Consequence

by Hazel Statham

In the wake of a duel, Marcel Blake, the Duke of Lear, an infamous rake and gamester, leaves London to visit his cousin in Paris. Here he meets and falls in love with Julie, the British ambassador's daughter. Thinking she would be horrified if she learned of his reputation, Marcel fights the attraction; but when he is wounded while saving her from the unwanted advances of a less-than-desirable would-be suitor, Marcel finds that she returns his affections. Ultimately, vengeance conspires against them; at their wedding reception, Julie is maliciously informed of Marcel's previous life of misdeeds, and she's led to believe that he only married her to please the king. With this insurmountable gulf suddenly between them, will Marcel prove his reformation, woo his wife, and find happiness with her, or is the sudden desolation in Julie's heart impossible to overcome? Have Marcel's games finally caught up to him for good?

188 pages, Kindle Edition

First published August 5, 2011

Reviews

[Jaime · Rating 4 out of 5]

There's nothing like starting off a novel with a good old fashioned duel.

Hazel Statham has written another lovely historical romance with Consequence. When the Duke of Lear must flee to his cousin in Paris, he doesn't expect to find strong willed Julie, who is more than a match for his wits. Both headstrong and feisty, Marcel and Julie make for a pair that kept me turning the pages.

I highly enjoyed Marcel and Julie's exchanges - especially at the beginning of the relationship. There is something about a battle of wills, as Marcel calls it, that really gets me to care about the characters and their romance. In many of Marcel's and Julie's scenes together, I found myself smiling.

Statham's true strength in Consequence has to be the dialogue for me. The words said, especially between Marcel and Julie, are beautiful and sometimes verging on being poetry. I know I mentioned before how much I love their exchanges, but the dialogue needs to be commented on again.

Statham occasionally wanders into using fancy words instead of the word 'said', which made a sentence here and there clunky. But there wasn't anything that threw me out of the story entirely. The threat of that came more from the names. In historical stories, people with titles are often referred to their titles by some people and their surnames by others. While historically accurate, I did find myself double-checking a couple times in the beginning to make sure I knew who was speaking.

[Tabitha Kronenwetter · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wanted to really like this book, but it was hard to. The story was intriguing, but the writing wasn't great. I read the word "lackey" more times than I ever thought possible. I seriously think she averaged one every two pages. Someone needs to buy her a thesaurus. It was also a little fast paced, I think she could have taken some more time to develop the story. But my biggest complaint is that the blurb on the book jacket gives away like 90% of the story! Seriously, who thought that was a good idea? In the end it was a mediocre book that I'll likely never read again and probably won't recommend.

[Louisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a great book, but the Duke, I just didn't like him most of the time. Other then that, it was great!

[Beeface · Rating 4 out of 5]

Shades of Georgette Heyer! Ms Statham must have been channeling the late Ms Heyer, the tone was very, very reminiscent of her Georgian novels.