Review: The Importance of Being Wicked

*I've been off being all medical again, because everyone needs a hobby and reviewing books doesn't have the same flair as recreational use of anesthesia. 

Oh Miranda Neville. We should be a perfect match and yet I find myself turning you away. I admire you so. While I was reading The Importance of Being Wicked I found myself thinking how well done it was, what a refreshing idea this or that aspect of the story was. It was so polite. I didn't want to leap into the pages and shake a bitch or weep into a cotton hankie while urging them to value themselves more. It was all the admiration in the world and none of the emotional passion. This means it's not you, it's me? Or something?

Doesn't help. Let's move on. Your cover is eye catching. I hate it. It's got this shade of dyed red hair seen clutching early bird special menus coupled with a red and rust palette straight out of fall. Her tomato red dress, the crimson chaise, it's a big yawn. The title is fine. I totally want a gig naming Avon romances, except I don't drink. Avon titles are the things you come up with after a long night of partying, the punchy humor that begs for high fives. But they work. They move books and they're memorable.

The Importance of Being Wicked has nothing to do with Oscar Wilde slash (sigh) and everything to do with a Duke. (Can we just move on to pretend kings? All these dukes. I expect Julia Quinn's next book to be You Only Duke Twice featuring a widowed duchess choosing from six lovely dukes. Maybe she's been widowed twice but runs away with an earl. Crazy stuff. Or wait, it could be The Duke Of The Month Club! Our heroine has one year to choose from an assortment of dukes reaching their majorities! A free YA suggestion. It's a gift. Holidays. You know.) Thomas The Duke comes from a long line of men who marry rich women. His dad screwed that up, so Thomas wants to get back on track. Caroline is the completely broke widow housing his teenage bag of cash. Enter hijinks.

Actually there are hardly any hijinks. Neville does a great job with Caroline. Impetuous and bad with finances, she's the girl who never wants to leave the party. As long as she's hosting, people love her. With the food and wine on offer the artistic community she adores will fill the silent corners of her home. Caro wants to have fun and forget when the bill collectors come round. She's always one step ahead and two bits short. Mostly this is her ex husband's fault. Disappointing, but it's a time honored truth that a widow in want of finances is rarely to blame. Thomas The Duke is super interested in family honor, almost as much as he is in refilling the family coffers. When the bright and beautiful butterfly of Caroline crosses his path he wants to forget everything and follow her.

It's a classic set up. Neville gets deeper into the motivations and causes of the characters than most authors bother with. Caroline is alternately frustrating and delightful. Thomas is a little less clearly drawn but he's a character that can't communicate emotionally so there's that. Problems are generally addressed and worked out leaving the conflict one of putting two lives together, not finding authorial reasons to keep them apart. What kept me from connecting to The Importance of Being Wicked was the sheer amount of sequel bait it held. Here is a character, here is a ton of background, here is a different character. Rinse and repeat. So many side threads are left unresolved. I got tired of waiting for a player to factor in a meaningful way or have their own storyline summed up. The canvas felt too infinite, the players too multiple. This one is a friend but also a nemesis, an enemy but also maybe a relative, a thief but also maybe.... my patience wore out. Tell the story you are telling me. Don't lay the case for a different one. I stop caring about what we have when I'm constantly told what I'm getting. The product placement may be skillful, but it's not necessary to the tale.

Overall, my admiration for The Importance of Being Wicked overpowered my weary rejection of it's chorus line. If you like Tessa Dare or Julie Anne Long I think Miranda Neville will fit the bill nicely.

Review: The Wild Marquis by Miranda Neville

Sometimes I like a publishing house and I can't recall if I like a particular author in that house so I will just buy their books anyway. Sometimes I like a particular blogger so I will try an author she seems crazy about. Miranda Neville as a perfect blend of both. I would have automatically purchased several of her books if Agency Pricing hadn't kicked in and made me seriously reconsider how I was spending my book dollars. (My Avon purchases are down about 80%, just to name one publisher.) After some consideration I decided this was the Miranda Neville book most likely to appeal to me. (Although I bought this at full agency, Avon is currently running a sale. The book may be as low as $2.99, check your vendors.)

I'm not a Miranda Neville fan. That's okay. It's good to know things about yourself and post Agency Pricing it's good to know I don't have four or five of her books TBR'd on my shelf. I can see why people are raving about her so I'll break down what did and didn't work for me. In The Wild Marquis she brings together two damaged people from (seemingly) different classes. The Marquis has been couch surfing since his deranged father threw him out. With his father dead, he has (for some sort of martyr reason) continued his estrangement from his sister and equally deranged mother. Oh, and everyone else in his family. On the other side, Juliana is trying to make a go of her book business after the murder of her husband. Juliana collects books for rarity, not content. Their world's collide when Cain decides he has to restore a lost book to the family library. (Just go with it.) Soon they are immersed in the world of auctions and antiquities and accidentally solving her husband's murder.

Juliana is a weird hybrid. Raised mostly in seclusion (In fact, both of them spend way too much time giving noble motives to their absolutely horrible families. It's a subtext of the story that neither can see their own family flaws, just the others.) then marrying into the middle class, Juliana has somehow adopted the upper classes morals but the middle classes inferiority complex. I wasn't sure exactly who she was. Juliana reminded me of this girl I knew when I was a teen who would try to seduce men by fondling the stick shift of her car and licking her lips while giggling. (Pretty much all you have to do to seduce a willing guy is say "Hey, let's have sex now.") Unlike that girl, Juliana isn't sure if she wants to follow through. She wants to have casual sex with Cain, but not be his mistress. She wants to be free from promises, but have his fidelity. Juliana is all about the mixed message. She also deliberately sets out to sabotage a client for Cain's benefit, while holding her professional integrity tightly. I didn't get her at all.

Cain, on the other hand, has had some horrible accusations made against him by his father the nutjob. Since everyone believes he's morally bankrupt, he moves into a brothel and makes his life work the care and feeding of old hookers. (A decent way to spend your life.) He also has a weird grey area where he has a long term mistress with sons - she dies and the sons are raised by her friend (who becomes his housekeeper) until they are old enough to work, and thereafter they become his employees. It wasn't a greying of class areas so much as a complete confusion of them. Suddenly, through Juliana, Cain discovers that he really likes collecting books. I don't understand why. Both of them have come to book collecting in a harmful manner, both have the right to have negative associations with book collecting. Yet both of them decide the book is the thing.

I don't have any problem with the plot, resolution, or pacing of the story. All of my concerns with The Wild Marquis involve characterization. I spent too much time asking why characters were doing (or not doing) things and too little just going along for the ride. As an example, in one scene Juliana falls over trying to insert a birth control sponge. Why? Who did she ask about birth control? If it was her husband, why isn't she proficient in it's use? If it was after her husband, how did she come by the information? Did she read it in a book? She's already established that she is pretty ignorant of the erotic market. There were too many moments in The Wild Marquis like this. I'm not a reader who deals well with "because they did" unless the story is yanking me along too fast to examine it.

What did work for me was the skill of setting. Neville is great with place and time, she sets up original components in an old frame. Her plots are obviously considered, her characters are fairly diverse. If you don't roll your eyes at a heroine stroking a book jacket and cooing about how soft and slick it is, her sex scenes are in line with modern books. I feel like Miranda Neville could write a book to really grab me but I didn't walk away from The Wild Marquis wanting to know more about anyone in it.