A Gentleman Never Tells (Essex Sisters, #4.5) by Eloisa James Formats available: paperback, ebook
Series: Essex Sisters #4.5
Pages: 112
Published by Avon Impulse on June 28th 2016
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo
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Eighteen months ago, Lizzie Troutt’s husband died in his mistress’s bed, leaving her determined to never marry again….and unfortunately virginal.
Eighteen years ago (give or take a few) the Honorable Oliver Berwick blackened his own soul, leaving him hardened and resolutely single.
When the chance for redemption in the form of a country house party invitation comes his way, Oliver is determined to prove himself a gentleman.
Until he breaks all the codes of gentlemanly behavior…once again.
My Review:
This one was just good fun. And sometimes that’s exactly what a reader, or at any rate this reader, is looking for.
Oliver is just so earnest. He really needs the element of whimsy (and occasional hair-pulling insanity) that his niece Hattie brings into his life. She lightens him up, and he needs that lightness, even as both he and the reader want to shake his sister. Oliver has become Hattie’s guardian not through the usual tragedy, but because his sister and brother-in-law have run off to Africa to convert the locals to their version of Christianity.
Hattie is much, much better off with Oliver. And is old enough to understand that she is. She also seems to be permanently plotting to bring him out of himself, and to get her own way. She and her best friend connive to do both, dragging Oliver to a house party at Lady Windingham’s two days early, so that she has more time with her best friend.
Fifteen-year-old Hattie has yet another ulterior motive. Back when Oliver and his friends were young and insufferable, they put about a whole series of cruel witticisms about various young ladies in the ton. Those witticisms set back the victims marriage prospects considerably at the time, even though all was well that ended well.
Lady Windingham was one of those young ladies, and Oliver needs to apologize for helping to attach “The Woolly Breeder” to her name.
But when Oliver discovers Cat Windingham’s beautiful but withdrawn sister Lizzie Troutt, he develops more than a few ulterior motives of his own.
As part of his apology to Cat, he makes a deal with her. He will make Lizzie laugh before the rest of the guests arrive. Including a man that Cat hopes will convince her sister to marry again.
Oliver plans to get there first.
Escape Rating B+: A Gentleman Never Tells is light, frothy and just plain fun, even though I haven’t read the rest of the series. (But now I plan to!)
Both Lizzie and Oliver very seriously need to lighten up, and the best way they can do that is with each other. While Oliver’s tenacious courtship and the sparkle of their banter carries the story, one of the underlying points is the often exasperated but always loving relationship between the sisters Cat and Lizzie. Even though they are currently driving each other crazy, they clearly want the best for each other. And Cat will stop at nothing to make sure that her sister gets a chance at happiness.
There is also a deeper layer underneath the froth about the way that guilt eats away at a person. Oliver feels guilty about the young ladies whose lives he and his friends attempted to ruin through their cruelty. And he has become an old sobersides to punish himself for his youthful peccadilloes. Those ladies deserve an apology, but he needn’t wallow in guilt for the rest of his life. If Cat and her best friend Josie (see Pleasure for Pleasure for details) are any indication, he seems to have accidentally done them each a very big favor.
Lizzie is also wallowing in guilt, along with a much healthier dose of anger. But being angry at dead people never gets a person anywhere at all. Her husband was an ass, and dying in his mistress’ bed was his last act of asshattery. But not before he blamed poor, inexperienced Lizzie for his inability to consummate their marriage. As I keep saying, and as Oliver says, her dead husband was an ass.
That Lizzie is both a widow and a virgin is its own delicious and shameful secret. It also fires Oliver’s desire to make Lizzie his and only his. Before his would-be rival appears on the scene.
But his real opponent is Lizzie. After her experience, she has absolutely zero willingness to trust another man with her fate or her future. Her father knowingly bartered her into the arms of her late asshat husband, a man who openly intended to spend her dowry and his nights with his mistress, while leaving her to care for his dying mother in a run-down house with few servants and even fewer comforts. When her father wouldn’t take her back, she swore off the entire male gender and was prepared to make it stick.
It takes more than a bit of persuading for Lizzie to see that either Oliver is an exception, just like her sister’s loving husband, or that her late, unlamented husband was just a singular ass and not a representative of his whole species.
Watching Lizzie and Oliver come out of their respective shells and find each other is just oodles of fun.
Reviewer’s Note: I will admit that the virgin widow trope is a personal pet peeve. It always seems like a contrivance to arrange for the ritual romantic deflowering by the hero, even when the heroine is no longer a dewy debutante. My two pence.
~~~~~~ TOURWIDE GIVEAWAY ~~~~~~
Eloisa and Avon Impulse are giving away an Essex Sisters Boxed Set to one lucky entrant on this tour!