Educating Caroline (Sonnet Books) [Mass Market Paperback]

I won't go too much into the plot since the book description above tells you what you need to know. But I will say that intially I was worried that the "heroine asks lothario to teach her about seduction" plot would be really hackneyed. But to my very pleasant surprise, it was well played, witty, sexy and just plain fun. I'm smiling now just remembering the first "lesson"! Both Caroline and Braden learned a little something that day!

Braden Granville, nouveau riche gunsmith who worked his way out of the Seven Dials slums and Lady Caroline Linford, daughter of the Earl of Bartlett, have more in common than one would think. For Caroline's father was the first Earl of Bartlett and was, like Braden, a self-made man. Though the rest of Society looks down their noses at him (including his gold-digging fiancee) Caroline doesn't - party because of her father and partly because it simply is not in her nature. She is genuine, sympathetic, warm and kind. She's also fiery and passionate when it comes to causes near and dear to her heart (fools and animals!). She's nothing like the other Society women Braden has romanced and she throws him off balance with her logic, her lack of artifice. He finds himself using the flimsiest of excuses to seek her out and though she knows she should run from him, she finds she doesn't want to!

I just loved this story, these characters. Well written, fast paced, sparkling and witty dialog all combine to a book I highly recommend!

Not long ago I completed "Educating Caroline" and, as a result, some of my long-held stereotypes (almost exclusively negative) about "romance novels" now lie, so to speak, in a shambles at my feet. Or do they? I can't decide. We have to put a tag on every book, stick it in some pigeon-hole, assign it to a genre. And I suppose "romance" was the inevitable category for "Caroline." But this novel isn't only a "romance."

In fact, you don't have to like romance novels to thoroughly enjoy "Educating Caroline." It is outrageously witty and occasionally naughty, with a complex (not to say audacious) plot and interesting, believable, finely-drawn characters. And of course it has a heroine to die for: the eponymous Caroline (yeah, I'm male) -- sweet, lovely, regularly non-linear in her sentiments and activities, and just courageous and resourceful enough to keep a most dangerous situation for getting entirely out of hand. And the interesting hero, while no push-over, escapes the cliché of being primarily an aristocratic man-toy: tall, dark, brooding, and impossibly handsome (and titled) -- much to the author's credit. (Her villians, by the way, are deliciously corrupt and degenerate.)

Since completing "Caroline," I've acquired and read two earlier novels by Cabot. Both make for good, amusing, even compelling entertainment. But neither lit the fire of this reader the way "Caroline" did. It's my opinion that, in Ms. Cabot's most recent novel, she has cast off some of the mass-market constraints she might once have felt compelled to observe with care. In doing so, she has now given us an exquisitely crafted novel of broad, general interest. And I am not easy to please: my novelists of choice are Henry James and (of course) the inimitable Miss Austen.

It's true that "Educating Caroline" will not make us forget "The Wings of the Dove" or "Pride and Prejudice." And yet, on the basis of "Caroline," one might almost conclude that Patricia Cabot is a sort of latter-day Austen-meets-Nabokov. I'll be carefully watching Ms. Cabot's web site for future developments. Stranger things have happened ... .

The main problem with this book is that there aren't enough likeable people. The hero, Braden, is excellent, and Caroline's brother, Thomas, and friend, Emily, are good, but every other significant character is hard, if not impossible, to like. Caroline's mother, barely thirty pages into the book, tells her daughter that while her own marriage was a faithful, loving marriage, Caroline shouldn't really expect anything similar, and ought to keep her mouth closed about her husband's affairs! While a certain amount of villainy and even cruelty can enhance a book, in this case it really just made me want to skip those pages that dealt with all the hateful characters. The heroine isn't UNlikeable, but she's just too naive and (a bit) self-centered to be really likeable. Only in her interactions with the (few) other sympathetic characters does she shine.

There are a few other odd things about this book; Caroline and Braden have no trouble meeting each other anytime they want, and often in complete privacy, which seems strange for an unmarried Victorian earl's daughter. Also, there's a "you lied to me, how can I trust you enough to marry you" plot device at the end which really served no purpose except to make Caroline look spineless (after all, everyone else in the book has lied to her and she hasn't lost any affection for them, but when she ASSUMES Braden has done so, she walks out on him without a second's pause). But Cabot is a good writer, and her prose carries some of the weaker moments. She's written much better heroines, though, and tighter plots, like Lady of Skye. I'll keep my fingers crossed for her next book, but Educating Caroline is not a keeper.