My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.
Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below.
Devil's Cub by Georgette Heyer B-
As I said in the lede, this book is something of a sequel to These Old Shades. In it we have the son of the romantic principles of that book, who is very much a rake with a violent temper, and who is much given to fighting duels in which he is known to have killed a man. In this story, he comes close to doing so again, and this time he is more or less forced to flee England, incase his victim dies, since that would be considered murder. While fleeing England, he decides to take along a young woman, who in turn, hopes to force him to marrying her or risk a great scandal. However, her older sister is given his message by mistake, and she decides to take her sister's place and when this is discovered, (she wears a mask to pull this off), she plans to make it seem like a great joke. Unfortunately, when the rake, the Devil's Cub of the title, discovers this, he doesn't take it a a joke, but, in rage, takes the older sister to France with him instead.
In most of Heyer's books, she has the women fall in love with either "bad boys" or the unflappable domineering man, so you can easily guess the ultimate ending of this tale. But, as in this story, you always have intrigues, misunderstandings, and misadventures along the way to that inevitable ending. In this case, however, I really disliked the male lead, the rake, and could not credit his transformation to something other than a violent, short tempered rake. I pity the poor heroine who will have to put up with his violent temper, a temper that I seriously doubt would be tamed even by love. So, all in all, fine for what it is, a historic romance, but far from her best.
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