This was a HABO from like, two years ago, and a book on sale earlier this month, and someone described this book as a “historical romance Weekend at Bernie‘s” and that was like putting a plate of cookies under a box held up by a stick and the box was labeled “RHG Trap” and how could I not?
This is RIDONKADONK.
Christiana is married to Dicky, Earl of Radnor, and it is not a good marriage. He is emotionally and psychologically abusive to her, has isolated her from friends and family, and has convinced her that she’s basically The Worst. Then her sisters bully their way in to tell Christiana that their father has gambled away the family fortune…again… and they have two weeks to find the middle sister a husband (so she can use her dower to pay off the debts), so they need to go to a ball ASAP. Â Christiana goes to demand that Dicky let them go… and finds him dead.
Now, a dead husband results in a required year of mourning, which would prevent the sisters from getting married, so the OBVIOUS, LOGICAL choice is to…. pack the body in ice, go to the ball, and hope to God he doesn’t start to smell before they got another sister married off. (This results in a hilarious scene where they’re trying to move the body and need to get past the butler without him finding out they have a body rolled up in a rug.)(As you do.)
Of course, who should show up at the ball that evening but Richard, Earl of Radnor, the twin brother of “Dicky” (who was not actually Dicky, but George, the younger-by-three minutes twin). AÂ year ago, there was a fire that apparently killed one twin, and the remaining twin took the other’s place and married Christiana and then this dude who is the exact double of her dead husband shows up in public and things go wildly off the rails.
See, at least one person has suspected that Dicky is actually George, and tells Christiana to find out if the one that’s in her house if he has a birthmark on his ass, so that’s a thing. Christiana and her sisters don’t know that there’s a live twin involved, so things go confusingly sideways pretty quickly. Also they (Christiana and her sisters, and Richard and his best friend) need to keep people from realizing that Dicky/George is dead, since he’s already supposed to be dead, and being alive and then dead and fake married to Christiana while pretending to be his brother (because, see, signing his name as his brother makes it not legal) would destroy Christiana’s reputation and prevent her sisters from marrying, so everyone keeps trying to hide the body in various places.
It kind of IS Weekend at Bernie’s. Â It’s very complicated and everything totally makes sense at the time, but when I try to write it out like that, I feel like I need to diagram things.
This “who’s on first” nonsense ends when Christiana and Richard almost bang on Dicky/George’s body. Well, she didn’t know it was there and he forgot in the heat of the moment, so…. if that’s a squick you have, well, don’t say I didn’t warn you. Â It’s a thing. Â That happens. Â In this book. Â They bang on a dead body. Well, almost.
Ultimately, they need to join forces to keep people from knowing that Dicky/George was alive, and that means Richard needs to step seamlessly into the life his brother stole, and figure out if Dicky/George was murdered, and if so, by whom and why. Also there’s a beta couple or two to pair off, and a discussion on the nature of consummation. And the very important math of how much champagne does it take to get a countess shitfaced enough to look at her husband’s ass.
I really liked this. Amid the ridonkadonk, Sands does a good portrayal of how an abuser can slowly whittle down his partner’s self-confidence and isolate her until he can do whatever he wants. I think it’s notable that Dicky/George is never portrayed as actually physically abusing Christiana. Instead, he uses the dominance he’s given by society. His words and actions punish her for being too outspoken so he can make her do what he wants. Even after he’s dead, she still finds herself doing what he would have wanted- embroidery, for example. Because that is what ladies do. It doesn’t help that Richard is there looking exactly like her abuser. There isn’t a magic fix for her; it takes time.
This was just a lot of fun, even if I had to stop in the middle and go to the other Bitches and say, “GUYS THE HERO AND HEROINE JUST FUCKED ON A DEAD GUY.”
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Oh, how I loved this book!
The next one in the series is just as fun, it’s the same story from the perspective of the middle sister.
I didn’t care much for the third one, but I just can’t remember why, now.
Why does my library not have this as an ebook? *Grumbles and places request for a paper copy*
Sold! Sounds like fun and only $1.99, YEA!!
My library has an e-copy! *fistpump*
I picked this up (from the library) based off the HABO because commenters raved about how funny it was. While I’m glad this worked for others,it was just too much farce for me. I could see this working as a movie and think I would enjoy that (and yes, I did see Weekend at Bernie’s) but while I sympathized with the heroine’s plight I really didn’t care for any of the characters. Also, the VERY detailed descriptions of moving the body just wore me down. This is where I think it would make a great movie–seeing the characters moving the body would be hilarious but reading about it in minute detail bored me silly. I had to skim after about the halfway mark.
I’m with Karen D. I’m reading this right now and it’s just really not working for me. All the body moving is really tedious and hard to keep track of; the sex scenes are poorly written (there’s a lot of thrusting of tongues in time with the thrusting other parts, which: what?); and I’m finding the heroine less a sympathetic victim of abuse and more simply TSTL.
I picked this up on the promise of crazysauce and unfortunately, I’m mostly just bored by it.
I read all three and enjoyed them. I especially enjoyed the scene when the three sisters take off their gowns outdoors to play something. That’s in one of the books.
@redheaded girl, what do you mean by “RIDONKADONK,” please?
I read another Lynsay Sands, and it was terrible. One of the worst romances that I’ve ever read. Heroine was TSTL (a running theme, I guess), the hero was so poorly sketched that he didn’t even rate a solid physical description and I had to stop when the heroine started collecting her prostitute-orphan-kitten army.
This book sounds really the same, kind of.
Sounds like my favorite Hitchcock, The Trouble with Harry, my generation’s Weekend at Bernie’s.
@eleventh hour…. an army of kittens that were orphaned prostitutes? Or an army of orphans, prostitutes AND kittens? Either way, I may need to read that one.
I’m with Karen D and Lara. I really, really wanted to like this, but…it was just boring, and I didn’t finish it.
I started reading Sands’ Argeneau vampires years ago because they were supposed to be funny. I believe I read the first five and to me, they were not only not funny but a waste of time. More recently I read one of her other historicals because it was proclaimed to be excellent by so many here. Again, not to me. Sadly, (because I hate redlining anyone) I’ve drawn the conclusion that Ms Sands’ work is just not for me and will not be reading her in future.
@genie, “an army of kittens that were orphaned prostitutes? Or an army of orphans, prostitutes AND kittens? Either way, I may need to read that one.”
My exact reaction. What book is this, please?
I read this when it first came out and all I could think was weekend at bernies. This book went over the crazy cliff for me and I hated it. I still remember it years later…and not fondly..
Weekend at Bernies and the Regency? Take my money please!
I bought this after the HABO, and I enjoyed it for the most part – although the heroine wore me down a bit.
I was going to get the second book in the series, but when I looked at the reviews [Amazon UK] they weren’t good, which put me off it.
OH. I forgot I tried to read her Argeneau series a while back and couldn’t get past the first one. And it was a short I think!
Well, I’ll still give it a go. Who knows, amirite?
The one Argeneau book I enjoyed is the one that takes place at RT, but the rest are kind of meh (I read that one first, because it was on a sale here, then went back and started reading the first ones from the library). Kindle is telling me the title is Single White Vampire.
I read this just recently because I read another Sands novel that I enjoyed and went on a library hold frenzy with her books. I’ve only gotten her HR novels and they’re really hit or miss; mostly miss. Sands does A LOT of drugging with “medicinals” in her medieval novels whether by accident or on purpose. A LOT. And she loooves to put her heroines in convents and then marry them off because of crazy sauce reasons by really crappy [step]parents. Her H/h’s are pretty much interchangeable from book to book.
One of the things I do like about her books I’ve read is that the hero usually doesn’t have a problem with liking/falling in love with the heroine. That’s a nice change of pace, but it doesn’t change the redundancy of her stories from book to book. Also, if you have a problem with anachronisms, Sands is not for you, she uses “Ok” waaay before it’s appropriate.
Having said all that I actually enjoyed The Countess, but not the other 2 in the series even tho I really liked the other 2 sisters better than Christiana.
This reminds me of one of my favorite funny Regencies, Lady Whilton’s Wedding by Barbara Metzger, also involving a screwbally Weekend at Bernie’s-esque plot to hide a dead body before a wedding. I love the Wodehousian manner of Metzger’s humor, but this more ridonkadonk version sounds fun too! The audio is in my tbrp somewhere, but I’ve never heard the narrator, Sarah Coomes, before. Any bitch opinions?
And PamG, thanks for the Trouble with Harry mention, I don’t know how I haven’t seen it yet but that obviously must be rectified immediately! 🙂