Of Swords and Parasols

My main thought about this book is that, while it only makes an acceptable historical romance, it would make a very good regency romance. For those not familiar with the jargon: Historical romances are the 300-500 page books (often with clench covers) with sex scenes and foreplay and dwelling on lust and such that people typically think of when they think of romance novels. Traditional regency romances are usually 200-250 pages (sometimes with itty bitty print to fit the page count) that rarely go beyond near-chaste kissing and are more focused on society and manners and wit, and sometimes even have the actual romance as a secondary factor.

For reasons I can’t recall, Gabriel Devine, the Duke of Wolverest, doesn’t want to get married himself (actually, I think he wanted the perfect bride, but was sane enough to realize such a thing probably doesn’t exist) and so he’s holding auditions for his brother’s bride by carefully selecting seven candidates to invite to his country home. Clumsy Madelyn Haywood wants nothing to do with it, but not only is her stepmother determined to marry her off, but her best friend, Charlotte, is in love with Gabriel’s brother, Tristan, which Madelyn is convinced will only lead to pain. After Gabriel and Madelyn meet in the garden when a case of mistaken identity causes her to give him a black eye with a lemon, Madelyn is chosen as the sixth candidate.

Gabriel is rather insufferable, but Parker treats him as such, which makes him more sufferable. Madelyn’s clumsiness and how cute it is are played up annoyingly, but when it’s not being emphasized, she has a pretty good head on her shoulders. Their interactions are often entertaining, but there’s a large chunk of the book that Gabriel essentially spends going “You must lock yourself in your room because I can’t control my hormones around you and it’s all your fault that I can’t control myself!” Like most heroes who pull that (both in romance novels and elsewhere) it just makes me want to smack him upside the head with something very hard and possibly spiky..

Underneath the annoyingly uncontrollable hormones, however, there’s evidence that Parker can write wit and barbs well, which, again, makes me wish it were a traditional regency romance where the focus would instead be on the banter, and likely the barbs between the various potential brides. It’s very much a first book and Parker has a lot of the typical first book problems, but there’s a good deal of potential for future books.