I've just finished the second novel in Lauren Willig's "Pink Carnation" series. This is a series of books set in the late 1700's - early 1800's (during the Napoleonic war) in various European countries (namely England and France). There are actually two distinct story lines throughout the book; one is in the aforementioned era, and the second is current day. The more modern story's star heroine is Eloise Kelly, an American grad student who is in England doing research for her dissertation on espionage during the Napoleonic wars. She's primarily interested in the Pink Carnation (and discovers that the Pink Carnation was actually a woman!) and comes in contact with an elderly woman who is a descendant of the Purple Gentian (yet another flowery-named spy). Mrs. Aderly allows Eloise access to personal documents regarding her family history and Eloise's topic of interest. It's also very convenient that Mrs. Aderly's grandson who is in charge of these historical documents happens to be a good-looking intelligent guy named Colin. Never a bad thing, right?!
As Eloise is pouring over the old correspondence and journals of Colin's ancestors, she becomes totally immersed in the story of Miles Dorrington and Henrietta Selwick. Henrietta is the younger sister of Richard Selwick, otherwise known as the Purple Gentian, and Miles is Richard's best friend since their childhood. In the last book, "The Secret History of the Pink Carnation," Richard and Amy (his now wife) were the main subjects of the story, but this one picks up where the last book left off, and shifts it's focus from them to Miles and Henrietta.
We learn in this book, that the Black Tulip, a notorious and dangerous French operative is in London! With Richard and Amy out of the picture (read the previous book) the English War Office recruits Miles to help discover the identity of the renown spy and capture him. Henrietta is an adventurous and precocious (not to mention verbose) seventeen-year-old debutante who is dead set on being a spy and contributing to the war effort. All this while Jane Wooliston, the Pink Carnation and Henrietta's cousin, is in France attempting to sabotage the French operations and asks Hen to act as her eyes and ears on the English front. The two women write copious amounts of letters to one another in a specific code designed to bore anyone who might happen upon it to tears whilst still imparting important information. They use terms like "Coffee, the taking of" which REALLY means "a situation of extreme peril, frequently requiring urgent assistance." Pretty clever if you ask me. On a more personal note, Richard asks Miles to keep an eye out for Hen as he is no longer available to play the protective big brother. As you can guess, just as in the last book, the two main characters end up falling in love. Didn't see that one coming, right?
Overall this book is a fun, very entertaining, and adventurous read. Ms. Willig does a great job of researching the time period and goes so far as to correct any inaccuracies she made in the name of artistic license in the back of the book. I love how easy it is to really picture yourself in the time period that the story takes place. The author has created a colorful cast of characters who are easy to relate to along with an espionage story line that keeps you guessing. She transitions nicely between the modern and historical story lines and does a great job of creating necessary tensions without causing the reader stress. It was a good, quick read for me with AWESOME vocab. (If you hadn't noticed by now, I'm a HUGE fan of parenthetical phrases and authors with impressive and creative vocabularies.)
I do have to say that this is MOSTLY a chick-lit, historical fiction novel, but it can easily be construed as a historical romance as well. Yes, most bubblegum reading has a strong love story contained between the covers, I do realize that, but not all of them have a fairly detailed "bodice-ripping scene" or two among the pages. Definitely a PG-13+ scene or two in here. In defense of the scene-in-question, (and keep in mind that this was characteristic of the time period) **mild spoiler alert** the lovers didn't love until after their wedding.**end of possible spoiler** However, there might have been a "flash of brief nudity" nestled in the "dating" stage of the relationship. Yes, I may be old fashioned, I may use too many "quotes," and I may like some romantic elements in my "pink" books, but I'm really not a big fan of detailed love scenes. There, you've been warned.....
Happy reading!
The Masque of the Black Tulip (Pink Carnation)
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