B-
Genre: Historical: European, Romance
Theme: Class Differences, Mistaken/False Identity, Nursed Back to Health, One Night Stand
Archetype: Highlander/Scot
Devil in Disguise is a fun, hot romance that tells the story of Lady Merritt Sterling, the widowed daughter of the Earl of Westcliff, and Keir MacRae, a whisky distiller from Scotland. It’s very much fanservice for readers who enjoyed the Wallflower series, with Lillian, Westcliff and Evie all appearing in the story, and Sebastian, who is now the Duke of Kingston, playing a particularly prominent role. I am honestly not quite sure how well this story would work if one had not read the Wallflowers books, but I definitely enjoyed myself reading it.
Merritt is an extremely competent and charming heroine, who inherited her husband’s shipping firm and continues to run it with the help of her youngest brother, Luke. She takes a very hands-on role in the business, and the welfare of her workers is paramount to her. She first meets Keir when he storms into her office after an accident involving a shipment of his whisky, and the attraction between the two is instantaneous.
Keir is very much your fantasy Scottish romance hero (though this being the 19th century, he doesn’t wear a kilt, alas). He is big and strong and speaks in a brogue, and he scatters his English with Scots words. He insists on wearing a beard because he is so handsome without one that his friends tease him about it (!). He is very patriotic, and doesn’t really trust any innovations that don’t come from Scotland. Whisky is, of course, the cure for all injuries, and Scotch whisky is the water of life itself:
“Islay whisky starts as hot as the devil’s whisper… but then the flavors come through, and it might taste of cinnamon, or peat, or honeycomb fresh from the hive. It could taste of a long-ago walk on a winter’s eve… or a kiss you once stole from your sweetheart in the hayloft. Whisky is yesterday’s rain, distilled with barley into a vapor that rises like a will-o’-the-wisp, then set to bide its time in casks of good oak.” His voice had turned as soft as a curl of smoke. “Someday we’ll have a whisky, you and I. We’ll toast health to our friends and peace to our foes… and we’ll drink to the loves lost to time’s perishing as well as those yet to come.”
I absolutely loathe the taste of whisky, but that made me want to give it another try.
Their romance is, of course, Doomed, because an Earl’s daughter, even one who is In Trade (gasp!) cannot possibly marry a lowborn Scotsman who lives in a cottage on a tiny island. But Merritt is willing to risk one night with him regardless, after which it will all be over. Alas, this very practical plan goes awry when it becomes clear that someone is trying to kill Keir, and when a second attempt leaves him with amnesia the only possible choice is for Merritt to pretend to be his fiancée in order to oversee his nursing.
If you didn’t follow the logical leap there, you are not alone. This story was highly enjoyable but I did feel that I had to fling my suspension of disbelief out the window a few times while reading it.
Speaking of Scottish fantasies, incidentally, it did not escape my notice that for someone who has just been stabbed in the back and then stitched back together by the doctor, Keir has quite remarkable sexual stamina. (It was a very hot sex scene! But also, I was distracted because I was worried he would pop his stitches or start bleeding in a very unromantic way at a key moment…)
But for me, the most significant problem with this story was the shape of the romance itself. Merritt and Keir have instant chemistry and connection, but their initial assessment of having little in common is pretty accurate. They really can’t marry without Merritt losing her position in society, and she *likes* living in London, running a business, and being involved in society. Keir, on the other hand, loves his home in Scotland and his business distilling whisky, and they are both in agreement that this is not a lifestyle Merritt would enjoy.
And yet somehow these problems just melt away, and we go from ‘our love is doomed and we may never marry’ to ‘happily ever after’ in the blink of an eye. Part of this is via the unveiling of a Big Secret (which is not hard to guess, but I won’t spoil it for you). And the other part is… true love changing everyone’s priorities, I guess? I’m not sure what I wanted here – either a bit less deus ex machina to resolve the central problem, or a bit more of a picture of just how Merritt and Keir were going to live together, outside the bedroom – but I definitely wanted more than I got. So for me, that was a bit unsatisfying.
On a more positive note, I really loved the way the question of family was handled in this story.
Keir knows from the start that he is adopted. He was abandoned as a child, and his parents took him in as they were unable to have children. Keir views his adoptive parents as his true parents – they were the ones who loved him and raised him, and he is not going to be ashamed of them or of his upbringing. I really appreciated the careful grace with which Keir’s feelings about family were treated by Keir’s blood relatives. The man who fathered Keir is clearly deeply hungry to claim Keir as his son, but he also understands that Keir already has parents. He can’t just waltz into Keir’s life when Keir is a grown adult and expect to be instantly loved and looked up to.
I appreciated this all the more because Keir’s blood family really do have every advantage of class, wealth and power over Keir’s adoptive family. It would have been so easy to dismiss them and make this into an Ugly Duckling sort of story, and I liked that neither Keir nor his sire were willing to do that. Indeed, Keir’s greatest concern on discovering the identity of his blood family is the horrifying possibility that he might not actually be Scottish!
For me, this also felt like a nice callback to the ‘found family’ theme of the Wallflowers books. There is also a lot of kindness in this book generally. With the exception of the Villains Who Are Villainous, everyone in this story goes out of their way to treat the people around them well. This made it a very restful book to read.
Devil in Disguise is a low-stakes, sexy romance, with cameos from some of my favourite characters from the other Wallflowers and Ravenel stories. It did suffer from one significant flaw (don’t play the Our Love Is Doomed card if it will be thrown away halfway through the story), and as I mentioned above, I’m not at all certain it would work as a standalone for someone who didn’t already know the Wallflowers. But even so, it has definitely earned a place on my comfort reads shelf. It’s like fairy floss for the soul – sweet and light and delicious, but if you spend too much time thinking about it, it will all melt away and you will just be left with a few sad grains of pink sugar. Best to devour it in one happy gulp, and revel in the sweetness.
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That paragraph about whisky might actually get me to read this, though I’m very much not in M/F historical mode right now. I have a bottle of Laphroaig (made on Islay) which I save for special occasions. It smells like burning barrels, then a fiery hit on the tongue, very volatile – will evaporate right up through your sinuses – and has a long, long finish like charred marshmallow. Unique. Yum.
I’m having a weird reaction to this book. I feel like I ought to WANT to read it and yet….I don’t. My brain is saying “auto buy author and more Wallflowers. Sound like a no brainer to me!” But nothing about it screams “BUY ME NOW!!” Heck, I don’t even hear a whisper. I feel like I’ll eventually read this but I’m not in a hurry. I just feel so confused!!
I just read this and really liked it. It’s classic Kleypas. If you are looking for a book where 90% of the book is focused on the main couple then this is for you.
There’s not a ton of external drama and you never meet most of the villains so if the chapters “from the villain’s point of view” irk you then you will enjoy this.
There is a lot of nostalgia for the Wallflowers and their families and it has the sweet and gentle (yet sexy) Kleypas language. It’s probably the “hottest” book she has written so far in terms of love scenes.
The people are all generally good and kind and if you are looking for a book that is soothing and charming rather than shocking/unsettling/ challenging then I think you will really enjoy this one.
This is a solid A for me; a lot of fun, and really, sometimes that’s all you need.
I just want to know why none of the Hathaways have ever appeared around Stony Cross during the timeframe of the Ravenels novels. Amelia’s and Leo’s kids should have grown up literally next door to Merritt and her siblings, and Amelia was friendly with Lillian, yet they’re never mentioned as contemporaries even though it would have made just as much sense to bring them into the Ravenels’ orbit as Westcliffe’s and Sebastian’s families.
Ahem. Maybe it’s just me.
My biggest problem was
Ugh.
I enjoyed this book, but am annoyed by the time inconsistencies. It’s set in 1880, 37 years after the wallflower books And yet, the main character is 33, but was supposedly born before the wallflowers found their loves. I was similarly confused by West Ravenel’s age in Devil’s Daughter. Wasn’t he supposed to be older than Phoebe, since she and her husband were the same age, and was portrayed as the bigger older bully, And yet in Hello Stranger, he’s four years younger than his future wife. Please get a better editor, Ms. Kleypas.
@JetGirl – I am not sure of the timing of the Wallflowers beyond the fact the very first book begins in 1843. Evie and Sebastian are the third book in the series so by the time they get together it could easily be three years.
It’s never said that Keir was conceived before any of the Wallflowers met their husbands, just that it was before Sebastian married Evie. He could have had the affair right before he married Evie and she could have secretly had the child 9 months later. That would account for four year difference from the start of Annabelle’s story and Keir’s birth.
I will also have to re-read about West but it could have been that he was just bigger and stronger than Phoebe’s husband who was always sickly, and not necessarily older. I will have to check on that though because I never picked up on it.
@Christine Devil in Winter, Sebastian and Evie’s book, is set in 1843, so 37 years earlier. In Devil in Disguise (set in 1880), Sebastian tells Merrit that Keir is 33 years old. Shouldn’t he be at least 37, then?
As for West, he tells Ethan in Hello Stranger that he got some Ravenel blood, 1849 vintage. Surely West, in order to be older than Phoebe’s husband, should be born 1845 at the latest, since Phoebe, according to A Wallflower Christmas, was born in 1846?
My point is that, just as the reviewer found the sudden resolution of the big problem in this book a bit difficult to deal with, I find that the timeline inconsistencies are hard to deal with. This happens a lot with successful genre authors. It can be hard to remember details from books you wrote a decade or more ago. But that’s where an editor comes in, and the one editing the final Ravenel books, as well as this one, fell down on the job.
I’m really confused with the timelines now because Annabelle’s book begins in Summer 1843 and the Wallflowers haven’t even become friends yet at the very beginning.
During her book she and Simon flirt, court and eventually marry. By the time Lillian’s book starts Annabelle is already married. Then Lillian and Marcus have their book. By the time it ends it’s days or a few weeks later because Sebastian is still bruised up from the beating by Marcus. When Annabelle shows up after Evie is married she’s been married, had an extended honeymoon and is pregnant right? Can this all supposed to have happened in half of a year (because the first book is Summer one?)
Where are Annabelle’s kids?
@Michelle- Annabelle, Daisy and their families don’t appear in this book at all.
The insta-lust is making it harder to get through this book, for me. I used to love insta-lust but I must be getting old and fussy.
I was, well, ‘startled’ by the instalust and actually put the book down for a minute to try to figure out what the hell it was I was reading! But I am an Easy R, willing to throw disbelief right out the window when it comes to Kleypas historicals – for me, it’s like a well made hot chocolate on a cold February afternoon. Comfy and fabulous.
@Mbl – we see that baby coming a mile away! But, to be fair, it’s a (probable) misdiagnosis rather than Keir’s Magical Sperm, given at a time when the inability to conceive still rested mostly on the woman. Fibroids usually do not interfere with a woman’s ability to conceive (my uterus looked like Bryce Canyon, fwiw) though it can make it more difficult to carry to term and to deliver.
What I loved most about this book was the dual love story – the one between Keir and Merritt and the one between Keir and his sire. Both were beautifully done.
A very spot-on review. Couldn’t agree more. So disappointed that Kleypas’ recent novels lack the depth of her earlier works. Hello, Stranger was the last one I enjoyed and even with that I felt there could’ve been a lengthier timeline.
I may be mid-remembering, but doesn’t Merritt have different parentage than the rest of her siblings somehow? I have the distinct impression that Merritt was taken in by Marcus and Lillian before their bio children were born. However, I could be mixing up her story with a Sarah MacLean novel, as I tend to read these two (favorite HR ) authors in tandem.
Merritt was born in the last Wallflowers book, Scandal in Spring.
I, too, want to see what happened to the Hathaway children. Maybe they’ll appear in a future novel.