in this installment of Willig's Pink Carnation series, we follow Lady Charlotte Lansdowne on her quest for true love. An imaginative, naïve, bookish young lady who fully wishes for a knight in shining armor to sweep her off of her feet, Charlotte pictures herself as the heroine of her own story,...
This was my second Lauren Willig stand-alone novel and I loved it. I thought this was a very interesting story spanning many eras. The novel follows Willig's pattern of telling her story over two different time periods. The first one follows Clementine in the late 1990s-early 2000s. Clemmie i...
This is one is my favorite of the whole series. The setting moves to India but the story is just as good if a little slow in the beginning.
Not even worth writing my own words. I copied and pasted fro two others I thought fitting:The characters were very dull and uncaptivating. There is nothing in Emma to arouse any interest; she's just a society girl who is completely content with her frivolous life. Augustus, meanwhile, has the mos...
Lauren Willig is a consummate storyteller. Like fellow author Kate Morton, she has an exceptional ability to shift between the past and the present, interweaving and connecting two separate tales into one. Her "Pink Carnation" series is a continual favorite, and her stand alone novel "The Ashford...
It took some time to get in to this story, as it assumes that you know/remember a lot from the other Pink Carnation books. There wasn't a lot of intrigue, but it was a fun read, once I did get in to the flow of the story. I understand that it is hard to get into character development in a short...
I love this series. It's got romance, intrique, history, suspense, comedy....and this little novella..an insert into the series is a quick read, but totally fits in with the series, but if you didn't read any of the other books, you would still enjoy and WANT to read the rest!!! England, France...
Such a cute little novella about Turnip and Arabella's quick Christmas wedding. Poor Turnip...can't even have a proper wedding night. Darn snow storms! But alas, that is what happens when you get married in the middle of the winter. I know, because I was born December 28th in the middle of winter...
Greetings ladies and gentlemen! If you missed my review for the last book in this series, The Masque of the Black Tulip, I’ll give you a slight refresher. Our hero’s name is Shoulders because you can bet your sweet ass the width of them will be mentioned more than his actual name. Our heroine is ...
Choosing a light read is a tricky business. It's like icing on a cake - too little, and all you have is cake; too much, and you're overwhelmed with fluff and sugar. I picked up this book because I wanted to read something with no murders in it, and besides, Napoleonic spy capers with women! Fun s...
Things to love about this novel? In chapter one, it picks up with the tale of its modern-day research, Eloise Kelly, who is off to the country with the dishy Colin Selwick for a look at his archives. (Insert eyebrow waggle here.) The Black Tulip also picks up with the lives of some of the charact...
Willig continues the exciting series with her fourth novel featuring Lord Vaughn, the delightfully devilish spy from The Masque of the Black Tulip, and Mary Alsworthy, the raven-haired beauty whose sister accidentally steals her suitor in The Deception of the Emerald Ring.
A dark comedy.Colin’s mother’s party was being held in a gallery in the Place des Vosges, just two houses down from the building that would have once held Antoine Daubier’s studio. The clear plate glass of the windows looked very incongruous between the heavy stone arches. Inside, the gallery spa...
Because I already used George III in a previous book, it felt a bit greedy to seize on another afflicted monarch, but Queen Maria I’s condition made a perfect premise for a novel set at the outbreak of the Peninsular War. Like her counterpart, George III, Queen Maria descended into a form of deme...
And what was in those ships all three? -- “I Saw Three Ships” The air was cooler in the hallway, away from the pressing heat of too many people, too many candles, and too much hot food all crammed into the same space. Funny, how even a room the size of a village green coul...
She tried to be methodical, but it was hard, when her ancestors’ chosen filing method appeared to be “just shove it over there.” Not to mention that her mind was largely elsewhere, scuttling back and forth between the memories evoked by her mother’s painting and that confusing, entirely unexpecte...
Rachel could feel the reverberations of it right down her spine. A bullet. “He shot himself?” “In ’20—or was it ’21?” John looked to Olivia for confirmation. “Cece found him. Horrible way to go.” “Horrible,” Rachel echoed. A horrible way to go and a horrible thing to see. She couldn’t begin to pi...
Jeremy must have been regrouping for an alternate line of attack, because we didn’t find him lurking in the shrubbery, hiding behind the shower curtain, or inviting random film crews onto the grounds. Colin managed to get his characters into two high-speed chases and one Russian mafia kidnapping....
Fans can rejoice in finding the outstanding features they’ve come to count on: intriguing historical details, double-crossing deceptions, complex characters, and plenty of romance.” —Library Journal (starred review) “With delectable wit and a deft hand at imaginative plotting, Willig expertly ma...
commented Val. She didn’t look prim now. Bea watched Addie coming around the side of the house. Her face was flushed, her hair mussed. Clandestine assignations behind the acacia bushes? How terribly out of character. There was a man striding around the side of the house, hurrying after Addie. Bea...
There it was again, two quick flashes followed by a pause and then a third. There was no doubting it. It was unmistakably a signal, and it was directed from someone lurking in the garden to someone waiting in the school. Arabella’s nose hit glass as she stretched full-length across the desk, squi...
