"Don't fall in love with your dead husband, Kallista. It can bring you no joy."There are few emotions more painful than regret, more specifically, the regret of finally realizing that you love someone, only after they've left---or after they've died. How horrible must it be to realize that you can't tell someone you love them. To come face to face with your own self-absorbance, your own youthful folly, your inability to see beyond yourself to a great love that could have been? A great love that never was.This series features a great main character, interesting mysteries, all that good shit, but for me, this book is memorable because it's one of the few that's ever made me cry.To give you an idea of the premise, this is about a very young widow, Lady Emily, in the late Victorian Era. She was married very young to a viscount, whom she didn't exactly love. She liked him, sure, but she didn't love him. He died young, when we initially meet Emily, she is already a widow. While not exactly a merry widow, Emily doesn't exactly mourn her late husband's death either.She entered the marriage mainly to escape her overbearing mother. She was sad about her husband's death, but right now, Emily is just enjoying her newfound freedom as a young widow.All is well and dandy, until she discovers her late husband's diaries. And man, were they a revelation.Slowly, Emily begins to discover that, unlike her, her husband was deeply in love with his wife. Her indifference came to light in stark contrast to his reactions to her. An initial meeting, briefly brushed aside by Emily, was perceived by her husband to be a delight, a joy.She saw her husband as rather dull. They shared few interests. She never bothered to find out more about him. Emily only learned about his hidden depths, far too late. "I assumed him to be transparent, like most people I meet in society. Now instead I find that he was a scholar of sorts, a patron of museums, and a friend to artists. I thought he was a stupid hunter."Philip saw in her a phantom of delight. He was madly in love. He was wildly happy with their marriage, in the brief time that they were married. Emily hardly noticed. She hardly cared. She never knew. I thought I would go mad with desire when she presented that perfect ivory cheek for me to kiss. Had her blasted mother the courtesy to leave us alone for even a moment, I would have taken the opportunity to fully explore every inch of her rosebud lips. For that, I am afraid, I shall have to wait.Call it the time of night, say that I was particularly susceptible and emotional, call it what you will, but I cried like a baby. It was 3 AM. I was going through some of my own relationship troubles, and this one passage made me sob. I put down my ebook, crawled underneath the covers, stifled my face with a pillow, and sobbed my heart out for a good 5 minutes. (It's still better than Forbidden, that book made me cry for at least 15.)The incriminating passage? I closed the book and placed it on the table beside me. For a moment it felt as if I had been reading a particularly satisfactory novel in which the heroine had won the love of her hero. But I was the heroine, and the hero was dead, dead before I had even the remotest interest in him. I started to cry, softly at first, then with all-consuming sobs that I could hardly control.Emily wasn't the only one sobbing her heart out that night.
I must confess. I feel a little bad about my relationship with Lady Emily Ashton. I came across her adventures in the wake of Lady Julia Grey's escapades and I fear I won't be able to do Emily justice, that she will always be overshadowed by Julia. And, um, Brisbane. Do not mistake me. I like Colin Hargreaves very much. He is a delight and I hope Emily never throws him over. But he's not....well. He's not Brisbane. There. I've said it. We can move on. If you haven't guessed by now, AND ONLY TO DECEIVE is the first in Tasha Alexander's series of Victorian mysteries featuring Lady Emily Ashton. A series that has a fair bit in common with Deanna Raybourn's Julia Grey novels. Emily, like Julia, is made a young and rather sudden widow at the start of the story. The thing is, she never much cared for poor, dead Philip. He was simply a way of escaping her overbearing mother. To the cynical Emily, he represented the lesser of all the evils courting her. After his death, however, Emily is shocked to discover her husband was wildly, irrevocably in love with her and she had no idea. Through his journals, letters, and stories told by his closest friends, she comes to know and love her late husband. As she embarks on a study of ancient Greek language and sculpture (in memory of Philip who was something of an afficionado), Emily becomes involved in a ring of forgeries leading back to Philip and his friends. It seems she has a few more things left to learn about the man she married.The best thing about AND ONLY TO DECEIVE is the wonderful immersion in all things Greek. I was instantly taken back to my history of civ classes and what a wonderful experience I had reading The Iliad for the first time. Emily, too, had the good sense to prefer Hector to Achilles. I thoroughly enjoyed watching Emily fall in love with her husband and struggle with the fact of coming to know him secondhand and all too late. I loved the way she embraced the life of the scholar as a tribute to him and how she tried to move on despite the ever-constricting mourning requirements imposed on all sides. Unfortunately, her loyal love for her husband soon becomes a bit ridiculous as it is clear he is dead and was not, perhaps, the capital fellow his friends made him out to be. Emily also suffers a few TSTL moments with regards to the merits of her two suitors as well as her endeavors to unmask the villain. As a result, I grew a bit impatient on the whole. Not enough to deter me from the next installment, as I did enjoy many things about this light and charming mystery. Here's hoping things pick up a bit in the next one.
What do You think about And Only To Deceive (2006)?
I found myself bored. It wasn't the Victorian setting; I love Victorian themed books, Society and the Season- these things entertain and amuse me always. This book was no exception. I was intrigued about the plot- a woman falls in love with her husband only when it's too late. It sounded tragically beautiful and I wasn't wrong- it was. What bored me was the mention of Greek antiquities, art, and literature. I know we all have a bit of knowledge regarding Greek mythology and art, but this book delves deep into these subjects. So much so that unless you're a Greek enthusiast or historian, you'll get bored. I mean I skimmed entire passages and I hate skimming almost more than I hate not even finishing a book (which I rarely do). I liked the heroine Emily Ashton- I felt like I could relate to her. Being a modern woman, I think anyone could have sympathy and understand her position and admire her character. Overall...it was an okay read but it wasn't special to me. :/
—Imani
An engaging historical romance, with an interesting plot and a diverse number of well constructed characters. I loved the first page of the book,(as well, as the following's of course...)but that one did an amazing job at catching my interest, presenting a character, with a very dry sense of humour...When Lady Emily finds herself widowed, she cannot in thruth, consider herself saddened by her husband's demise. In fact, her husband's death, will give Emily, something she has longed for a long time now: Her freedom. Freedom of a husband dictates, to whom she was forced to marry( if not to that one, it would be another ), and freedom from her dragonlike Mother! (Thank God!! I wasn't born in the nineteen century...well, if i did live through those times, i honestly don't remember anymore...although that would definitely explain some things...)But things will start changing in our heroine's life, once she starts getting to know her husband, through his diary and notes. Through them, Emily is shocked to find out, that Phillip was, (unlike her), in love with his spouse...or at least, with the image he had of her....As the story unfolds, and while Emily adquires two admirers, she starts to appreciate the husband she had, and wishing they had gotten the chance of living a livetime together....of course this may be due to the fact, that he couldn't command her life anymore...fairy tales are lovely, but reality due gets in the way.And when, Emily finds herself in the possession of certain facts, those ones may forever shatter the image she constructed regarding her dead spouse...oh, and in a strange turn of events, (view spoiler)[Phillip could well be alive...or not (hide spoiler)]
—Susana
When I read the back cover of this book I was immediately interested. There's something very appealing and romantic about getting to know someone by his letters and personal papers. Unfortunately for Lady Ashton her husband is already dead when she starts to get to know him that way.For Emily, accepting the proposal of Philip, the Viscount Ashton, was an easy way to escape her overbearing mother, who was set on a grand society match. So when Emily's dashing husband died on safari soon after their wedding, she felt little grief. After all, she barely knew him. Now, nearly two years later, she discovers that Philip was a far different man from the one she had married so cavalierly. His journals reveal him to have been a gentleman scholar and antiquities collector who, to her surprise, was deeply in love with his wife. Emily becomes fascinated with this new image of her dead husband and she immerses herself in all things ancient and begins to study Greek.Emily's intellectual pursuits and her desire to learn more about Philip take her to the quiet corridors of the British Museum, one of her husband's favourite places. There, amid priceless ancient statues, she uncovers a dark, dangerous secret involving stolen artefacts from the Greco-Roman galleries. And to complicate matters, she's juggling two very prominent and wealthy suitors, one of whose intentions may go beyond the marrying kind. As she sets out to solve the crime, her search leads to more surprises about Philip and causes her to question the role in Victorian society to which she, as a woman, is relegatedI found this one a very enjoyable story. I liked to know how Emily starts to admire her husband and is curious enough about his personal hobbies to start making inquiries, read the Iliad and studying ancient Greek. I particularly enjoyed the part about the British Museum and the gentlemen interest with classic sculpture that seemed to lead to multiple copies of the objects in exhibition. One strong point was how Alexander starts all chapters with an entry of Phillip's diary. It made it all the more poignant.However this interest and the fact that she finds many original pieces in her country house lead her to believe Phillip may have been involved in illegal activities of exchanging the original pieces in the museum for copies. She decides to investigate further and develops a personal interest in the art.At the same time Emily, a young and now very rich widow, learns to enjoy the freedom she now has and her behaviour sometimes shocks her mother whose biggest ambition seems to be for her daughter to get married again. Emily has one suitor almost from the beginning - Andrew Palmer - and also develops a friendship with the man who was her husband's best friend - Colin Hargreaves. They will both influence her in different ways. She also has strong female friendships with whom she will attempt some rebellious gestures, like drinking port with gentleman after dinner. I liked the Victorian world portrayed here and the mix between mystery, historical fiction and romance.Grade: B
—Ana T.
