I totally loved this book - I thought the both the hero and heroine were charming and irresistible, I coudn't put it down and didn't want it to end. Eager for more!

http://ktleyed.blogspot.com/2009/11/s... ( )

So far up my alley, it's practically in the next street. The descriptions make it sound rather Scarlet Pimpernelish. That's sort of true, but what it really is is a Regency romance with a pair of intelligent and witty protagonists who drive each other crazy as they fall in love. The frame story of a historian researching dashing English spies is also a delight, with a romance brewing there as well. ( )

Summary: Grad student Eloise Kelly knows what she wants to write her thesis about: the true identity of the Pink Carnation, who, like the Scarlet Pimpernel and Purple Gentian, was a British spy in France during the Napoleonic wars, but who, unlike the other two men, has never had his identity revealed. Eloise stumbles upon a treasure trove of papers which she is told may hold the name of the Pink Carnation, but what she finds instead is a love story between Amy Balcourt, a feisty young woman who is determined to help the British cause against Napoleon, and Richard Selwick, the man who was known as the Purple Gentian.

Review: This book was thoroughly, exceedingly silly, but still entirely entertaining. Let's be honest: it's got a lot of flaws, both in concept and execution, but at the same time, it kept my attention, kept me reading, and was a nice, light, thoroughly fluffy, funny good time.

The main problem I had with the book was how thoroughly anachronistic it was, both in terms of dialogue and behavior. I'm not an expert on the Regency period by any means, but I know damn well that the vast majority of the situations in which Richard and Amy contrive to find themselves would never, ever have happened. A young lady of high society arranging a midnight meeting with a man she's never met in a public park? Right. That selfsame lady getting to third base on the floor of a rowboat crossing the Seine? Not a chance, no matter how impulsive she is. Amy frequently behaves like an rather slow child, or at best an impetuous 14-year-old, rather than the 20-year-old she is (and this in an age where many 20 year old women were already married with a kid or two), and I had to frequently remind myself that Robert wasn't being inappropriately gross and creepy by lusting after her. (At least not based on their age difference. Based on how incapable Robert seemed to be of holding a single other thought in his head when he was around her, his attraction to her was certainly ill-advised and incompatible with his espionage activities.)

I wasn't crazy about the framing plot, either. Chick lit is just not my genre of choice, and the framing story is thoroughly steeped in it (New rule: If you refer to an article of apparel, particularly shoes or handbags, by designer ("my Jimmy Choo boots"), then what you are writing is chick lit.) The male "romantic" "lead" in the framing story is your standard devastatingly handsome but curmudgeonly but with a soft gooey heart of gold Brit... Willig even names him "Colin", fer god's sake. And, while I'm okay with the framing device of a grad student pouring through old documents to introduce a historical plot, the abrupt switch from "Oh my goodness, look at these amazing papers and documents and letters and diaries and DOCUMENTS." to an omniscient third-person narrator in the historical sections left me wondering about the context, and about how much of what we were reading was actually available to Eloise.

But despite not being clear about the context of the story, and despite wanting to give Amy a good slap and tell her to stop being a moron, AND despite figuring out the identity of the Pink Carnation very, very early on, I still kept reading, and I still enjoyed the book. As long as I was able to turn off the part of my brain that makes rational objections to all of the things mentioned above, this book was funny, and entertainingly racy, and a fun adventure romp. 3.5 out of 5 stars.

Recommendation: If you like historical romances, or just need something light and appropriately guilty-pleasure-ish for an airplane or vacation read, or just to give your brain a break, this one was certainly fun to read, despite (or because of?) it being thoroughly silly fluff. ( )

The Secret History of the Pink Carantion is seemingly written to sully the names of chick-lit, fanfiction, and historical fiction all at once (based losely on Emmuska Orczy's The Scarlet Pimpernel). Lauren Willig provides not one but two insipid idiotic (Mary-Sue) 'heroines', one in the modern era and another hoping to inflitate Napoleonic France.

The spies here are more interested in trite banter and tired slap-slap-kiss routines or in initiating sex scenes too cheesily full of 'swoon's to be accepted into a romance novel than actually doing any spy work. (And actually, they do get caught on a recon mission because they're too busy groping each other.)

It's such a waste that Willig completely ignores the chance to teach real history or compare/constrast the social values of women of two different eras (attitudes towards 'birthright' and monarchy, gender roles, patriotism, etc) in favor of poorly executed romantic tropes. By the time I was halfway through this novel, I had long since dried my feminist tears and was actively hoping Napoleon would uncover our protagonists and execute them to spare the world from more of this horrific prose. ( )

I suspect this series will get better as it goes along, which is why I'm continuing with it. Overall, the book was good, but most of it irked me. I wanted to deck most of the main characters. I do very much like Eloise. And as for the characters of the past I really love Miles and Henrietta; I hope to see more of them. ( )