Tour Review - - The Librarians

The Librarians

by Sherry Thomas

Publisher: Berkley

Release Date: September 30, 2025

Reviewed by PJ

Sometimes a workplace isn’t just a workplace but a place of safety, understanding, and acceptance. And sometimes murder threatens the sanctity of that beloved refuge....

In the leafy suburbs of Austin, Texas, a small branch library welcomes the public every day of the week. But the patrons who love the helpful, unobtrusive staff and leave rave reviews on Yelp don’t always realize that their librarians are human, too.

Hazel flees halfway across the world for what she hopes will be a new beginning. Jonathan, a six-foot-four former college football player, has never fit in anywhere else. Astrid tries to forget her heartbreak by immersing herself in work, but the man who ghosted her six months ago is back, promising trouble. And Sophie, who has the most to lose, maintains a careful and respectful distance from her coworkers, but soon that won't be enough anymore.

When two patrons turn up dead after the library’s inaugural murder mystery–themed game night, the librarians’ quiet routines come crashing down. Something sinister has stirred, something that threatens every single one of them. And the only way the librarians can save the library—and themselves—is to let go of their secrets, trust one another, and band together....

All in a day’s work.

PJ's Thoughts:

Having read Sherry Thomas's historical romances, I wasn't sure exactly what to expect from this new, standalone, cozy mystery. What I discovered were characters who engaged my interest, a mystery twisty enough to keep me guessing, and a satisfying conclusion that would lead me to read more of this type of book by Thomas. 

There are four main characters in this novel, all of whom work at a small neighborhood library branch in Austin, Texas. Over the course of the story, we learn about each of them in present-day scenes as well as flashbacks, all told from each individual's point of view. That much head-hopping can easily become confusing, especially when the characters are also interacting with one another as well as secondary characters but I felt the author handled the flow well. There were a couple times when I had to re-read a few pages to make sure I was in the right timeframe of the story but those were few. 

The author takes her time setting the stage for both the mystery portion of the book as well as the individual stories of the main characters. I engaged with some of the main characters earlier than others but by the end of the book, I was wholly invested in all four. The pace set by the author with each main character gradually revealing their secrets to the others feels authentic and relatable, also allowing me, the reader, to get to know them more intimately as they slowly come to know one another. I will say that if you're an impatient reader, you will need to call on some patience for the first third of the book as it moves at a relatively slow pace while the stage is set for the mystery and we get to know the characters. It wasn't an issue for me but it may be for others.  

The mystery is an important part of the book but there is also a bit of second-chance romance for two of the main characters (I was pulling for both couples) and some heartbreak along the way for another. The mystery itself is very well crafted, with several surprises that kept me guessing. Just when I thought I knew what was happening, the story zagged in an entirely different direction, keeping me eagerly flipping pages right up until the end. 

If you're into cozy mysteries with relatable characters, a well crafted storyline, and a satisfying payoff at the end, all wrapped up in well-loved books and community at the local library, give this one a chance. I thoroughly enjoyed it. 

Review - - My Beautiful Enemy

My Beautiful Enemy

By Sherry Thomas

Publisher: Berkley

Release Date: August 5, 2014

Daughter of a Chinese courtesan and an Englishman who dies before his daughter is born, Catherine Blade grows up in China as Ying-ying, loved and sheltered but knowing that she is not the daughter her beautiful, graceful mother wants her to be. After her mother’s death, she and her amah are given quarters in the household of her mother’s protector, a powerful and distant figure whom Ying-ying addresses as Da-ren, or “great personage.” Anchored by her amah, who trains her in martial arts, and an Englishman hired to tutor De-ran’s sons, who teaches her English and tells her about the land of her father, Ying-ying is devastated when both her mentors are killed the same night. The events of that night also make it necessary for Ying-ying to disguise herself as a male and adopt the life of a vagabond, trying always to elude the enemy who wants to destroy her.

On her journey, Ying-ying meets a man known to her only by the name she assigns him, the Persian. The two travel together, gradually learning more about each other while at the same time maintaining their secrets. After the Persian saves Ying-ying from bandits, he confesses that he has known from the beginning that she is female. The two become lovers, but just as Ying-ying begins to believe she has found someone who will never leave her, they separately discover facts about one another’s allegiances and part.

Eight years later, Ying-ying in her English identity as Catherine Blade arrives in England on a mission. Her reform-minded stepfather is in need of funds and has charged her with locating a pair of legendary jade tablets that reveal the location of great treasure hidden long ago by Buddhist monks. One of the first people she meets in England is Captain Leighton Atwood, her Persian whom she thought was dead. The connection between the two of them is as potent as ever and the relationship as complicated. Leighton, having finally given up on finding the girl from Chinese Turkestan, has acquired a fiancée, but neither Ying-ying’s treachery, his loyalty to his fiancée, nor his patriotism is enough to interfere with his desire to protect Catherine. Danger and betrayal threaten Catherine at every turn. It will take the combined strength and skill of Catherine and Leighton to defeat their enemies, known and unknown, and a willingness to trust one another to finally achieve their HEA.

Sherry Thomas gives readers an adventure-packed novel that interweaves a cross-cultural romance and a tale of political intrigue and danger. The story alternates between Chinese Turkestan in 1883 and England in 1891. In an interview with Madeline Hunter that appeared in USAToday’s Happily Ever After, Thomas said, “And all you need to know about My Beautiful Enemy is that it is Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon meets Downton Abbey.” That description gives readers a sense of the book, but no description or summary can do justice to its complexity and emotional power.

With some authors who set stories in alternating times, I quickly grow confused and frustrated, but Thomas deftly juxtaposes past and present with clarity and grace.  There was never a moment in this novel when I was confused about the action and never a moment when I was not eagerly awaiting the next scene. “Kick-ass heroine” has become a cliché of the genre, but in the case of Catherine, it is literally accurate. However, Catherine is much more than a deadly practitioner of the martial arts. Her strength of character equals her physical strength, and yet she also has vulnerabilities. Leighton too is a survivor, one with a nurturer’s heart and a keen intelligence, a combination sure to leave readers sighing.

As always with Sherry Thomas, one of the joys of reading her novel is the prose. Whether it is in the humor of a sentence such as “The interlocking gears of a wedding, like those of a war machine, ground on inexorably” or the poignancy of a sentence stunning in its simplicity (“And then the silence became that of his absence, a silence that she had come to know all too well), each line is crafted with precision and elegance. And the first love scene could serve as a textbook to teach how to use the details of such a scene to reveal the characters and their unique relationship. “He caressed her as if the night were infinite, and every square inch of her skin deserved its own hour of worship” is a sentence specific to the experience of these particular lovers.

My Beautiful Enemy is different—different from Thomas’s earlier romance fiction and different from other romance novels—but it has the richly layered characters, the compelling story, and the distinctive voice that readers expect from this author. Thomas has written a prequel “The Hidden Blade” that gives the backstory of Ying-ying and Leighton. Although it is not necessary to read the prequel to appreciate My Beautiful Enemy, doing so will make reading the novel a richer experience. I give both my highest recommendation.

~Janga

Guest Review - - The Luckiest Lady in London

The Luckiest Lady in London

By Sherry Thomas

Publisher: Berkley

Release Date: November 5, 2013

  

Felix Rivendale, Marquess of Wrenworth, is the perfect gentleman to the finest detail, but he is not real. He is all image, carefully constructed by a young man scarred by a loveless childhood and determined to maintain emotional distance even as he wins the affection and admiration of London’s elite. When he finds himself orphaned at seventeen, he makes his plans accordingly.

He planned to eclipse her in both acclaim and influence – a fitting tribute from the son for whom she had so little regard.

As for his father, Felix’s tribute to him would be to never repeat the man’s great mistake of loving with all his heart and soul. Friendship he would permit, and perhaps some mild affection. Love, however, was out of the question.

Love made one powerless. And he had had enough powerlessness to last ten lifetimes. In this new life of his, he would always hold all the power.

Every move Wrenworth makes is planned to elicit exactly the response he desires, and he glories in the fact that everyone is ignorant of the cold, manipulative mind at work behind the façade of perfection. But he also becomes bored with the perfection of his pretense and a bit disappointed that no one has the wit to penetrate his disguise. Then he meets Louisa Cantwell.

Louisa Cantwell lacks beauty, wealth, and family connections, but she is intelligent, pragmatic, and highly motivated to find a wealthy husband. She has always known that her mother’s small income will cease at her death, and Louisa and her sisters will be dependent upon their own resources, which essentially are non-existent. Louisa accepts quite stoically that she must marry well in order to provide for her sisters. She has no illusions about her situation, and she plans competently and sets realistic goals. She studies the social world like a textbook, and she learns to make the most of what she has. Her teeth are crooked, so she learns to smile without showing them. She is small bosomed, but bust enhancements can work wonders. She learns to create the impression of beauty without being beautiful. She is struck by the uncommon good looks of Wrenworth and recognizes her instinctive response to his appeal, but she knows he is far above her touch. She is also almost instantly aware that he sees through the front she has so painstakingly created.

Wrenworth, in his turn, is reluctantly fascinated by this woman who clearly is attracted to him but who is able to control the attraction.

She wasn't so good an actor that he couldn't see through her pretense at fifty paces. She was, however, good enough that he'd been slightly surprised at the transparency of her infatuation. When their gaze had met for the first time, he had almost heard the wedding bells ringing in her ears.

Then it dissipated into thin air - not just the look, but the infatuation itself. And that had firmly caught his attention.

At first, he plans to make her his mistress until his fascination exhausts itself. When she rejects him, he does something he never expected to do: he asks her to become his wife. Even though Wrenworth is far wealthier than the men Louisa had chosen as potential husbands, she knows he is dangerous to her, a man she can never truly trust or fully know.  Despite reservations on both their parts, they marry. Then things get really interesting.

I start anticipating the next Sherry Thomas book as soon as I turn the last page on the current one, but my anticipation ratcheted up tremendously when I read the following paragraph on Thomas’s blog:

The Luckiest Lady owes its genesis to The Lord of Scoundrels.  I read the book late in the previous century and thought to myself, Hmm, what if, after a pretty horrendous childhood, instead of turning into Lord of Scoundrels, a man turned into The Ideal Gentleman instead?  Two sides of the same coin, right?

Lord of Scoundrels is high on my list of all-time favorite romance novels, and I adore Dain. I’m also a believer in the wonder of stories that begin with what ifs. So I was incredibly eager to read this book. But my first reaction was disappointment. I understood the hero’s motivation, I found the hero fascinating, but I didn’t like him very much until I was well into the book. No doubt my response was due in part to the enthusiasm with which I embraced Thomas’s Fitzhugh trilogy. If I say that I’ve read it three times already and fully expect to read it again, you will have some idea of how much I love that series. It was a tough act to follow. But when I reread The Luckiest Lady in London, I discovered that my response to Wrenworth in a sense mirrored Louisa’s, and maybe I was reacting just as Thomas planned for her readers to react.

At any rate, by the second reading, I was able to appreciate Wrenworth more fully as a character who is a maelstrom of emotions that he devotes his considerable will to controlling. His fascination with Louisa renders him vulnerable to her and threatens his control. Small wonder that his fear of her is equal to his desire for her. It is rare to see a hero and heroine who mirror one another’s complexities to the degree that Wrenworth and Louisa do. She is as intelligent and self-controlled as he is, and she recognizes and accepts her passionate nature. And by “passionate” here, certainly I include her desire for Wrenworth, but I also include other things that matter to her. The scenes between these two are sometimes witty and amusing and sometimes darkly sensual, but they are always credible and riveting because Thomas makes the reader believe in these two characters and who they are separately and together.

Another thing at which Thomas excels is her ability to capture the power of that first moment of attraction so that the reader experiences it on an almost visceral level. These are Louisa’s thoughts on meeting Wrenworth:

It was difficult to draw breath. Her heart palpitated in both pleasure and panic. And she flushed furiously, too much heat pulsing through her veins for her to control or disguise.

A heartbeat later, however, she was cold. She could not say how she knew it, Lord Wrenworth having been nothing but flawlessly courteous. All the same, she was suddenly dead certain that on the inside, he found her patently ridiculous, perhaps even laughable.

I hope the quotations I have included are sufficient to show you Thomas’s masterful command of prose. Her ability to use words that have the depth and flavor and richness of a glass of truly excellent wine is always one of the joys of reading—and rereading—her books. If you too value beautiful prose, intelligent and complex characters, and a story that will engage your heart and your mind, I highly recommend The Luckiest Lady in London. And if this should be your first Sherry Thomas book, I envy you the delight of a backlist that stands with the best in the romance genre.

-Janga
http://justjanga.blogspot.com

Guest Review - - Tempting the Bride

Tempting the Bride

By Sherry Thomas

Publisher: Berkley

Release Date: October 2, 2012

                                

Helena Fitzhugh marches to her own drum. She is university educated in a time when few women are. She owns a publishing company purchased with her own money and operated with her own energies, even rarer choices for a young woman of her class. She is also in love with a married man, Andrew Martin. They fell in love when Helena was twenty-two, and neither Andrew’s agreeing to his mother’s demands that he marry the woman she chose for him nor the marriage itself has shaken Helena’s love for him. And her family’s watchful care and the interference of the pestilential Lord Hastings combined have not prevented her from seeing Andrew.

David Hillsborough, Viscount Hastings has been in love with Helena Fitzhugh since they were fourteen. So overwhelmed was he by Helena and the feelings that she evoked in him that he behaved foolishly, attracting her attention by annoying her with vulgarities and putdowns, in the manner of obnoxious adolescent males. The problem is he’s stuck in the pattern thirteen years later, unable to forget Helena and unwilling to take the risk of telling her how he feels. He knows how close to social ruin Helena is skating in her relationship with Andrew, and he does his best to prevent disaster for Helena’s sake and for that of her twin brother, Earl Fitzhugh, his best friend.

Hastings learns that Helena and Andrew have been set up by Andrew’s wife who wants evidence that will allow her to break free of her husband. Hastings rushes to the hotel where the lovers are to meet and arrives in time for Andrew to hide and Hastings to be found with Helena when the Martin women, Andrew’s wife and domineering mother, burst into the room. Hastings announces that he and Helena have eloped, but before his fiction can become fact, Helena is critically injured in an accident as she chases after Andrew.

Hastings is a constant presence at Helena’s bedside as she lies for days in a coma from which he fears she may not awaken. When she does regain consciousness, Helena can remember nothing of the past thirteen years of her life. She recognizes Venetia, her sister, and Fitz, her twin, but she doesn’t know their spouses. And she doesn’t know Hastings, who she is told is her husband. Hastings has the opportunity to start with a clean slate. He can relate to Helena now with none of the annoying games that have characterized his relationship with her for years. She responds to him with none of the scorn that was her wont. As he reveals to her the man he truly is with all his intelligence and charm and devotion, Helena begins to view him with liking and eventually with desire. Hastings is torn between joy over the feelings growing between them and fear of the future when Helena’s memory returns.

This is the third book in Thomas’s Fitzhugh trilogy, following Beguiling the Beauty (Venetia’s book) and Ravishing the Heiress (Fitz’s book). The pattern of a Fitzhugh past the first blush of youth finding the love of her/his life with someone who has loved her/him from a young age is sustained in this book. Despite this similarity, each story is unique. In this one, Thomas takes some of the conventions and tropes I dislike in romance and weaves them into a story that I loved, regardless of my prejudices.

First, I’m not a fan of the hero and heroine who begin as word snipers constantly tearing at one another verbally. This kind of thing makes me really uncomfortable in real life, and I don’t like it any better in fiction. Helena and Hastings’s pointed exchanges are a minor thread in the first two books, so it’s been going on for quite a while. But because Thomas made me care about Hastings from the beginning by showing him as more than the man Helena sees, I wanted him to have his HEA. I wasn’t persuaded that Helena deserved him even for much of this book. But Thomas undercut my dislike of the character by having Helena think exactly what I thought of her earlier behavior: “She could hardly breathe for her searing aversion to this reckless, selfish woman. . . .”

Speaking of aversion, I have an aversion to amnesia plots. It probably dates from an addiction to soap operas in my teens. But I found Helena’s physical and emotional reactions to her amnesia believable. I don’t know if anything else would have served so well to render the self-assured Helena vulnerable. The character was much more likable after she lost her memory.

Triangles don’t have much appeal for me either, especially when they involve adultery. But Helena is so clearly the pursuer in her relationship with Andrew that it’s difficult to hold him responsible. Gentle, anxious, and so easily controlled by strong-willed women, he is such an unlikely partner for her. Nothing makes this clearer than the final scene between the two where Helena’s farewell action is to give Andrew commands involving both his marriage and his writing.

On the other hand, Hastings’s love for the willful Helena is the kind that leaves me sighing. He has no illusions about her, but he views all she does through the lens of a love that understands and accepts. When the amnesiac Helena is horrified by the knowledge of all she has risked in her determined pursuit of Andrew, Hastings comforts her: “You lost him when you loved him the most, a difficult blow that never quite softened with time.”  Helena is solaced by his kindness. “She let herself wallow in the magnificence of his compassion, the sweetness of his friendship.”  We see that generosity of spirit in Hastings’ love for Helena and just as movingly in his love for his illegitimate daughter, Bea.  He’s also an artist and a writer and a passionate lover. He’s close to the perfect hero in my opinion, and my favorite moment in the book is when Helena fully realizes what she has. The epilogue is a very pretty bow on the wonderful gift of this story.

I’ve heard that Sherry Thomas may not write any more historical romances. I hope she changes her mind, but I’m grateful for the treasures she has given readers over these past few years. I’m particularly grateful for this nearly perfect trilogy. For the third time, I highly recommend the latest book in the Fitzhugh trilogy.

~Janga
http://justjanga.blogspot.com

Review - - Ravishing the Heiress

Ravishing the Heiress

By Sherry Thomas

Publisher: Berkley Sensation

Release Date: July 3, 2012

Millicent Graves, the only child of a wealthy manufacturer, has been educated to be a lady and brought up to know that her purpose in life is to marry well. She is not yet sixteen when the marriage contracts are signed that will make her the bride of an earl more than twice her age, but before the marriage takes place, the earl dies. Millie, who has been trained in “discipline, control, and self-denial,” is not a romantic. Her ideas about love have been shaped by her upbringing and by her reading of Jane Austen’s novels. She has not been allowed to read the Brontës. Character, sense, and good humor are the qualities she would most like in a husband. But all of Millie’s preconceptions change one evening two weeks after the funeral of her intended husband when the new Earl Fitzhugh dines with the Graves family. For Millie, the appearance of the young earl is cataclysmic. “Like a visitation of angels, there flared a bright white light in the center of her vision. Haloed by this supernatural radiance stood a young man who must have folded his wings just that moment so as to bear a passing resemblance to a mortal.”

Fitz had never expected to inherit the earldom. At nineteen, he is still a student at Eton, looking forward to a military career and marriage to Isabelle Pelham, the young lady with whom he has been madly in love for three years. But now he is Earl Fitzhugh and responsible for an estate that’s falling to pieces and eighty thousand pounds of debt. His only honorable option is to exchange his title for the fortune a wealthy wife will bring. Filled with fury and frustration over the situation, he accepts his fate but vows to Isabelle, “No matter what happens, I will always, always love you.”

When Millie sees Fitz with Isabelle at a cricket match, she understands that he is not only being forced to marry her but to part from one he loves desperately. Millie, self-possessed and wise beyond her years, proposes a truly convenient marriage. She and Fitz will agree to a “covenant of freedom,” a period of eight years during which their marriage will remain unconsummated and Fitz will be free to live the unencumbered life of a single man and Millie to follow the life of an unmarried woman while enjoying being mistress of her own household.

Although the marriage is not without painful adjustments for both Millie and Fitz, a friendship grows during the eight years of their covenant. As they work together to restore the dilapidated Henley Park to beauty and prosperity and reinvigorate the faltering business Millie inherits from her father, they build a shared life of common interests, love of home, and social gatherings with family and friends. They come to like and respect one another, and if Millie falls more deeply in love with Fitz and harbors hope for their future, she never speaks of her feelings to anyone. Then word comes that the now-widowed Isabelle Pelham Englewood, who has spent most of the eight years in India with her husband, is returning to England.

Before he can begin a life with Isabelle, Fitz feels honor bound to consummate his marriage. After all, an heir to inherit his noble blood and the Graves wealth was a purpose of the marriage. For six months, he and Millie will be lovers as well as man and wife. After that period, he and Isabelle can be together. But Fitz’s initial jubilation over reuniting with Isabelle is soon tempered by concern over her lack of decorum and its effects on Millie. And the more passionate moments he and Millie share, the more he becomes aware of how important Millie is in his life. He begins to realize that what was true for the nineteen-year-old he used to be may not be true for the man he has become during his marriage to Millie. What’s an honorable man to do when he realizes the woman he swore to love for always is not the one with whom he wants to share the rest of his life?

If you read my review of Beguiling the Beauty, you know I loved the first book in Sherry Thomas’s Fitzhugh trilogy, but Ravishing the Heiress is even better. Millie is one of the most remarkable heroines I’ve encountered in my years of reading romance. Her first response to Fitz is a reminder of how young she is. It has all the wonder and drama of first love and all its vulnerabilities. But even when her heart is shattered, Millie preserves her dignity. Her proposal of the “covenant of freedom” is a self-protective act, but it also shows a rare sensitivity to Fitz’s feelings. She may be young, but she is never self-absorbed. Watching her love for Fitz deepen and her hope for more than friendship persist even through his years of careless love affairs was heart wrenching and made the ending all the more satisfying.

Fitz demonstrates maturity in his tenderness with his sisters, in his acceptance of his responsibilities, and in his recognition of what running away with Isabelle would cost her, but he is in other ways typically young and self-centered. In the beginning of the marriage, he is aware only of his own suffering with no concern about Millie or even consciousness of her as a person. Only gradually does he become aware of the qualities that make Millie exceptional. His is the greater growth because he has further to go.

Reading this book,  I was reminded of Georgette Heyer’s A Civil Contract, another book about a titled young man who must give up the one he thinks is the love of his life to marry a wealthy, self-possessed young woman. Unlike many Heyer fans who hate the book for being anti-romantic, I like A Civil Contract. But I always thought Jenny deserved a bit of love’s soaring along with its quiet contentment. Millie gets all that Jenny misses, and that she does makes me love this book all the more. My favorite line in the novel is a comment Venetia, Fitz’s sister and heroine of Beguiling the Beauty makes to Millie, who has paraphrased with some bitterness Byron’s claim that “Friendship is Love without his wings.” Venetia answers her: “No, my dear Millie, you are wrong. Love without friendship is like a kite, aloft only when the winds are favorable. Friendship is what gives love its wings.”

As is always true with a Sherry Thomas book, part of the joy of reading it comes from the richness of the prose. This is not an author intoxicated with words who displays them like ornaments but rather one who employs them with precision to reveal her characters and enhance her themes. She does so in the language of the early scenes that reflect perfectly the youthful protagonists and later in passages like this one in which Fitz acknowledges his curiosity about sexual intimacy with Millie:

“He’d firmly buried that curiosity: A pact was a pact. They’d shaken hands on eight years and eight years he intended to keep his hands to himself.

But buried things had a funny way of sprouting roots and feelers just beneath the consciousness. So that when he did at last acknowledge it, he found himself facing not the same small seed of desire, but a jungle of lust.”

I try to write balanced reviews, but sometimes I love a book so much that I feel as if I have to write with the brakes on to keep from overwhelming readers with my enthusiasm. That’s the way I felt writing this review. I highly recommend this book. And if I could say that with bands playing and flags flying to get your attention, I would.

~Janga
http://justjanga.blogspot.com

Guest Review - - Beguiling the Beauty

Beguiling the Beauty

By Sherry Thomas

Publisher: Berkley

Release Date: May 1, 2012

Christian de Montford, Duke of Lexington was a golden boy—handsome, wealthy, and blessed with an early discovery of a passion for natural history. One day when he was still a student at Harrow, he saw a woman who captured his senses and imagination at first sight.

"Her face—he lost his breath. He’d never encountered beauty of such magnitude and intensity. It was not allure, but grace, like the sight of land to a shipwrecked man. And he, who hadn’t been on a capsized vessel since he was six—and that had only been an overturned canoe—suddenly felt as if he had been adrift in the open ocean his entire life.”

Even after Christian discovers the woman is married, she haunts his dreams and fuels his fantasies. A few years after he first sees her, a disturbing incident with her husband, who dies soon afterward, combines with a few facts and many rumors to persuade him that her beauty is superficial, a glorious surface disguising a “shallow, greedy, selfish woman.”  A second sighting, five years after the first, demonstrates that her power over him has not been diminished by his disillusionment.  Ten years after that first meeting, Lexington is in Boston to deliver a public lecture on Lamarck and Darwin at Harvard University. When a member of the audience questions his statement that beautiful people are untrustworthy, he responds with anecdotal evidence about character flaws of the beauty who still commands an uncomfortable part of his thoughts.

Venetia Fitzhugh Townsend Easterbrook is that woman, and she is a member of Lexington’s audience that day. His words anger her, and they also destroy the barrier she has erected between herself and the painful memories of her first marriage. Arranging to meet her sister and sister-in-law in New York, she looks forward to privacy that will allow her to recover her shattered peace, but Lexington’s presence in the same hotel makes that impossible. In an effort to avoid being recognized, she adopts the identity of a German widow, Baronesse von Seidlitz-Hardenberg. When she interprets Lexington’s behavior as evidence of his arrogance, she remembers her sister’s words following the Boston episode: “Avenge yourself, Venetia. Make him fall in love with you and give him the cut.” Impulsively, she decides to do just that and books a stateroom on the Rhodesia, the ship Lexington is set to sail to England on the next morning.

What follows is one of the best ship romances I’ve ever read. Thomas pays tribute to the influence of Judith Ivory’s Beast in her acknowledgements, and the influence of this classic romance is evident. But Thomas’s story is uniquely her own, not derivative in the least. Venetia’s plan works all too well, and Lexington soon falls under the spell of the heavily veiled, mysterious baroness. The two quickly become lovers, and almost as quickly fall in love. Lexington is not at all the man Venetia expected him to be. But Venetia is hoist with her own petard because Lexington has fallen in love with a woman who does not exist and she dare not reveal her identity to the man who spoke of her with such contempt.

Thomas has once again created a heroine and hero who manage to fall within the conventions of romance fiction and yet remain distinctly individual. Lexington is titled and rich and the dream of every mother with a marriageable daughter, but he is also a scientist and scholar with little interest in society. The twice-widowed Venetia possesses a bewitching beauty, but she is neither unconscious of it nor spoiled by it. Indeed, she is fully aware of its power and regrets the way it isolates her and renders her as something out of the range of normality. She sees herself, to use her own term, as something of a “freak.” Both Venetia and Lexington are imperfect characters, and their recognition of their imperfections, their willingness to admit their mistakes, increases their appeal.

Some may label this a love-at-first-sight tale. I disagree. Thomas distinguishes Lexington’s desire for Venetia, which is instantaneous, from the love that develops after their time together on board the ship. When he still believes his baroness and Venetia are two women, Lexington is dismayed by his physical response to Venetia when the baroness holds his heart. The story is compelling because it is a romance but also because it raises issues about beauty and responses to it and the effects of misjudgment when appearance is confused with reality.

The secondary characters are neither conveniences nor usurpers. Each serves a definite purpose and appears as an individual with a story. Lexington’s relationship with his stepmother reveals something of his character, as does Venetia’s close ties to her sister and brother and sister-in-law, who are more than characters bearing placards proclaiming “My story is next.” Even Lord and Lady Tremaine, whose cameo delighted me since Private Arrangements is one of my all-time favorite romances, were included for a reason other than as a nod to fans.

Finally, there is Thomas’s prose, which, as always, is lucid and lyrical and lovely. Her words always seem to be perfectly chosen whether she’s showing Lexington thinking that Venetia has “pickpocketed his heart” or Venetia becoming aware of the physical transformation love has wrought in her: "Her familiar features had been transformed. By excitement, elation, and caution thrown to the wind. She looked like a woman for whom life was only beginning, rather than one weighed down and calcified by disappointed dreams.”

Complex, compelling characters, an unusual and emotionally powerful plot, and prose with the range and beauty of music—what more can a reader ask for? Maybe more of the same. I am confident that’s what Thomas will provide in the next two books in her first series. My recommendation is to put Beguiling the Beauty on your must-buy list, and while you’re at it, you should add Ravishing the Heiress (Millie and Fitz’s story, July 3) and Tempting the Bride (Helena and her hero’s story, October 2).  

~Janga

http://justjanga.blogspot.com