When Jo Beverley passed away last month and we were discussing recommendations, several people mentioned Emily and the Dark Angel. I realized I had a copy but had never read it. It was just the sort of charming, quietly hilarious comfort read I needed.
It has the best meet-cute I’ve read in a long time, too. Emily Grantwich is walking through her hometown, Melton Mowbray, when a man bumps into her. Another woman in an upstairs window, furious with the man who has knocked Emily over, hurls a container of violet-scented powder, aka Poudre de Violettes, at them, covering them both. This is likely one of the most extraordinary things that has ever happened to Emily, which is saying something: she’s been running her family’s estate since her older brother went missing in the war and her father suffered a paralyzing injury after trying to duel a neighbor over some disputed land. (You know what they say: good sabers make good neighbors, and if that doesn’t work, there’s always pistols at dawn.)
Emily is level headed, extremely competent, and frustrated with the state of her life at present, but unable to see any alternative. She could marry the vicar, who is really her only prospect, and while he is the brother of her dear friend (who is/was betrothed to her brother), he’s awful in the way of someone who is never in doubt that he is always perfectly morally correct and responsible for everyone else’s moral correctness. He has opinions about Emily running her family’s estate and accompanying business, and he barely manages to keep them to himself. Meanwhile, Emily grows more frustrated the more she contemplates her life because she likes what she’s doing: she’s a talented land manager, the people with whom she transacts business respect her or respect the agents she deploys on her behalf, and she takes advantage of opportunities with shrewd and level-headed analysis, such as when she buys a prime flock of sheep at a low price and decides to have them graze on the aforementioned disputed land. The dude who did the disputing with her father and injured him has since died, no one knows who his heir is or where said heir is, and hey, sheep need grass, so why not?
Of course, the heir shows up, and of course he ends up terribly violet-scented with Emily in the middle of the street, and of course he has an equally terrible reputation as a rake, scoundrel, and heartless libertine. He’d probably agree, though the truth of his reputation and the rumor of it don’t entirely match. He’s Piers Verderan, aka The Dark Angel, and he’s in town to size up said estate he’s inherited, and also to take part in the local fox hunting, which tends to flood the town with young, wealthy, mostly ridiculous young men obsessed with the hunt.
Verderan isn’t young, and he’s not ridiculous, though he is chillingly confident and handsome, at least in Emily’s opinion. From their first meeting, he’s drawn to her. Emily is meanwhile pretty certain that he’s a terrible idea, except that he’s fascinating and to her deep surprise seems to be interested in her.
The heart of the romantic conflict is relatively simple: Emily doesn’t think she should have anything to do with Verderan due to his reputation and the effect of said reputation on her own standing in the (small, very attentive, and gossip-fueled) community. Verderan meets Emily and is poleaxed by the scented powder of love, and adjusts to the development of his unexpected feels with aplomb and determination. It’s not so much “will they or won’t they” as it is “will they be able to make the choices to be together in a way that preserves as much of their happiness and dignity?”
Emily has existed with things happening to her that she must adjust to: her father is unable to manage his estate, her brother is gone, and there’s no one else to do it, so she takes over. Part of the growing tension is Emily’s desire and hesitance to choose something entirely different, entirely for herself, that is entirely the opposite of what she has been told she should choose. As the reader, I wanted her to choose the dangerous, irresponsible, passionate thing, knowing that it would be so inconsistent with her character and her values, it might be too painful and too impossible to bear if she did. The consequences of other people’s actions affected Emily and she bears their responsibilities as a result; she knows she can’t put down all the things she does and walk away without terrible consequences for people she cares about.
The side characters are vivid and interesting and built with subtleties of language that make their descriptions and their actions distinct and believable. Emily’s aunt Junia is particularly awesome, as she is not impressed or intimidated by anyone, and is not at all hesitant about writing letters that cause all sorts of mayhem to befall Emily. Junia is sort of a cautionary tale and an object of wonder for Emily: Junia does as she pleases, lives with her brother and pursues whatever messy, random artistic endeavor captures her attention, but, like Verderan, she’s also entirely fluent in who and what she is, and what she wants for Emily.
This is a Regency romance in the traditional vein, so no one goes to Bonetown, but there is a letter that Verderan wrote to Emily about his desires which he says is so hot it set his desk on fire. Please tell me somewhere this letter is written down because holy smokes. Verderan is quite skilled at communicating scorching palpable desire when there are barely any kisses to be found in the text.
That’s the best part of this book: the double meanings, the entendres, and the unintentionally hilarious dialogue. There are conversations and ongoing jokes in this book that I can’t possible explain without spoiling them (“pudding” is now going to make me snort laugh almost as much as the word “gumpy,” without any needed context). There are some scenes, such as the one in Verderan’s foyer, that I’d pay considerable amounts of money to see performed, especially with handsome actors gifted in the way of sharp dialogue and understated usage of one eyebrow and pursed lips to convey an ocean of reaction. Some of the scenes of ensemble comedy in this book were so funny and delightful, I had to read them a second time before I went on to the next chapter.
Emily and the Dark Angel is written in a historical style that’s rather sedate and quiet; fans of older style Regencies may know what I mean. If you expect bombastic characters and sweeping grandness, that isn’t in this book; the story moves at a deliberate pace with a balance of character evolution and plot development that is part of what I look for in a comfort read, along with world building that includes community, care taking, and excellent dialogue. Emily and Verderan change one another – and if there’s one complaint I have, it’s that the emotional declaration and determination came a little too quickly for me to believe in every moment of that change. But by the end of the book, the difficult impossibility of the choices facing Emily, the painful history that followed Verderan, and the circumstances surrounding them both were all resolved to such a charming and satisfying degree, I had a big, deep Good Book Sigh at the end. I can see why so many readers love this book, and count it among their favorite comfort reads.
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Thanks!
One of my absolute favorites. I love Emily and Verderan.
Wow, a Jo Beverley I haven’t read! This sounds scrumptious, and I can’t wait to dive in. Thanks for the rec!
Pudding. *snicker*
I need a comfort read so I pushed on click to find that I had it in my Cloud from 2010. Soooooooo i uploaded it to my Kindle. The one good thing about aging is that you forget what you’ve read and you have lots of ‘new’ books :).
Sounds so good.
I need a comfort read, and I love a regency. Sounds wonderful. I’m so in.
These books are what I cut my romance teeth on, and I’m so lucky in that – my standards of writing and characterization were set high from the beginning!
This used to be my favourite Jo Beverley (when I’d only read her trad Regencies), and is still probably in the top 5, and a comfort read.
Thank you for this review! After reading the comments on the Jo Beverley post, I borrowed “Emily and the Dark Angel” from the library, but hadn’t started reading it yet. It’s waiting for me at home.
This sounds great! Fundamentally I think I always want romances that are basically traditional Regencies with some smut – a gap that, alas, remains largely unfulfilled. (Writers, someone get on that please?)
I know what you mean, Cordy. I’d like to keep that Heyer-esque and genuine Regency feel but have more racy stuff shown to the reader.
I’ve been thinking about this idea of yours and Cordy’s and I wanted to ask – by the Regency feel, do you mean character driven stories with fairly sedate and time specific plots instead of, say, contemporary concepts placed on historical characters?
YES! That’s what I want – traditional character driven, historically accurate regencies (or any historical era for that matter) with a bit of naughtiness. They are so few and far between. I really dislike “modern” characters being plunked down sometime in the past – because really, how many secret female spies/writers/scientists/explorers/archaeologists/closet geniuses can there be?
Carla Kelly’s naval series comes to mind as historically accurate with a bit more than a chaste kiss between the H & h.
Also Barbara Metzger’s Lord Heartless. It was the first of hers I read and I was so excited – traditional regency feel, snappy dialogue, etc. I have since read two others – Snowdrops & Scandalbroth was the last and they were both disappointments. Too much farce for my taste.
And that’s not to say I’m adverse to just super fun, witty dialogue, sexy fun times. Tessa Dare’s Castles Ever After series are some of my hands down favorites. And I like books with female archaeologists – Ravished is some serious catnip – beauty & the beast AND freakin’ archaeology all tied up with a bow.
If anyone else has some suggestions, my Kindle would love to hear from you….
This sounds interesting and I’d love to read it but my library doesn’t carry it. They have quite a few other titles but not this one.
Never having read her, I’m unwilling to spend $9.99 on a new-to-me author. Honestly, as much as I love Ilona Andrews I have a hard time paying $12.99 for a book I won’t even own. She holds an entire reread shelf by herself and the only way I can justify buying her newest Kate is by telling myself that supporting her now means more books in future.
I still haven’t forgiven Ace/Penguin for putting them in HB. Though if I was capable of restraint I’d wait until the pb released.
For me to think of a book as Regency in the Heyer tradition, the key factors are language, personalities, and historical details. Carla Kelly and Patricia Veryan are the first two that come to mind. I’m sure there are others I’m blanking on at the moment.
The holy grail for me would be all of those delicious details plus an exciting plot PLUS some racier stuff.
@SB_Sarah – yes! Dare one hope for a Rec League type thing?
I guess what I mean is: historical romances (any era) that are written by someone who understands her era deeply enough that the characters, while strongly sexually drawn to each other, are also very much constrained by the mores of their day. But, you know, with sex scenes eventually. I don’t hate zippy plots, but I’m primarily interested in character-driven material, and if the plot is adventurous, I do want the adventure to be pretty close to historically possible.
I’d agree with others that accurate-feeling language and historical detail are important to me. I particularly love that many Heyer characters are extremely bright and quite sarcastic, so the dialog and subtextual flirting are generally excellent. Two Heyer books with more than the usual amount of sexual tension (to me) are DEVIL’S CUB and VENETIA, which both feature men who are sexually a little morally ambiguous, and women of their day who are ladylike and kept by cultural mores and personal ethics from jumping into bed with the heroes, but not pretending to not feel the pull. So if I could have that plus sexy times, that would be excellent!
Some of Laura Kinsale’s work does this for me (I think that LESSONS IN FRENCH is very accurate-feeling, in terms of the ways the characters are hemmed in by their time and place). So does some of Loretta Chase, but not all. I really like MR. IMPOSSIBLE, MISS WONDERFUL, and LORD PERFECT, which all definitely push the limits of what was probable or permissible, but the characters are all twisted into knots about it and concerned about repercussions and honorable behavior, and there are weird side characters, which is very Heyer-y to me. (Also, for those who love female characters with careers, but want it to feel real for the time, I highly recommend both MR. IMPOSSIBLE and MISS WONDERFUL. And LESSONS IN FRENCH, for that matter, which all feature driven women who struggle, mostly successfully, to do what they do within the tight limits of their era.)
Carla Kelly definitely feels Heyer-y to me. Sometimes Mary Balogh comes close, but – to be honest? I don’t like her sex scenes.
How about Joanna Bourne’s books?