Not my favorite Seton but plays to her strengths in terms of research and weaving in an ensemble cast, and her writing in the 1970’s allows for less cNot my favorite Seton but plays to her strengths in terms of research and weaving in an ensemble cast, and her writing in the 1970’s allows for less censorship for how absolutely buck wild she is than earlier in her career did. ...more
This couple was teased in previous Spindle Cove books so well that I actually bought the damn thing instead of testing the waters from the library firThis couple was teased in previous Spindle Cove books so well that I actually bought the damn thing instead of testing the waters from the library first. No regrets.
This is surprisingly less saccharine than Dare’s other books and I really enjoyed it for that reason? I don’t always click with “MMC can’t be involved with FMC for some honorable reason but also can’t tell her why” plots, but Thorne and Kate were really grounded characters and with Thorne that emotional incompetence worked better as a quirk that he gets roasted for throughout the whole book. B plot wasn’t my thing but it rarely is and I loved any scene Kate shared with the extremely whipped Corporal Thorne. Might be my favorite book by Tessa Dare?...more
This is one of those weird ones where I wasn’t wild about the book but I could not have gotten through this book with this plot and this way of depictThis is one of those weird ones where I wasn’t wild about the book but I could not have gotten through this book with this plot and this way of depicting the events if not for Seton’s really great writing. I was anticipating more of a medieval romance (and based on how Seton wrote gothic romance with Dragonwyck, I’ll pick up anything she’s written but one where the characters are searching Avalon had me by the throat) but it’s a lot drier than that, more the influence of Star-crossed, interconnected lives and political intrigue spanning several nations. It’s meticulously researched and manages to have a human story throughout. If it sounds dry and boring, it could be, but Seton has always had a certain way about her prose that makes it fly by. It’s not Seton’s best but it’s still Seton’s.
One element that did surprise and delight me is Seton wrote Dragonwyck about 20 years earlier than this book and had to be so censored about the sexuality; and this relatively chaste medieval drama has a lot of tiddies and unslakeable lust compared to the bodice-ripper that couldn’t mention a lot of that explicitly. I’d actually have loved to see what she could do with the villainess of this book as a main character: she is camp and delightful. ...more
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