Ten Ways to Be Adored When Landing a Lord [Anglais] [Poche]

(With apologies to Ms MacLean because I truly enjoyed NINE RULES TO BREAK WHEN ROMANCING A RAKE.)

1. Make sure you are an old, cranky, jaded reader of HRs. This may be the very most important step to being bored here.

2. Do have just read a really superior HR immediately before this one.

3. Unconsciously compare the hero in TEN WAYS to the one in NINE RULES and find that you like twin Gabriel more than twin Nicolas. (Sigh. There's something about those really more rakish rakes...)

4. Find the characters to be somewhat bland and uninteresting. Note that you're not especially interested in or impressed by the H and h, in spite of being told repeatedly how very daring, intrepid, wonderful and handsome the hero is and how brave, resourceful, self-sacrificing and beautiful the heroine is.

5. Find it silly that the hero's sidekick is a Turk named Durukhan (nicknamed "Rock" for pete's sake) but he acts no different from any kind, strong and noble-of-spirit Englishman you have encountered in HRs. Couldn't there be something more exotic about him other than his strong, dark and tall look?

6. Consider the mini-newspaper PEARLS AND PELISSES here to be a pale imitation of Julia Quinn's LADY WHISTLEDOWN.

7. As you are reading, keep trying to see when something (anything at all, you may be desperate as the book progresses) will happen other than having the characters all hang around the Townsend estate, the hero evaluating the heroine's marble statue collection, the heroine trying to keep her refuge for women safe, and both lusting after each other. Note that the heroine almost falling off her roof during repair work may be the most exciting thing to happen in the whole book.

8. Find the sex scenes a bit silly because of the same-old same-old aspect of them and dialogue like this: "Never hide from me, beauty"; "All right, beauty. I am yours for the taking."; "Is this what you want, beauty?"; "I shall make it better, beauty."; "I am here, love...Look at me, Isabel."; "I shall catch you when you fall." (That's not off the roof; that's into the Big O.)

9. Discover that even though Sarah MacLean writes very nicely for the most part and did an excellent job in NINE RULES, what she wrote about this time did not appeal to you personally.

10. Repeat Way #1. You must be a pain-in-the-neck, old, jaded, cranky HR reader to be bored. If you are young and have read less HRs, you may be way more enthusiastic about TEN WAYS and may very well love it.

Set in 1823. After a popular ladies' magazine names Lord Nicholas St. John as one of "London's Lords to Land", Nick agrees to help the Duke of Leighton locate his runaway sister, Georgiana, who went north. Georgiana has a ten day head start and has covered her tracks well, but Nick specializes in tracking people. With his Turkish companion, Rock, by his side, Nick gladly leaves London behind. The hunt leads Nick to Yorkshire where he meets and becomes intrigued by an enigmatic female.

Being the daughter of a title wastrel, Lady Isabel Townsend is used to uncaring men. After her father's passing, Isabel continues to do what she has done for several years now: Care and protect those dwelling within Townsend Park, as well as her brother's birthright. Ten-year-old James is the new Earl of Reddich. Isabel knows that James needs a man to guide him, but no one is available. Their father certainly never cared about his heir and was never in Yorkshire. James also needs to go to school, but everything that had not been entailed to James is gone.

Townsend Park is also a secret sanctuary for ladies in need, fondly called the Minerva House. The house is filled with two dozen mouths to feed, all of which were females required to remain well hidden. In dire need of funds, Isabel decides to sell her collection of Grecian marble statues. Lord Nicholas St. John is a well known antiquarian, so when Isabel meets him in Dunscroft she is eager for him to view, value, and perhaps help sell her precious marbles. But Isabel must be wary. Should Nick learn her secrets, the Minerva House would be exposed and James's future could be ruined.

***** FIVE STARS! In a word, "WOW!" MacLean has a smooth, yet vivid, writing style that quickly caught and held my interest. Several intriguing characters, each with their own secret or two, caused my surroundings to blur. The real world seemed to fade away as I found myself pulled (unprotesting) into the lives of Nick and Isabel. No simpering miss here! This heroine does whatever needs to be done, including getting on the roof to fix leaks. Be prepared to spend several hours reading once you crack open this book. So order out, unplug all electrical devices, and lose yourself in this romance for an extended period of time. Highly recommended! *****

Reviewed by Detra Fitch of Huntress Reviews.

Recently Amazon suggested a Sarah MacLean book to me when I was browsing through Christina Dodd's offerings. I love Christina Dodd's historical romance and have been missing them now that she's seemingly switched to contemporary romance. I decided it was time to give a few new authors a chance.

I grabbed the last book in Ms. MacLean's Love by the Numbers series, Eleven Scandals to Start to Win a Duke's Heart. I instantly loved it. It was well written with what I've come to believe are accurate details for the period. The characters were engaging. The dialogue fresh. The story itself - snobbish aristocrat ultimately falling for the inappropriate woman - wasn't bad. Not my favorite but easy enough to read through thanks to the heroine's spirited personality. I especially loved how she had the habit of conjugating verbs in Latin when she was upset.

So impressed was I that I got the first book in the trio, Nine Rules to Break When Romancing a Rake. I was immediately drawn into this book because the heroine isn't a perfect beauty like Juliania in the third book. The story of a wallflower capturing the interest of a rake is always a good read. And so it was. The idea of a Victorian wallflower's bucket list was charming (not that its called this in the book). Any excuse to put a good girl in breaches during a period book, right?

However when I reached the middle book, Ten Ways to Be Adored When Landing a Lord, I realized that these three stories shared too many similarities for my taste. I do feel that I must point out that the first two books chronicle male twins and so it's understandable, perhaps, that they should go about things similarly. However the last book is about a family acquaintance - a Duke no less - who is at once a friend to one of the twins and an enemy to the other. Yet the similarities appear here as well.

The love scenes of these three follow much the same pattern. Since this is a review, I'll spare you the gory details, but after reading three back-to-back, I felt that the love scene portions of these three books were done with a formula. As if the author sighed when she arrived at them, looked at her schedule of what was to happen when and then plopped in the appropriate scene - tweaking as needed to accommodate the particular characters in that book. I'm sure that isn't what happened at all but it does begin to feel like that after reading them back to back.

Some of the dialogue in the love scenes in particular seems to be repeated. All three heroines have the initially charming habit of gasping out words in the heat of passion without finishing them, e.g. "I -" "Nick - " "I don't - " "Please - " But after three books of this, the charming habit becomes annoying. More than one of these males commands their women not to hide themselves from him. More than one crows his oral prowess with something akin to: If you liked that, you'll love this. There were other similarities here but I'm having trouble recalling them now because, as my other half enjoys saying: "I've slept since then."

The terms of endearment used in the three books were also similar. Callie's is "empress" - so named after her full name's namesake Calpurnia. Juliana's was "siren" because Simon is convinced she's bewitched him. And Isabel is "Voluptas" - the name of one of the marble statues she's brought Nick to value.

However at least once you can catch Nick referring to Isabel as a siren. The siren theme also appears in the first book with Callie and Gabriel. I could have sworn the term of endearment "beauty" was used in more than one book as well, but going back through I wasn't able to find it. Still, the fact that I considered it one tells you how disturbed I was by these similarities (probably because I struggle with much the same when writing but work to make sure it doesn't happen as obviously as has here).

All this stated, I know how bleeding hard it is to write this genre well - maintaining period dialogue that is somewhat believable across an entire novel, let alone three, is a massive task. This author does that well. Her stories and characters are also engaging. But in terms of becoming a new favorite author of mine, I don't think that will happen unless her upcoming book has none of the similarity problems these three had. And yes, I do intend to read it.