B-
Genre: Historical: European, Romance
This RITA® Reader Challenge 2015 review was written by Catherine Heloise. This story was nominated for the RITA® in the Best First Book category.
The summary:
After he is betrayed by one of his own, British spy Julian Travers, Earl of Langford, refuses to retire without a fight, vowing to find the traitor. But when the trail leads to his childhood home, Julian is forced to return to a place he swore he’d never see again, and meet a woman who may be his quarry—in more ways than one.
Though she may appear a poor young woman dependant on charity, Grace Hannah’s private life is far more interesting. By night, she finds friendship and freedom as a member of a smuggling ring. But when the handsome Julian arrives, she finds her façade slipping, and she is soon compromised, as well as intrigued.
As she and Julian continue the hunt, Grace finds herself falling in love with the man behind the spy. Yet Julian’s past holds a dark secret. And when he must make a choice between love and espionage, that secret may tear them apart.
Here is Catherine Heloise's review:
I must admit, after writing three reviews for novels in three genres that I don’t tend to seek out, I was pretty excited to see a novel come up that was not just a Regency-set historical, but one with smugglers and spies and a heroine who runs around in breeches. Sign me up!
Alas, while The Smuggler Wore Silk wasn’t a bad book, it didn’t really thrill me. In fact, of all the books I’ve reviewed, it’s the one I’ve had most trouble bringing myself to reread. This may not be entirely the fault of the book. I’ve had a particularly exhausting couple of weeks at work, which have left me with less energy for reviewing, and, more importantly, I read fairly heavily within the Regency-smugglers-and-spies-and-women-in-breeches genre (a trifle specific, perhaps, but I devour it when I find it!), so I have a lot more basis for comparison than I do with contemporary, paranormal or inspirational romance. As a result, I am probably more inclined to be picky than when I read in genres where the tropes are less familiar to me.
Anyway, please bear all this in mind while reading and take this review with a grain of kindly and tolerant salt.
By day, Grace is the put-upon poor relative, who teaches the children, manages the household, and provides herbal remedies to the local villagers. But by night she is the leader of a band of smugglers! Hooray! Naturally, she leads them for entirely selfless and non-financial reasons and out of noblesse oblige and to protect them, which is lovely, though now I think about it, given how put-upon she is by her horrible uncle, why isn’t she taking a small percentage and putting it away for a rainy day? I’d be tempted to in her shoes. But then, I am not a Woman With A Past who is Lucky To Be Permitted To Live Here.
I’ll start with some good stuff. First up, I really did like Grace. She is intelligent and self-possessed, and I liked the fact that she was quite self-assured and confident even when put-upon. I enjoyed the way her character developed over the course of the novel, and it was highly satisfying to see her face down the people who had made her life so difficult.
The minor characters were also good fun. I thoroughly enjoyed Jack, the smuggler, who is apparently based on a real historical figure, and the awful uncle and his friend were suitably dreadful. One thing I really liked was Grace’s realisation that Michael, the man who had jilted and disgraced her, really was in love with the woman he had married. Caddish antagonists don’t usually get to have genuine emotions and happy relationships unless they redeem themselves first – I found it rather refreshing to learn that, nope, Michael was just a not very nice person, and he was married to a fairly mean-spirited woman and they were in love, and that was just how it was.
The quality of the writing was very good. There were some really fun lines – I especially liked Julian’s first sight of Grace: “How convenient to find Miss Hannah’s head in his oven.” While I found some of Julian’s lines in their banter rather sleazy, I did like the sensual scenes between Grace and Julian, which were beautifully and delicately written. The seductive stories and fantasies Julian made up for Grace were actually quite gorgeous, full of colour and scent.
I thought the spy/smuggler plot fitted together well, and the story definitely kept me turning pages. I was pleased to find that while I guessed one half of the mystery plot, the other half was totally unexpected, and yet made perfect sense in retrospect.
So far, so good. Now let’s talk about our hero.
Julian is the Earl of Langford, also known as the Wandering Earl (less appealing, but probably more solvent than a wandering minstrel), because he is never actually at his estate. He is rumoured to be living the high life all over Europe, but naturally this is a cover for the fact that he is a Secret Spy! Except that he is a lot less secret than he used to be because Some Traitorous Wretch revealed his identity to the French. Shocking! Julian is not happy about this, or about his forced retirement, and so he manages to wangle his way into being the person who goes down to the coast to investigate the smugglers who are supposedly involved in this disclosure – and who are conveniently located near his neglected estate.
(Can you guess who these smugglers are? I bet you can!)
Julian also has a Terrible Past with a Dark Secret. It’s quite legitimately awful, actually – when Julian was only eight, his father murdered his mother, and Julian was witness to both this and the preceding years of abuse and debauchery. (We get told about all of this early on, but Grace doesn’t get to find out for ages because it’s much more fun to brood and glower and get snappish for no obvious reason.) Unpleasant stuff, and it is entirely understandable that Julian should decide to run off and become the Wandering Spying Earl. It’s also understandable that he absolutely does not want to go home and do all the Earlish things that he is supposed to do, such as continue the family line, even though his father is now dead.
I started off with a lot of sympathy for Julian, but unfortunately, he wore my patience out very rapidly. He flirts with Grace in a decidedly sleazy fashion in order to get close to her and find out what she is hiding, and since he also can’t keep his hands off her, he manages to compromise her. He then offers her marriage, despite still thinking that she is probably a traitor, in which case, “Her reputation meant nothing. His offer of marriage would be rescinded.”
I honestly found that pretty disgusting. Especially as Grace initially refuses him and he then sends her this letter all about how much he admires and respects her. He really goes all out to convince her to marry him, and as far as I can discern this is purely so that he can have more opportunities to discover whether she is the traitor or not. Because he has also decided that if she is not a traitor, he will marry her, and then find a way to continue to be a spy. Even though ,“Spies made horrible husbands…. Travers men made even worse husbands…. The marriage would be a failure.”
He is pretty glum about this situation WHICH HE BROUGHT ENTIRELY ON HIMSELF. There is brooding. I am unimpressed – as far as I’m concerned, the tragedy is all Grace’s.
Things do improve. Julian and Grace manage to achieve several rational conversations. Julian even starts convincing cynical me that he likes Grace and that he might not be a complete waste of oxygen – though he really is incredibly secretive about just about everything in his personal life, while demanding absolute trust and honesty from Grace. Still, they seem to be building a friendship and a relationship and I begin to hope that a happy ever after is possible.
And then, all of a sudden, Julian learns that he might be able to go back to spying after all, and promptly goes into ‘abandon ship’ mode. (The ship being, of course, the relation-ship.) Because, “Marriage and children and family aren’t for me…. we both know that.”
We do indeed know this, Julian. It’s because you are too much of a git to be married to anyone.
And so it continues. You’ll be glad to know that he changes his mind by the end of the book.
One challenge when writing a romance novel is that if the hero and heroine belong together, there is a sort of gravitational pull between them. The story wants them to be together, and it’s really hard to resist this force and keep them apart for 100,000 words without either burying your hero and heroine in a mountain of plot and misunderstanding, or making one or both of them behave like idiots. To me, the part where Julian found out that he could return to spying after all felt like a desperate attempt by the author to wrench apart a hero and heroine who were getting too close to their happy ending too early. And, unfortunately, Ms Alexander was not able to pull this off in a way that didn’t show where the joins were.
The Smuggler Wore Silk – incidentally, I’m trying to remember if Grace ever gets to wear silk in this story, because I don’t think she does – was nominated for a RITA in the category of Best First Novel. I think it’s a well-deserved nomination. Despite my irritation with Julian, and the little structural issue above, there is some excellent writing in this book, as well as some good characterisation, and a well-thought out plot. In the end, while I didn’t put down the book at the end of the story with that happy sigh of certainty that hero and heroine would be blissfully happy together forever, I did feel that Grace and Julian would be happy together, given time. Similarly, while I felt that this story didn’t quite hit the mark, Ms Alexander’s writing definitely has potential. While I’m unlikely to read this book again, I’ll be keeping an eye out for her work in future.
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I found The Smuggler Wore Silk to be a great first novel! In my opinion, her second book, In Bed with a Spy is even better.
I don’t search out the Regency-smugglers-and-spies-and-women-in-breeches genre like you do, Catherine Heloise, so I enjoyed reading your review. I agree the secondary characters were a lot of fun. Liked how thing worked out in end despite Julian and his temporary slide into idiocy.
I hear you about the “Gravitational Pull”. Alas – it sounded promising, and may still be worth a read. Thank you for this review – definitely well researched (and maybe her breeches were silk?)
So what would you name as some great “lady in breeches” books? This one sounds meh, but I do like me some historical drag.
Catherine, if it is true as you say, and I have no reason to believe otherwise “I read fairly heavily within the Regency-smugglers-and-spies-and-women-in-breeches genre (a trifle specific, perhaps, but I devour it when I find it!), so I have a lot more basis for comparison than I do with contemporary, paranormal or inspirational romance. As a result, I am probably more inclined to be picky than when I read in genres where the tropes are less familiar to me.
Anyway, please bear all this in mind while reading and take this review with a grain of kindly and tolerant salt,” then if anything, I think reading widely within this trope gives you excellent reason to be picky in this sub-genre of the Regency romance.
In fact, you convinced me that your B- minus was quite possibly far more generous a grade than I would have given it because I don’t see how from what you said that Grace would ever have been drawn to Julian.
One of these days, I am going to get around to doing the research because I am fairly convinced that silk was not worn as frequently as present day authors of romance novels seem to think. In fact, it is a detail that is really beginning to annoy me, as both an historian and a fiber artist. Not to mention an avid reader. Any of us who have read extensively in the novels written in the nineteenth century will know that even ballgowns were not made of silk at this time.
I read a newsletter from Sabrina Jaffries recently where I was horrified to read Ms Jaffries write that she and other authors of her ilk are not writers of historical fiction but writers who place their characters in an historical setting. I’ve just spent thirty minutes going through my trashed email to get an exact quote from her July newsletter. Here it is. “Do romance authors exaggerate the extent to which women were promiscuous? Perhaps. But we’re not trying to write historical fiction. We’re writing romantic fantasies with a historical feel.”
So does this mean they don’t feel obligated to get the historical details correct? I guess i need to ask Ms. Jeffries.
In fact, I just did post a longish thing on Sabrina Jeffries FB page, if any wish to see it.
https://www.facebook.com/SabrinaJeffriesAuthor?fref=ts
I am wrong. They were wearing silk ballgowns in the Regency. I was thinking of the times I’ve read about Our Heroine and Our Hero getting it on midst the silk sheets and I know they did not have those in the Regency.
@Gloriamarie: I think it depends on the reader. Admittedly, I am not very knowledgeable when it comes to historical settings. If an author throws in some sort of food dish that didn’t show up in the time period until decades later, it’ll most likely slip right past me and I’d have no idea. However, Redheadedgirl would most likely catch it. I know that doesn’t quite answer the question whether authors have an obligation to get certain details correct, but some readers (myself included) may not even know the difference in details to begin with.
Amanda, I know it may slip by readers. Of course, it may. *****All***** the more reason why the author must DO The Research and get it right. And by that I mean using primary sources, not other Regency authors unless they use Georgette Heyer who did her own research as is obvious from her biographers.
And most emphatically NOT Barbara Cartland as a source!!! LOL