On a Wild Night (Cynster Novels) (Mass Market Paperback)

Thus it is that she ends up in a gambling den, challenged to a game of whist by a notorious gamester. A mysterious stranger steps from the shadows and offers to partner her and together they win. It’s only afterwards that she discovers his identity: Martin Fulbridge, Earl of Dexter, who has been away from Society for ten years due to a scandal in which he might have seduced an innocent girl and murdered her father.

Of course, he didn’t do it, as we’re assured as soon as we meet Dexter, and of course if he wants to aspire to Amanda’s hand he needs to prove it - so thus we have Laurens’ usual dramatic plot. And once again this plot feels as if it was buttoned onto the story as an afterthought because she ran out of things to write about - other than occasional references to ‘the scandal’ and Dexter’s need to clear his name, there is no mention of it for a couple of hundred pages, and the resolution is all dealt with in a great hurry.

Why only one star? Well, to begin with I find it impossible to believe that this book is set in Regency England. I could just about believe it of Georgian England, but not the 1820s. Where was Amanda’s chaperon? Regardless of how long she’d been ‘out’, she couldn't get away with running around gambling dens, orgies, meeting men at five o’clock in the morning and even going to what appeared to be brothels unnoticed. And, by the way, if she had been ‘out’ for that long, I couldn’t see her or her sister still being sought after other than for their dowries: they’d be considered on the shelf by their age, 23.

Second, I had thought that this book might be somewhat different from others in the series, in that the Cynster character is female; perhaps a hero not of that family might be an interesting character, for a change. But no; Dexter is depressingly Cynsterish in his traits: uninterested in marrying until he meets Amanda, whereupon he immediately wants her; he pretends he’s not pursuing her, but his manner is oppressively protective; he proposes marriage - which she refuses - and insists that she will be his wife, and then conspires to ensure that she has to accept him by enlisting the help of her family. Yes, I’ve been here before. Yawn.

Annoying errors riddle the book. First, Dexter introduces himself to Amanda in the gambling den as ‘Martin’. Of course he wouldn’t; he’d have introduced himself as ‘Dexter’. Second, at one stage he is introduced at a party as ‘Lord Martin Fulbridge, the Earl of Dexter’. Incorrect; he is Lord (or the Earl of) Dexter. His first name is Martin and his family name Fulbridge, and so if he wanted to be relatively incognito he could introduce himself as Martin Fulbridge, but never ‘Lord Martin’.

And what’s with all those irritating sentence fragments and verbless sentences? This is a habit of Laurens’ in her [romantic] scenes (of which, again, there are too many to be convincing for the period, and they are too long to be interesting), but in this book they seemed even more noticeable than usual. I note that she’s finally using ‘disinterested’ correctly, but she’s now using ‘evocative’ incorrectly. Apparently, Dexter’s kisses and caresses are ‘evocative’ - of what, Ms Laurens? The word isn’t an adjective akin to ‘sensual’ or ‘arousing’!

I have Amelia’s story already, though I don’t expect much from it; I can’t see me buying anything else by Laurens after that.

wmr-uk