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Genre: Historical: European, Romance
This RITA® Reader Challenge 2015 review was written by Nita G. This story was nominated for the RITA® in the Long Historical category.
The summary:
Sensible and lonely, Olivia Mather survives by her wits—and her strict policy of avoiding trouble. But when she realizes that the Duke of Marwick might hold the secrets of her family’s past, she does the unthinkable, infiltrating his household as a maid. She’ll clean his study and rifle through his papers looking for information.
Alastair de Grey has a single reason to live: vengeance. More beautiful than Lucifer, twice as feared, and thrice as cunning, he’ll use any weapon to punish those who fooled and betrayed him—even an impertinent maid who doesn’t know her place. But the more fascinated he becomes with the uppity redhead, the more dangerous his carefully designed plot becomes. For the one contingency he forgot to plan for was falling in love…and he cannot survive being fooled again.
Here is Nita G.'s review:
This was my first Meredith Duran. I liked it. The hero is tortured. The heroine is smart and determined. They banter. They fight. A great combination for me.
Olivia needs certain papers that Alastair de Gray has. She hopes the information she gets from these papers will stop her pursuers and she’ll be able to live in peace. She infiltrates his household as a maid in order to look for those papers. What she finds though is a household in chaos as their master self-exiles himself in his bedroom. Alastair’s now-dead wife really did a number on him. He thought they had a cordial marriage, but he soon finds out after her death that his wife did not agree.
Some might find the beginning of the story a bit slow. Alastair is extremely stubborn and it takes a while to get him out of his room and self-pity. I enjoyed the interplay between Olivia and Alastair during this time, so this wasn’t a problem for me. Alastair could also be rather mean. He’s extremely angry at his wife’s betrayal and has lost all his trust. I was not looking forward to him finding out what Olivia was actually doing in his home. HIs reaction was about what I expected. I was able to forgive him, but some might think he goes a little too far in how he treats Olivia at times. Alastair is also aware of their class difference and does try to tamp down on his attraction to her. He expects his servants to always do what he says immediately and Olivia right away pushes his buttons. But it’s exactly what he needs.
I thought this book very well written. I loved how Duran wrote the characters – how they thought.
But she, who had nothing, walked through the world with her chin held as high as his, and nothing seemed to shame her. How was it possible?
He knew why he wanted her. Just as an engineer coveted strange new devices, he wanted to strip her, disassemble her, study her parts, and make her secrets his own.
Great story, tortured hero, brave and bold heroine – I do recommend this one.
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Thanks!
Dear Nita, I too have recently read and enjoyed Fool Me Twice. I believe it is #2 in a series about women who have been done wrong in some way who then infiltrate the homes of the men who they suspect to be the perpetrators of the wrong. Each is very much of a stand-alone and don’t have to be read in order, as I discovered.
I truly love the Wounded Hero trope. Alastair is basically a really nice guy devastated by what his wife did. Yeah, he was mean to Olivia, but he was mean to everyone.
While I enjoyed the story, I would not have given it as high grade myself solely because I find the premise implausible. However, let me hasten to add that, implausible premise or not, I’ve read three of the four and if the fourth ever goes on sale, I’ll read that one too!
In each book of the series, a woman who is in some way upper class, not the Upper Ten Thousand but not a Cit or working class in any way, takes a job for which she is really not qualified. Yet somehow stumbles through it to figure out who done her the wrong, or her father the wrong. It simply strikes me as much too unrealistic. I had to keep pushing away such thoughts in order to continue to read the story. I really resent it when such intrusions happen. I resent it when an author departs from the appearance of verisimilitude, as I have mentioned before.
On the other hand, I have enjoyed it enough to read three of them!
Thanks for this review! I bought it and really really really enjoyed it!
It worked for me on almost all fronts even if I did see most of the book coming!
However I agree with Gloriamarie the premise is a little too implausible for me to read the other books if they all have the same premise.
I could buy it once here because of Olivia basically running away from extreme danger and wanting to hide herself as effectively as possible (while trying to gather evidence) and she is overqualified to be a housekeeper and she had the skills for it.