whittlesby is actually an agent of the Crown who has been using his poetry to pass on information he has gathered to none other than the Pink Carnation (Jane Wooliston). There is nothing fake about the feelings he has developed for Jane, and after ten years, he has grown weary of the role he’s forced to play. But his superiors have learned that Napoleon, with a new weapon in his possession, is planning an invasion of England, and Whittlesby is their best bet for garnering information about Napoleon’s plan. His orders are to find a way to attend the gathering at Malmaison, Napoleon’s summer home, where the secret weapon is to be displayed to a select company.

Emma, who is considered almost family by the Bonapartes, is charged with creating a masque, significantly one with a nautical theme, for the gathering at Malmaison. Whittlesby realizes that Emma is his best means of securing an invitation to Malmaison and offers his services as collaborator on the masque. Emma rejects his offer initially but seizes on it when a visiting relative reveals that her family expects her to return to New York, a plan he has expedited by booking her passage on the ship on which he is returning. As they spend time together, Emma and Whittlesby begin to discover the person behind the public personae each has adopted.  The two don’t so much fall into love as grow into it in a gradual blooming with a few frost warnings along the way to threaten the budding relationship.

Meanwhile, in the framing contemporary story, Eloise Kelly continues her research and tries to comfort her boyfriend Colin Selwick in his dismay over the infestation of a film crew at Selwick Hall. Add the presence of Colin’s stepfather, Colin’s ex, Colin’s sister, and Colin’s sister’s ex, and the complications compound. From Eloise’s perspective, the greatest complication is the fact that her fellowship is running out, she has a tempting job offer at “the other Cambridge,” and she has to make a decision about whether to stay in England or to return to the United States, whether to trust she and Colin have a future or to put her career in academia first.

This is the ninth book in Willig’s Pink Carnation series, and it’s another winner. The historical setting is France at the time Napoleon is declared emperor. Bits of American history are interwoven into the story. Emma is the niece of James Monroe and accompanies him and his family to Paris where he is American envoy in 1794. Robert Fulton, inventor of the steamboat, is also inventor of the weapon that could give Napoleon the means of invading England. The theme of the masque/masks is skillfully employed. The emphasis on words—poetry, epistles, notes—and what words reveal and conceal adds interest and complexity.

For me, the characters are the most important part of any story, and these characters are a delight. Emma seems to be all frivolity and sparkle, but this image is undercut by her very real grief over the death of a husband she loved but was just beginning to know and by her knowledge of engineering and her commitment to realizing her husband’s dream. The deception that Whittlesby has carried out for over a decade requires intelligence, courage, and considerable ability to act and to rhyme. The reader also discovers a few intriguing tidbits about Jane Wooliston.

If you are a fan of the series, you definitely don’t want to miss The Garden Intrigue. It follows fast on The Orchid Affair, but it is substantially lighter in tone. There is a rich vein of humor in this one, but it also has its heart-twisting moments. If you have yet to read Willig, I highly recommend her books. The core story works well as a standalone, but readers new to the series may have questions about the characters in the frame story. As for me, I already have The Passion of the Purple Plumeria (August 26) starred on my book calendar. I have an abiding weakness for alliteration and love the sound of “plumeria,” and so the title won my heart. That was before I knew that the new book will be about Miss Gwen, the redoubtable companion of Jane Wooliston. Now I’m practically salivating at the thought of it.

~Janga
http://justjanga.blogspot.com

Guest Review - - The Mischief of the Mistletoe

The Mischief of the Mistletoe

By Lauren Willig

Publisher: New American Library (trade paperback of October 2010 hardback edition)

Release Date: November 28, 2011

Arabella Dempsey had expectations from her wealthy Aunt Osborne with whom she has lived for the past twelve years. When Aunt Osborne marries a fortune hunter decades younger than she, Arabella’s expectations of being her aunt’s heiress are disappointed, as are her expectations of the attentions of Captain Musgrave, her newly acquired uncle. Arabella returns to her family in Bath, but home is no longer the site of her memories. Her father’s health is failing, her sisters are little more than strangers, and the genteel poverty in which they live persuades her that she must earn her living. The only thing that makes Bath endurable is the presence of her dear friend, Jane Austen.

Against Jane’s advice, Arabella accepts a position as junior schoolmistress at Miss Climpson’s Select Seminary for Young Ladies. As she concludes her interview with Miss Climpson, she finds herself literally knocked off her feet by Mr. Reginald Fitzhugh, who is delivering a Christmas hamper to his younger sister, a student at the school. Recognizing the affable “Turnip” by his waistcoat, “a masterpiece of fine fabric and poor taste,” Arabella reminds him that they have met, but an experienced wallflower, she is unsurprised and unoffended by his having forgotten her.

The attempted theft of a Christmas pudding with an attached note—in French—that orders “Meet me at Farley Castle, tomorrow afternoon. Most urgent” begins a series of shared adventures. The note leads them to a frost fair in the ruins of Farley Castle where they find another Christmas pudding, this one in the marble hand of an effigy, with the clue written on ribbon. More puddings and more clues follow.  Complications include a mysterious list, several suspicious characters, a chaotic Christmas pageant, and the twelve days of Christmas festivities at Girdings House, home of the Dowager Duchess of Dovedail. But the journey the mystery sets them on is secondary to the course that leads to love.

Some fans of Willig’s Pink Carnation series will doubtless miss the contemporary frame story of Eloise and Colin, and those who prefer ample lacings of darkness and love scenes with heat may be disappointed. But most of Willig’s fans, or at least those that waited for the paperback release, will remember the amiable Turnip, “long on looks and short on brains,” and enjoy him as a different kind of hero in this series.
For those who have not read Willig but enjoy historical romance that evokes smiles and sighs, I highly recommend this book. I always find a special delight in books that cause me to imagine the author smiling with pleasure as she creates the adventures of her characters. This is such a book. Reading it is great fun. First there is Arabella and her circumstances lifted straight from Jane Austen’s unfinished novel <i>The Watsons</i>. In TMOTM, Jane is inspired to write the novel by Arabella’s story. It’s also marvelous to see a wallflower coming into her own with adventures, dances, a grand proposal, and a hero who loves all the qualities that have gone unappreciated.

The trio of schoolgirls who aid and abet includes not only Sally Fitzhugh, Turnip’s sister, but also her “particular friends,” the younger sisters of Alex and Jack Reid (Blood Lily) and Jane Wooliston (Pink Carnation). They are engaging characters, credible as schoolgirls but also filled with potential as heroines of their own stories. Fans will recognize several familiar characters, but the best of the secondary characters is Jane Austen, who is very much the witty and astringent Jane of her letters.

But the book’s star and its heart is Turnip. Handsome, wealthy, genial, kind, boisterous, and smarter than he is given credit for being, he is an endearing, unforgettable hero. Willig includes Jane Austen’s Bingley, Georgette Heyer’s Ajax, P. G. Wodehouse’s Bertie Wooster, and Nigel from Jill Barnett’s Bewitching in her list of Turnip’s literary antecedents, with a nod toward Loretta Chase’s Rupert Carsington as a kinsman. He reminded me most strongly of Freddy Standen in Heyer’s Cotillion, although Turnip’s embroidered waistcoats would have horrified the sartorially elegant Freddy. But Turnip is an original not an imitation. He’s also a darling, and The Mischief of the Mistletoe is a perfect confection for holiday reading—light, sweet, and finely crafted.

Note: This book takes place after The Seduction of the Crimson Rose but before The Temptation of the Night Jasmine. You might also enjoy the bonus chapter, “Away in a Manger” (Turnip’s wedding night) available free on Willig’s web site: http://laurenwillig.com/diversions/index.html

~Janga

Guest Review - - The Betrayal of the Blood Lily

The Betrayal of the Blood Lily
By Lauren Willig
Publisher: NAL Trade (reprint of 2010 hardcover)
Release Date: January 4, 2011

The Betrayal of the Blood Lily is the sixth novel in Lauren Willig’s Pink Carnation series. Like the other books in the series, this one features a blend of espionage and romance and is framed by the story of Eloise Kelly, an American graduate student in England working on her dissertation, a treatise on aristocratic spies during the Napoleonic wars. In book 6, the romance between Eloise and Colin Selwick, self-proclaimed novelist and maybe spy, has progressed, but the heart of the novel is the historical tale, the story of Penelope Deveraux, a secondary character in The Masque of the Black Tulip and The Temptation of the Night Jasmine.

Penelope delights in breaking rules and setting the gossips of London society abuzz until she finally goes too far. Caught in a compromising position with Lord Frederick Staines, she finds herself “ruined in January, married in February, on a boat to the tropics by March.” Her husband is appointed Special Envoy to the Court of Hyderabad, and Penelope is expected to play the role of Lady Staines, little more than an appendage to her husband. The physical attraction that brought Penelope and Freddy together is a poor foundation for a marriage between two people who share no common interests or values. Freddy spends his time drinking, gambling, and consorting with the Indian mistress he has installed in the home he shares with Penelope. Penelope, who finds she is married to a man she doesn’t even like, keeps busy confounding the expectations of Captain Alex Reid, a controlled, disciplined soldier who escorts the Staines to Hyderbrand. The story is filled with political intrigue, rumors concerning the mysterious spy Marigold, and dangers in unexpected places. Alex, against his own judgment and at considerable risk to his honor, accepts Pen’s help to find the spy and protect British interests in India.

Blood Lily possesses the skillful characterization and historical detail for which Willig is known, and it boasts a more exotic setting than the other books as well as major twists to some established conventions. While India has become more common as a setting for historical romance in recent years, it is still rare enough to be refreshing to readers looking for a change from London ballrooms and English estates. Forced marriages are a staple in romance fiction. Typically the marriage leads to the predictable HEA, but Willig inverts the trope here. Penelope’s forced marriage leads to misery.

Penelope is not a typical heroine in any sense. She is thoughtless, manipulative, and prone to bouts of self-pity, but she’s also courageous, intelligent, and vulnerable. In other words, she is human with her fair share of weaknesses and strengths. Alex is a more conventional character, but his loyalty to his motley family and the conflicts he suffers save him from being merely typical. More turning convention on its head occurs with the adulterous relationship between Pen and Alex. Willig doesn’t gloss over the adultery. Although Freddy is a faithless spouse, Pen’s adultery, should it be discovered, would be viewed quite differently. Additionally, both Pen and Alex have their own guilt with which to contend.

Meanwhile, in the contemporary world, Eloise is trying her hand at matchmaking and feeling insecure after a near-quarrel with Colin. But it’s Valentine’s Day, and they have a date, complete with a rose, pink champagne, and revelations about the modern-day Selwicks.

Some readers may find Willig’s unconventional choices too much, but for readers who like flawed characters, value great dialogue, enjoy mystery with their history, and appreciate memorable prose, this novel will be a great addition to the TBR stack. If you’ve never read any of the Pink Carnation books, this one works well as a stand-alone book. I’m betting that if you read this one, you’ll look for the backlist. I’m reading The Mischief of the Mistletoe (October 2010) now and looking forward to The Orchid Affair (January 2011).  I also have high hopes that we will see more of Alex’s fascinating family in future books.

~Janga