The premise of this is a little weird. In the 18th century, this architect built a mansion in London, and it passed to his son’s wife and his grandson when he died, except the grandson is the son’s wife nephew. (I think. It got confusing.) They hit hard times, and are forced to take in boarders/tenants into the mansion, which the ghost of the architect is pissed about. His one goal of the afterlife is to get all of the tenants out of his mansion, and maybe his grandson and daughter-in-law, too. They’re utter failures in his eyes, seeing as they’ve allowed interlopers into his precious mansion.
This is apparently the second book in the series, which doesn’t really show, since there’s so much exposition given. Parts of the story are told in first person by the architect-ghost, such as the prologue. The prologue’s OK, but the later sections in his voice I feel slow down the story. I didn’t really enjoy them.
The basic plot is that there are these sisters living in the mansion, and they have hit upon hard times. Their father and mother are both dead, and the house they had been living in had gone to a male cousin because of the way it was entailed. (That’s the end of the P&P similarities, though.) Sibyl is very calm and sweet and retiring but Meg … Meg is different. Meg practices “abstracted thinking”, which I gather is meditation/yoga, so she frequently falls into trances to avoid difficult situations.
Things are quite desperate financially for Meg and Sibyl Smiles, and when a “French” prince moves in on the street, so that his sister might snare a titled English lord during the London Season, Meg has two goals. 1) Become the companion (governess, sorta-kinda) of his sister, and 2) become the prince’s wife or, barring that, his mistress. Financial security will soon be hers!
The hero’s name is Jean-Marc, Count Etranger, and he is the illegitimate son of the king of a fictional country between France and Italy. So he is foreign and Mediterranean. Ooh, aah. And he also feels that England is his spiritual home, as his countrymen do not have the same English efficiency and practicality and blah blah. It was a bit nationalistic, really, and I kind of tuned it out. Rest assured that his accent is charming, but his English is flawless. His big problem is that his father has decided to make him the heir to the throne of Mont Nuages (the minuscule French/Italian country)
The first half of this book is a fairly normal and typical Regency romance, except for the whole meditation bit on the part of Meg. Then it gets weird. There’s this costume ball to introduce the prince’s sister to Society, which is weird, because how would you introduce someone to Society when she’s wearing a mask and everyone is supposed to be anonymous? Also, during the course of the night, the hero gets drunk and the heroine is sexually and physically assaulted by a masked man. (The hero’s drunkenness has nothing to do with the assault; it’s not through negligence on his part.) She enters the ballroom, where the hero is stretched out drunkenly on a sofa, for some reason, and the hero discovers the assault, scoops her up in his arms, and deposits her in his bed, where she’ll be safe. And then they have sex.
Wait, what? She was just sexually assaulted and less than an hour later she’s ready to have sex with anyone? Not cool, authorperson. Not cool.
It all culminates in a Three Stooges scene, where no fewer than five people have pistols drawn on each other in an inn room, and a guy throws himself out the window to his death rather than being shipped back to Mont Nuages for criminal charges. I like to think he did it because things were just getting too silly.
On top of all that, with the introduction of the costume ball, the book stops feeling like a Regency and starts feeling like a crack fest. There are really too many characters and the plot is cluttered. The book is about 150 pages too long. It’s 440 pages as is, and could have easily been about 350 with better writing and plot.
So, if you’re bound and determined to read it, read to about chapter 23 or 24 (page 275-ish), and then make up your own ending. Really. I like to think that Jean-Marc proposed to Meg, there were fireworks, her sister married his footman who was really a secret agent of the crown and a nobleman, and Jean-Marc and Meg became King Jean-Marc and Queen Margaret of Mont Nuages, while Sibyl and Viscount Verbeux bought the Smiles family home. Everything was sunshine and lollipops and wild copulating after dark. Maybe in the afternoon if the mood took them. They were happy, and the incredibly annoying architect-ghost fucked right off. THE END