Status Updates From The Governess and the Duke ...

I’m obsessed with Viola & Hunt!!!!

We are now approaching the end of narrative. The Duke and Viola have been together and parted. And now the happy ending is about to arrive. Thinking on Felicity, and a 14-year-old brain:
How easy it was to find pleasure and sad stories when you were very young… A tragic eternity last only as long as it takes to turn the page.

Back to William Blake, and greeted with open arms
The modest rose puts forth a thorn
The humble sheep of threatening horn
While the Lilly White she in love delight
Nor a thorn nor a threat stain her beauty bright

This from Felicity

Viola, horrified, SY
Duke: she wanted you to have an ample retirement package.

Now that is a trope that is very rarely ever used

The séance is interrupted by the appearance of the Mooorcliff ghost. during a thunderstorm and upsetting the Ouija board. They all chase after the apparition.
At the gazebo, the Duke admits that he’s known that Felicity’s sprained ankle was a rose. And the truth comes out that she had planned this.

The authors narrative begins to disintegrate with her visit to the farm, the violence of Silas her father, the convenient storm which brings them to the cottage, and the ultimate dissolution when she calls the Duke fluffy.

This sinks her beyond reproach, and leaves the reader with a sour taste

Felicity: I say, do you think when men fall in love, they become cats?? That would be jolly amusing.

Viola
A ghost is never allowed to grow past her tragedy. She must mourn the same memory over and over, long after everyone else has ceased caring. I can think of nothing lonelier.

Another insight to live by

Duke: I am terrified for the man who eventually makes you his wife
Felicity nodded. As am I. So. Have we an agreement?

Beware the Ides of Felicity…

The Duke
Thank you, but I don’t need to strategize with a child
He was feeling peevish. Viola had the patience of a saint; the girl was a nightmare

Excellent summary

Felicity: I feared that would happen. She’s like a deer; one Russell in the under brush and she takes off.

The author does have her finger on the pulse of her narrative perfectly

Be careful what you wish for; more tears are shed over answered prayers than unanswered ones; wanting something is often more exhilarating than getting it.
At the ruins, the Duke kissed her.

An insight so profound, a maximum I have lived with my entire life. Getting the name of Alon when wishing I was not.

Augustin Pyrame de Candolle
Swiss botanist (1778-1841)

It is these little intellectual flicks that she inserts
That keep the title like an uneven road, sometimes giving great vistas, and sometimes boring mud flats

One thing you should know about women, your grace. We often find the ordinary terribly stifling

It is sentences like this that keep me reading

Aha
The secret reveal
She wanted him, he realized, as much as he wanted her. It was for only a second, but it lasted a proper lifetime… He knew her now

Asked why she loves them she returns
I suppose they allow me to forget the outside world for a time

Indeed, that is why we read these titles of fluff, insubstantial, yet essential. Because we have come to a reality of Trump. Enough said. There is a cadre of scholars who no longer can think and serious matters, and I am one of them

I can almost forgive this author anything as she gives Viola a weakness for books. As a librarian and having a rare bookshop for 30 years, the passion for books is one that is special, reserved in a hierarchy of taste that most never reach. And to those who fasten on these titles by audio or digital, they know not what they miss

The Duke finds Viola‘s irritation ( with him for correcting the landlord for his rudeness) to be erotic.

Now that is a reach. This author seems to shit all over herself, that’s the only word I can use. Great disappointment,

Conversation between Felicity, the uncontrolled one, and Viola
I can’t get up, remember? My ankles twisted
A metaphorical getting up, then.
A person can’t perform metaphors

That is an excellent line, a brilliant line almost, and this author it is too bad that she is pandering to at least common denominator of readers seeking sexual release

And of course I spoke too soon. It’s back to the silken thighs…

Lydia Drake keeps throwing out fabulous lines, intelligent lines, pestering lines that keep in one’s mind. So far there has been a burst of pages without her sexual innuendo, and they have been wonderful. But she has chosen to appeal to those who appreciate purple rather than intelligence. Too bad

The problem with this author is that she is schizophrenic. She does not know whether she wants a purple narrative, or an intellectual discussion. She would’ve been so much better off to keep with the intellectual discussion, until there was the foregone meeting of Duke and governess in a suite emotional tangle. The author has the bones to write but disappoints

And here we have a very simple and quite sophisticated assessment of William Blake, interspersed with her overwhelming sexual desires. She just should stick to one thing at a time. Oh and the grandmother, who has not been the same since the French revolution. Another interesting character, lost in the paragraphs of useless sexual desire

Description of the library. Misplaced the Gutenberg Bible. Give me a break

And to further muddy the waters, the author continues to insist that the heroine is overcome by sexual feelings whenever she looks at him.
We could well do without this. This is such a sloppy mix

Yet the author throws in buckets of bon mots which are lost when she again loses herself in descriptions of deference

Why do you not look at me the Duke says
She says I don’t want to take liberties
He says this isn’t the days of the Saxons, I won’t have you whipped. She could go so many places and she chooses not to. A sadness

The governance had never been in a room with so many high ranking people. Please, don’t go on. But the author goes on
Meanwhile, Viola felt certain she’d pass out soon.

This author gives no one a break

If you had met, or meet a character like Viola in real life, you would like to slap them upside the head and say be brave, don’t be an imbecile

Sappy that is the operative word for the narrative