AAR

[Eliza]

Boy I loved this book. Sophie and Longmore were a couple I enjoyed immensely. I also thought the author gave everyone great names. So far this is my favorite book of the year, which is neat since my favorite book last year was the first in this series, Silk Is for Seduction. Can't wait for #3 but I will. Loretta Chase really is the best.

[merryweather]

I enjoyed it very much as well, but my favorite is still the first in the series. Marceline and Clevedon are such a great characters and great together. I've read a lot of criticism of the unrealistic situations in both books (relationships between shop clerks and titled gentlemen) but I feel like Chase works out the plot in a pretty believable way and I'm always suspending disbelief when I read most books anyhow. So no problemo for me.
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For the first time in her life, she saw exactly what she’d thrown away when she decided to have him by means fair or foul……that she’d not saved him but wronged him by consigning to him all the ability of a box turtle to make his own choices. ~Gigi

[Tinabelle]

I normally enjoy Chase's books but this one just fell flat for me. I had high expectations since I loved the first book in the series. It is really hard for me to put my finger on what didn't work for me. I don't have trouble suspending reality so that was not the problem. Bottom line - I really did not like Sophie or Longmore or Clara very much in this story. The emotion, the chemistry, the plot - it was boring. I have read so many reviews of this book and I know I am in the minority, but there you have it. I hope the next book will work better for me.
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So many books; so little time!
www.shelfari.com/tinabelle

[Blackjack1]

I am still reading it and so far really enjoying the book. I don't find the class issue to be a difficult obstacle in this book (same with the first in the series) because Chase creates so many loopholes in that Sophia is French, she is more of an artist and modista than a mere "shopgirl", and the family is referred to repeatedly as former bluebloods fallen on hard times. There is therefore an attempt to reduce any negative associations with the working class, and so it becomes more palatable for Longmore to justify his attraction to a dressmaker.

[Anne_Gresley]

[dick]

I enjoyed the book, but I do weary a bit with the repetition of the same kinds of pairings in the H/h. Sophie/Longmont aren't much different from Bathsheba/Rathbourne, Olivia/Peregrine, and even Jessica/Dain. And each heroine is remarkably adept at manipulation. I'm beginning to think Chase is misandrynous.

[Eliza]

[Anne_Gresley]

[Tinabelle]

[Anne_Gresley]

It's certainly true that the Noirot sister are manipulative and I can understand why people don't enjoy reading about chatacters with that trait. But I'm so bored of reading about the same girl with different coloured hair. So many heroines are interchangable place-holders that I enjoy Chase's manipulators for the very reason other people are annoyed by them; it's not an admirable trait. Not all of my traits are admirable either and it's nice to read about a woman with flaws.

[Blackjack1]

And yet, the Noirot women are trying to succeed in a world that excludes women from earning a living or having a role at all in the public sphere outside of their relationship to a man. I tend to like Chase's respect for her female characters and the respect the men come to feel for the women with whom they fall in love. Longmore seems equally manipulative to me in that he is scheming to seduce Sophy for much of the book. I am finding that both characters here seem well-matched. I haven't finished it yet though

[Anne_Gresley]

[Eliza]

Funny but I was more drawn to Longmore's character because in a world of social artifice, I found him refreshing, acting just as he was and who he was.

Chase did take the mick out of him in the beginning for intelligence, but I trusted where Chase would take him. I thought she was having fun with him to start and would reveal more about him as the novel when on. And she did.
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Also, on a different topic, you can see fashion plates of Sophie's outlandish dresses here that Chase describes in detail in one scene, especially the outlandish, oversized sleeves:
http://twonerdyhistorygirls.blogspot.com/2012/07/fashions-for-july-1835.html

[dick]

Chase makes no bones about describing several of her heroes as short on mental ability; they are often characterized as almost puerile. Whether the heroes are strong or weak, the heroine's "take care" of them, doing what they think is "best" for them. She seems in many books to look upon the heroes as children. Even when their mental capacities are at least average, the heroine's "manage" them, as with Jessica in Lord of Scoundrels, Olivia in Last Night's Scandal, and to some extent Bathsheba in Lord Perfect. One of the reasons I've always disliked Lord of Scoundrels is that it always brought to mind Philip Wylie's "Generation of Vipers," a chilling suggestion that women--mothers in particular--managed to emasculate their sons' psyches, as, in my reading of the book, Jessica did to Dain. Even the duel in that book was, in the end, a manipulation.

[Anne_Gresley]