The Marquis Who Mustn’t
At this point we’ve reviewed so many Courtney Milan books on this site that the reviews are kind of a foregone conclusion – you know the book is going to get a good grade, the question is just – how good? My answer for The Marquis Who Mustn’t is: Very Good, especially if you are in the mood for pure heartwarming material. Evil is vanquished. Wrongs are righted. Apologies are made. And of course, love wins.
What I appreciate most about Courtney Milan is that she makes every book fresh. Common themes run through her work but I never feel like I’m reading the same thing with a new cover. Milan always provides something new for the reader to geek out over. In this book, it’s pottery. In the last book, it was brown sauce, something I didn’t know I could geek out over (but I totally did).There’s also always layers and layers of character development in her books. In this case, I expected a powerful romance. I did not expect an even more powerful depiction of a mother/daughter relationship that moved me right down to my core.
Aside from the relationships that the protagonists, Naomi and Kai, have with their relatives and their fellow villagers, my favorite aspect of this romance is that Naomi and Kai are not interested in changing one another, and they have a kind of trust mingled with boundaries that one rarely sees in fiction or in life. In many cases as the plot progresses, something is set up to be a dealbreaker, but when the protagonists encounter these potential deal breakers they tend to react with, “OK, I accept this new thing I’ve learned about you, and I will incorporate it into my life under my terms.” It leads to a fascinating dynamic and loads of interesting and moving character growth.
No one who reads Milan, or this site, will be surprised to see an A grade here. If this is your first Milan, I’d suggest starting with the first Wedgeford Trial book, The Duke Who Didn’t. However, The Marquis Who Mustn’t is a solid stand alone. It’s a great romance, it involves people who solve problems creatively and in interesting and unexpected ways, it has history and art, it has complicated family dynamics, it explores historical diversity in England, and, as I mentioned a long time ago in this sentence, it has a whopping good love story. Full squee for this installment in a long line of squee-worthy books.
– Carrie S
One good fraud deserves another…
Miss Naomi Kwan has long wanted to take ambulance classes so that she can save lives. But when she tries to register, she’s told she needs permission from the man in charge of her. It would be incredibly wrong to claim that the tall, taciturn Chinese nobleman she just met is her fiancé, but Naomi is desperate, and desperate times call for fake engagements.
To her unending surprise, Liu Ji Kai goes along with her ruse. It’s not that Kai is nice. He’s in Wedgeford to practice his family business, and there’s no room for “nice” when you’re out to steal a fortune. It’s not that the engagement is convenient; a fake fiancée winding herself into his life and his heart is suboptimal when he plans to commit fraud and flee the country. His reason is Kai and Naomi were betrothed as children. He may have disappeared for seventeen years, but their engagement isn’t actually fake. It’s the only truth he’s telling.
Historical: European, Historical: Other, Romance
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I adored this book. As I mentioned in Whatcha Reading, The Worth Saga has gone a bit off the rails for me. The last one was a good book with good characters, but I didn’t find the resolution romantic (IMHO). I think it is truly a saga with a lot of stuff going on and characters to remember.
But the Wedgeford Trials are just delightful. I love the community *and* the romance. To me the most romantic thing is when someone just really sees you and gets you on a level most other people don’t or won’t and they like that part of you that other people might not even see or actively reject.
It’s hard to articulate, but this book definitely gave me that romantic feeling. And then there’s a funny, sweet diverse commuinity on top of that? And it’s funny? Lovely.
I have been stalking my library’s website, waiting for this. I’m really looking forward to this one. I’m intrigued by the FMC wanting to learn emergency medicine in that period! It feels like I always learn something from Courtney Milan’s historicals.
I feel dumb, but I am confused by the reference to ambulance classes. Would anyone be willing to give me a sentence or two about when this book is set and how the “ambulance” thing fits? Is it like…horse and buggy ambulances?
Need more coffee.
I liked everything about ‘The Marquis Who Mustn’t’ *except* for the scene toward the end involving MMC’s father. I thought the response was unnecessarily violent and thus out of character.
I think an “ambulance class” basically refers to a first aid class.
Here is a link to an illustration of a “ambulance class for ladies, London 1890s” – one of the panels resembles a scene from the book (applying a bandage to an arm).
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:An_ambulance_class_for_ladies.jpg
I loved the book, especially how Naomi felt truly “seen” by Kai, and how Naomi learned to see her parents’ relationship with each other and with her (especially her mom) in a new light.
FYI, The Duke Who Didn’t is $0.99 at amazon and Apple for a week or so.
@Jenny, thank you for sharing that link! The captions are delightful, and it looks like the class spent as much time falling about laughing as they did learning about first aid. I hope they loosened their corsets beforehand.
New Courtney Milan and there’s *pottery*??? Didn’t read the rest of the review but thanks very much for it, I gotta go!
@chacha1–I used to follow Courtney Milan on Twitter and she posted a few times about her dad—dude sounds like a SERIOUS piece of work. Wouldn’t be surprised if some of that found its way into her books. (I can’t really read Milan because so many of her books have family relationships that are deeply dysfunctional, especially the siblings.)
Would go a little lower with an A- — still very good though!