Wednesday

Romancing of Lady Stone by Delilah Marvelle

November 27, 2013
Fairytales can come true, they can happen to you, if you're young at heart... blah blah blah.

http://www.delilahmarvelle.com/

Up front thoughts. Romancing of Lady Stone, by Delilah Marville, is a story that has its up and downs, ins and outs... all in glorious descriptive technological form. Yes, you won't need to open a biology book anytime soon, dear readers, because this story is filled with pages and pages of what goes in where. Which is too bad because even though I like hot passages in my books, after numerous pages of detailed instructions, the adventures of Mr. Toad's whankee-roo loses its drama and turns into a yawn fest. And, this is too bad because the characters of Lady Cecilia and Konstantin Levin had possibilities. Some good character development was lost in the plethora of bump and grind.

Romancing of Lady Stone, a novella, is part of the School of Gallantry series, which I have not read (and as much as I thought Cecilia and Konstantin had possibilities there weren't enough to make me want to read more in the series). What I did like in this book was that the heroine was 10 years older than the hero and she had four children, one of them a 21-year-old son. This son is the reason Cecilia is traveling through Russia without an escort. You see, her son has eloped with his mistress to Russia and is hoping to marry her, so Cecilia must stop this from happening. Along the way, she is drugged, robbed, dumped into a carriage. When she wakes up, she is resting on our hero Konstantin and it is instantaneous lust time. I don't have a problem with this in books, if I can see that this couple have a connection beyond the whankee-roo. They could have connected and they almost did, but in the end didn't. 

While I like older women and young men stories, I am always concerned by what I know will eventually happen when that older woman reaches the age of oh maybe 49. Then there will probably be no more banging against the wall or bumping all over the floor, unless it is his head because she's going to be having night sweats! And hot flashes! And mood swings! And she will have to increase her intake of Black Cohosh!! It will be horrible, but not for him, cause he will only be 40, he will still be able to salute the flag if you get my drift. So, watch out, Cecilia, because someday you're going to scream and run the other way when you see Timothy Toad headed in your direction.

Now, on to other problems that sort of threw me out of this story. There was the creepy guy in the mask who is going to give Konstantin money, and who also likes to watch from dark corners while some energetic panting is going on. I'm not sure why this was added, unless it has to do with The Whipping Society series Ms. Marvelle is going to publish. Besides that extremely unpleasant moment, the Duc de Andelot character was just downright disturbing. I suspect he will show up again.

Russia. I know that authors who write historical novels do research, but I am reasonably sure (maybe) that during this time period the naming process of patronymics was in use in Russia. Maybe not everyone, but I'm sure aristocrats used this "son of" naming format. Another thing about dragging the family back to Russia to live in peace and without scandal is there was a revolution ahead and I had a hard time separating what I know historically is going to happen to this family's continued life expectancy. 

Overall, fast read, nice couple, creepy masked man, improper Russian references threw me out of story, and way too much sex.


Time/Place: 1830s Russia/England
Sensuality: Scorcher

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