The Bride Wore Scarlet
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"Carlyle delivers a fast-paced pleasure." --BookPage
Product Description
Passion and secrets simmer behind the elegant facade of Victorian London in another deliciously intriguing novel featuring the dangerous men of the mysterious St James Club.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Mass Market Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
I love Liz Carlyle's books and have read them all. However, I was disappointed with her last new novel, the first in this new Victorian set, paranormal series. This second book is a vast improvement with more action than the first book.
Here we have two main characters who are both the children of characters who appeared in her previous Regency/Georgian series.
Carlyle is obviously not going to be able to use this devise for all the books in this series. It would be just too much of a contrived coincidence for all the children of the Regency characters to be paranormal i.e. seers.
Here we have Anais de Rohan, Max de Rohan's (Not Quite a Gentleman) daughter. Max and his wife are 'away', and although they are mentioned several times, they do not actually appear, unfortunately. Max's Italian grandmother, has identified his daughter rather than his son, as being the next "Guardian". She is therefore trained from a child to fight etc. How her parents manage to miss this, heaven only knows. However, she has a big problem, Guardians are traditionally men and women are not allowed into the society.
However, the society has a problem. A French child, a strong seer, is being held in Brussels by a relative who wants to use her in order to gain enormous power. The British Guardians have been asked by their French brothers, to liberate her and her mother. The French have rented a house near to where the child is being held. The best hope is for one of the British Guardians with the help of a woman posing as his wife, to infiltrate the child's relative's house. That's where Anais comes in handy. She is promised that if she poses as Lord B's wife, then she will be accepted into the Guardian's society.
I'm not saying any more, as there won't be any point in you reading it. I enjoyed it.
Here we have two main characters who are both the children of characters who appeared in her previous Regency/Georgian series.
Carlyle is obviously not going to be able to use this devise for all the books in this series. It would be just too much of a contrived coincidence for all the children of the Regency characters to be paranormal i.e. seers.
Here we have Anais de Rohan, Max de Rohan's (Not Quite a Gentleman) daughter. Max and his wife are 'away', and although they are mentioned several times, they do not actually appear, unfortunately. Max's Italian grandmother, has identified his daughter rather than his son, as being the next "Guardian". She is therefore trained from a child to fight etc. How her parents manage to miss this, heaven only knows. However, she has a big problem, Guardians are traditionally men and women are not allowed into the society.
However, the society has a problem. A French child, a strong seer, is being held in Brussels by a relative who wants to use her in order to gain enormous power. The British Guardians have been asked by their French brothers, to liberate her and her mother. The French have rented a house near to where the child is being held. The best hope is for one of the British Guardians with the help of a woman posing as his wife, to infiltrate the child's relative's house. That's where Anais comes in handy. She is promised that if she poses as Lord B's wife, then she will be accepted into the Guardian's society.
I'm not saying any more, as there won't be any point in you reading it. I enjoyed it.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
60 reviews
20 of 20 people found the following review helpful
Better than A TOUCH OF SCANDAL, book 1 of the FAC series.
2 Jun 2011
Format:Mass Market Paperback|Amazon Vine™ Review
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(3.5 stars) I was torn about the rating to give this book. In many ways it deserves 4 stars, maybe even 4.5. Liz Carlyle is one of the best HR writers around. She has a great way with words, her romances are very satisfying and her love scenes pretty hot. Isn't that what we all want in an HR?
This one starts off very well. Great feisty heroine, Anais de Rohan, handsome but arrogant hero, Geoff, Lord Bessett, beautifully atmospheric set-up, great descriptions of the Thames and the seedier parts of London. And a fun fact about the heroine is that she's Max de Rohan and Catherine Wodeway's daughter, H and h of NO TRUE GENTLEMAN, and the niece of Lord Treyhern and his wife Helene de Severs from BEAUTY LIKE THE NIGHT. The hero is the son of the H and h of THREE LITTLE SECRETS. (It seems that Carlyle likes to revisit couples and use their offspring as main characters in new books.) These older characters are not part of this book but they are mentioned. Helene de Severs, in particular, had an impact on the life of our hero Lord Bessett during his childhood.
This story has the drawback for me of being part of Carlyle's new paranormal series about the Fraternitas Aureae Crucis and the St. James Society, the English branch of the FAC. I don't enjoy the occult, people with special Gifts, mysterious societies or sects. That's part of what put me off of Gaelen Foley's latest series. However, here the FAC and the Gifts, to a large extent, take a backseat to the romance and the adventure and that's a good thing.
You probably know the plot by now. Anais wants to be initiated into the FAC, of which Bessett is an important member. This is a bit like any female trying to get into an Old Boys' Club. They don't want her but allow her to accompany Bessett on a mission to Belgium as a way to prove herself. The mission is to rescue a child with the gift of prescience, who is under the control of a really bad guy.
The first half of the book is a first-rate romance/adventure. The second half drags a bit for me, the part where Bessett and Anais have settled in in Belgium and are trying to find the best way to effect the girl's rescue. That is, however, the section of the book where the romance really heats up, so that's one good thing about it. And my interest perks up again in the final 50 or so pages, where we have a denouement with pirates and swordfights, etc.
It's a pretty good book. I wish I could overcome my prejudice about the paranormal enough to give it 4 stars.
This one starts off very well. Great feisty heroine, Anais de Rohan, handsome but arrogant hero, Geoff, Lord Bessett, beautifully atmospheric set-up, great descriptions of the Thames and the seedier parts of London. And a fun fact about the heroine is that she's Max de Rohan and Catherine Wodeway's daughter, H and h of NO TRUE GENTLEMAN, and the niece of Lord Treyhern and his wife Helene de Severs from BEAUTY LIKE THE NIGHT. The hero is the son of the H and h of THREE LITTLE SECRETS. (It seems that Carlyle likes to revisit couples and use their offspring as main characters in new books.) These older characters are not part of this book but they are mentioned. Helene de Severs, in particular, had an impact on the life of our hero Lord Bessett during his childhood.
This story has the drawback for me of being part of Carlyle's new paranormal series about the Fraternitas Aureae Crucis and the St. James Society, the English branch of the FAC. I don't enjoy the occult, people with special Gifts, mysterious societies or sects. That's part of what put me off of Gaelen Foley's latest series. However, here the FAC and the Gifts, to a large extent, take a backseat to the romance and the adventure and that's a good thing.
You probably know the plot by now. Anais wants to be initiated into the FAC, of which Bessett is an important member. This is a bit like any female trying to get into an Old Boys' Club. They don't want her but allow her to accompany Bessett on a mission to Belgium as a way to prove herself. The mission is to rescue a child with the gift of prescience, who is under the control of a really bad guy.
The first half of the book is a first-rate romance/adventure. The second half drags a bit for me, the part where Bessett and Anais have settled in in Belgium and are trying to find the best way to effect the girl's rescue. That is, however, the section of the book where the romance really heats up, so that's one good thing about it. And my interest perks up again in the final 50 or so pages, where we have a denouement with pirates and swordfights, etc.
It's a pretty good book. I wish I could overcome my prejudice about the paranormal enough to give it 4 stars.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Good story bogged down by one too many paranormal elements
21 July 2011
Format:Mass Market Paperback|Amazon Vine™ Review
(What's this?)
I haven't read the first book in the series or any other Liz Carlyle book, so I came into this without any idea of what to expect. I found characters that I liked and a general storyline that was pretty good but muddled up with paranormal elements that the author seemed to not know what to do with.
I really liked Anais - she was assertive, even aggressive sometimes and funny. Bessett wasn't as fun, but if you stripped him of his paranormal silliness he would have been a good solid, sexy third rate Bond.
The bare story would have been fine. I liked the idea of the secret society, that they didn't allow women but Anais had trained her whole life to get in and needed to go on this mission with Bessett to prove herself. The villain was perfectly chilling, the victims nice and pitiful and there was some good swordplay and yay! Pirates and scalawags! The problem was the author decided to throw some paranormal elements in there but she didn't seem that committed to them. They felt unfinished, as if she didn't really want to go all the way and make this a full-blown paranormal romance, so she teetered on the edge. Rather than settling for small talents that could be easily used in the storyline like Anais' were, she had to add some huge, amorphous "evil portal sensing" thing that Besset does that gets overly complicated, unable to be defined and puts a pall over the entire book.
I liked a lot of this book and did enjoy reading it, mostly because of Anais and her banter with Besset. If it were possible to give half stars, this would be a 3.5 and I usually round up. I just had a nagging feeling that this was a good historical romance with some nice paranormal elements then for some reason there was a decision to throw even more in there and it just didn't fit.
I really liked Anais - she was assertive, even aggressive sometimes and funny. Bessett wasn't as fun, but if you stripped him of his paranormal silliness he would have been a good solid, sexy third rate Bond.
The bare story would have been fine. I liked the idea of the secret society, that they didn't allow women but Anais had trained her whole life to get in and needed to go on this mission with Bessett to prove herself. The villain was perfectly chilling, the victims nice and pitiful and there was some good swordplay and yay! Pirates and scalawags! The problem was the author decided to throw some paranormal elements in there but she didn't seem that committed to them. They felt unfinished, as if she didn't really want to go all the way and make this a full-blown paranormal romance, so she teetered on the edge. Rather than settling for small talents that could be easily used in the storyline like Anais' were, she had to add some huge, amorphous "evil portal sensing" thing that Besset does that gets overly complicated, unable to be defined and puts a pall over the entire book.
I liked a lot of this book and did enjoy reading it, mostly because of Anais and her banter with Besset. If it were possible to give half stars, this would be a 3.5 and I usually round up. I just had a nagging feeling that this was a good historical romance with some nice paranormal elements then for some reason there was a decision to throw even more in there and it just didn't fit.
8 of 10 people found the following review helpful
Solid characters, interesting plot
13 Jun 2011
Format:Mass Market Paperback|Amazon Vine™ Review
(What's this?)
This is the first Liz Carlyle book I've ever read (I know, I know, where have I been all these years?), and I liked it. Anais and Geoff were 3-dimensional characters whose romance felt real. Anais was a strong heroine and the fact that she was a fighter who was trained to be part of the militia was really interesting and unique. Rohan was a great character as well, but I personally found Anais to be more real and relatable. The only reason I gave this four stars was because I am not at all a fan of paranormal, so I didn't really appreciate that aspect of it. Save for a few, I can't stand paranormal books , let alone paranormal aspects in what I thought would be a completely historical romance. This stuff about people having special "gifts" isn't really my thing. I prefer books that are grounded in reality. That being said, the paranormal aspects were done well.
Overall, the writing style was beautiful as were the characters. Those who like paranormal would really love this book. As for me, I simply liked it because of the strong characters (especially heroine) and the mystery plot.
Overall, the writing style was beautiful as were the characters. Those who like paranormal would really love this book. As for me, I simply liked it because of the strong characters (especially heroine) and the mystery plot.
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