B
Genre: Historical: European, Romance
Theme: Opposites Attract, Plot Moppet, Slow Burn, Small Town
Archetype: Character with a Disability
I love the Pennyroyal Green series by Julie Anne Long. The fictional village in Sussex is one of those places I firmly believe really exists (or I really want to believe exists) and her books have a standing place on my “fibro sucks” reading shelf. When It Started with a Scandal came out I was super excited. I really enjoyed the story, but unfortunately, I felt that a lot of the actual development in the main characters’ relationship happened at the last minute.
It Started with a Scandal is the 10th book in the Pennyroyal Green series, and the series focuses mainly on two families, the Redmonds and the Everseas. This book is about two ancillary characters– Phillipe, Lord Lavay and his housekeeper, Elise Fountain.
Lord Lavay, a Prince of the House of Bourbon, lost his home and most of his family members in the Terror. He’s living in Sussex now, trying to find a good marriage that will give him the funds to purchase his familial home back. He’s also grumpy as shit–largely because he’s in pain all the time. I feel you, Phillipe, I feel you. Fibro fist-bump.
Phillipe used to be a privateer/spy for the English Crown, and at one point was attacked by six men. He was badly injured and came down with a fever, and since then he’s experienced episodes of extreme pain in his joints.
This story is based on the fable of the lion with the thorn in his paw, and Phillipe is that lion. When the book opens Elise is interviewing for the position of Phillipe’s housekeeper. The previous housekeeper is fleeing in tears and Phillipe has a tendency to get really shouty and throw things.
Elise really, really needs this job. She’s a fallen woman–the gently bred daughter of a doctor who got pregnant out of wedlock and was disowned. She previously taught at a girl’s school, but after a parent found out about her sordid past she was fired.
Phillipe’s house is in disarray. The servants are running the show, playing five-card-loo rather than doing their duties. Elise is determined to set shit right, and she’s not about to be intimidated by Phillipe, vase-throwing or no.
A lot of this book is about Elise getting the servants back in order, and while I enjoyed that I felt that it detracted somewhat from the romance I was waiting for. In fact, a good half of the book is more spent on domestic issues, and Elise spending time with her son, Plot Moppet Jack, than is spent with Elise and Phillipe falling for each other.
Elise realizes that Phillipe is in pain, and she empathizes with him when she realizes that he’s yearning for the same thing she is–a home that’s been denied to her. She has the giant brass lady-balls to address his pain directly to him, bringing him willow bark tea and pointing out that he’s kind of an asshole when he’s hurting.
Once he’s less ouchy, Phillipe quickly becomes a more likable person. He moves from snappish and unpleasant to flirty, which is a problem for Elise. She really, really needs this job and she knows what her indiscretion cost her last time. Despite that she also really wants to kiss him. One thing I really appreciated is that Phillipe is aware of the position his advances would put Elise in. He doesn’t want her to feel harassed and he doesn’t want to be the dude who is sleeping with his housekeeper on the side.
I gave this book a B because while I really did enjoy it–I read it in a day–I felt like a lot of Elise and Phillipe’s relationship was saved for the end. I kept looking at how many pages were left and wondering when these characters were going to act on their forbidden desires. Once Phillipe realizes he’s in love with Elise, everything happens very quickly which took a lot of the tension out of the book. The conflict was resolved super-quick in a way that left me going “huh?”. The whole love between different classes (even if she wasn’t disgraced, Elise is the daughter of a physician and Phillipe is still a prince) was never actually addressed. Granted Phillipe is dispossessed, but he still lives like the aristocrat he is.
I kept thinking of Miranda Neville’s The Duke of Dark Desires which also features a dispossessed French nobleman falling for his servant and how much more conflict was present in that book.
A lot of It Started with a Scandal felt like a tour of Pennyroyal Green to see how folks were doing as well as set-up for The Legend of Lyon Redmond. Phillipe is close friends with Violet Redmond and the Earl of Ardmay from I Kissed an Earl. Elise’s son Jack is being tutored by Reverend Adam from A Notorious Countess Confesses. Because I love the Pennyroyal Green series so much, I was fine with this. It was coming home to old friends. Had I never read any of those books I would probably be bored by all the character visits.
I think that how much a reader will like It Started with a Scandal will depend on how familiar he/she is with the series. Readers starting with this book might be confused and disappointed, but those who are intimate with Pennyroyal Green will find it, while not the strongest book in the series, still a pleasant read.
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Totes agree. Pallid. Disappointing compared to earlier installments.
I actually liked this one more than some of the other Penny Royal books. Maybe because I’m a sucker for a heroine like Elise. Her backstory touched me and I like the trope of a curmudgeon gradually thawing and eventually stepping outside society’s rigid parameters to love this woman and boy. I cried several times, especially when Phillipe gives Jack the toy lion and during the bell tower scene. Made my heart hurt for Jack and Elise. The writing is good and I liked the interactions Elise had with the servants. Felt authentic and very much the actual world in which she would have existed, rather than contrived instances where Elise and Phillipe are thrown together. And I love your tag of “slow burn”. This is definitely a book that encapsulates yearning.
Nice review!
@Liz Talley: Yes, we need more books tagged “slow burn.” It’s one of my catnips. (That’s probably not grammatical, but I have many a catnip.)
I tried this a while ago. I love stories about housekeepers, but less because I enjoy cross-class romances (I have very nitpicky feelings about them) and more because I’m interested in how people organized and ran great houses. I had a lot of the feelings you talk about here and didn’t finish the book. It was fine, but I could see that it was shaping up to be the kind of “No, it’s fine, nobody will be weird about the disgraced lady with the child out of wedlock, or the class boundaries” book I personally don’t enjoy. Julie Anne Long is a fine writer, but I find her books to take place on Disney History Island, where there is a surface veneer of “it’s in the past!” but there are no or very few repercussions for behavior that would, in that era, have had lots of repercussions. I really enjoyed “What I Did For A Duke” but was kind of surprised that nobody in the book ever mentions, hey, in our time people are tense about gently-bred virgins having pre-marital sex. Her books are fun, but perhaps challenging for people who like their historical romances historical? (If anyone knows of any new writers who do historical-type historical romances, I am all ears! I need a new book very much.)
Tangent but: I had to stop reading these books after Violet’s book (the one with the sea captain?) when the hero had this lengthy aside about how had it was for him not to rape her. Of course he would never use the word rape, but that’s what he was saying and it deeply disturbed me to see a romance hero spouting rape apologist bullshit. Put that book down and will probably never read another book by her. (Also she reused the same paragraph about violet Redmond threatening to throw herself into a well over a suitor in like three books with almost no changes and like… Come on…)
Tldr: I do not get the pennyroyal green thing at all.
There are a lot of things about JAL’s books that bug me. @cordy, that bugged me about What I Did for the Duke too. In fact, I think all of her gently bred virgin heroines give away their v-card without a second thought. But I still love the series so much. And inspite of all of its flaws, I LOVED The Legend of Lyon Redmond. I really hope you guys eventually review that.
Actually this is one Long romance I really liked. Mostly I don’t get what the appeal of her romances are. I loathed the latest one, the Lyon book. Unlike Lyon the hero in this one is a good man who tries to do right by the heroine and her adorable little boy. I was charmed by the couple and was rooting for them.
I’ve read maybe five or six of the Pennyroyal Green books, and I’m not a huge stickler for absolute historical fidelity, so I can overlook things like the gently bred ladies sneaking into dudes’ bedrooms.
But my problem—and maybe it was just the ebooks—was that every single book was riddled with typos and errors. At one point Long was spelling Jonathan Redmond’s name both “Jonathan” and “Jonathon.” I hope she settled on one spelling before he got his own book, but I didn’t read it, because that shit drives me absolutely bonkers.
These books are really hit and miss for me. I love What I Did for a Duke and the Marquess/schoolteacher one, but the others are about meh. This fell somewhere in the middle for me.
And while I enjoyed the recent Lyon story I really, really, REALLY didn’t get the point of the epilogue. Totally ruined the book for me, it was just an unnecessary info dump about people i mostly didn’t know or care about.