Enjoyed this regency book. The whole thing was light hearted and left me with a happy feeling after I finished. I didn't think the solving of who the spy was was as in depth as it could have been. Henrietta and Miles were just not all that good as spies or as spy catchers. That is what kept the novel from rating higher. I wasn't 100 percent fond of the two time lines either. I think the modern time line which seems to be there to carry the story from book to book is unnecessary.

The narrator on this one did an excellent job differentiating the various characters. I was listening in the car on family vacation and there were a couple of racy parts that we skipped because I didn't want to listen to them with my young teenage sons. We were all red faced. I did go back and listen to them later alone though. ;-)

I think I will look up other in the series though and read them, so all in all a success. ( )

Eloise is writing a dissertation on the Pink Carnation, a little known English spy from the Napoleonic era. Her research has led to a cache of heretofore unavailable archives owned by the Selwick family, Eloise is invited to their estate for the weekend to research the old diaries, letters, and even an old spy codebook. Eloise immerses herself in the long forgotten story of the search for the Black Tulip, one of Napoleon's most dangerous spies. The Black Tulip is on the hunt for the Pink Carnation and in doing so the lives of Colin Selwick's ancestors are in jeopardy. The only thing I found off-putting about the story is that it is too much of a romance and not enough of an intriguing spy adventure. ( )

Amateur night in the Regency World of espionage continues as the French spy, the Black Tulip, is a target for British counter-espionage. ( )

well, there was no bodice ripping (though there was shift ripping =])!

I liked that Ms. Willig had a parallel story line going on with the researcher and her subject- though she's now sucked me into reading the next novel to see what happens with the researcher and her potential love interest...

It was fun, a nice flouncy romp (if those can be flouncy) through regency England and it's nest of spies and potential spyees..er, those spied upon. ( )

Vacillating between "the heights of espionage to the depths of French farce" (or a Wodehouse-styled bungling with some assistance courtesy of Reginald “Turnip” Fitzhugh), Willig has produced another energetic and breezy rollicking romp through 1803 Europe and modern 2003 England. Romance continues to sizzle and thrum off the pages with our new romantic couple Miles and Henrietta providing just as much romantic misadventure as Richard and Amy did in the first installment of the series. Continuing the winning formula from the previous book, Willig presents readers with a formidable foe for Miles in the form of the brooding Lord Vaughn, a known rake of London society according to Henrietta’s mother, the Marchioness of Uppington. While the unmasking of the Black Tulip was no surprise to me, I found the budding relationship between Miles and Henrietta to be a delight. The fact that even Eloise has her own misadventures gives the two story-lines a parallel aspect.

Overall, a wonderful blending of Regency romance with swashbuckling Napoleonic Wars espionage anchored to the present via the modern day story-line of historian student/archivist Eloise Kelly. ( )