This is a debut novel from an author who has gotten a lot of buzz, thanks in part to her popular novella in a Christmas anthology. It’s the story of Jenny Keeble, a woman of uncertain and unhappy origins — she doesn’t know who her parents are, but someone sent her to a boarding school where she was treated badly — who has made a career for herself as Madame Esmerelda, a fortune teller, and Gareth Carhart, the humorless Marquess of Blakely. Jenny and Gareth are brought together by his young cousin, Ned, who suffers from what today we would call depression, and who has relied on Jenny’s predictions of his future happiness to get through dark times. Gareth, a man of science, hopes to discredit her. He agrees to allow her to try to prove herself, knowing she’ll fail. At the same time, he finds himself attracted to Jenny almost immediately.

I appreciated the uniqueness of this story, the romance across socio-economic positions, and the sensitive treatment of Ned’s mental illness. There were some very touching and funny scenes, like when Gareth tries to be “just one of the guys” for a moment with his man of business, or when he sings a song of his own creation in public. I also appreciated it very much that the author didn’t resolve the mystery of Jenny’s origins by making her a duchess or something equally convenient.

Overall, though, I didn’t enjoy this one as much as I hoped.

I think if I had to put it down to one thing, it would be that the book seems kind of permeated with a very modern psychology. Jenny and Gareth psychoanalyze themselves and each other with 21st century precision, and this had the effect of creating a kind of clinical distance for me as a reader from the characters and the action. In lit review speak, I guess it’s a variety of “telling not showing”.

For example, Jenny doesn’t have to figure out why she went into a life of deception as Madame Esmerelda: she tells the reader point blank that

She’d known since she was a very small child that she stood alone against the world. That had brought her to this career — the sure knowledge that nobody would help her, and everyone would lie to her. Lying to them instead had only seemed fair play.

And Gareth:

He’d left London eleven years ago because polite society nearly suffocated him. It was the rigor of scientific thought, the clarity of observation, the control he gained over the universe as his understanding bloomed, that kept some vital part of himself in motion since his return.

And later,

What had started as awkwardness and isolation had soon become superiority and a fierce reclusiveness.

Jenny says life coach things to Gareth like “You see, there is nothing on this earth so powerful as a lie that can come true.”

And Gareth, this cold scientific man, suddenly starts saying things like, “I need someone who can look at a man and move him to become more. I can’t do it alone.”

I was jarred at several points by specific things that didn’t work for me. For example, Jenny and Gareth butt heads on their first meeting. So why, when he shows up at night at her door, does she open it and allow him to mack on her? We are told that “something vitally feminine deep inside her chest insisted she stay” and then a few paragraphs later, we are reminded that, “everything warm and womanly in Jenny welled up” but it wasn’t enough for me to believe in her reaction, because the reader has been given no indication that Jenny finds Gareth attractive. Would she have responded that way if the local rat catcher or butcher showed up? (Also, as an aside, there is no “seduction” in this book. Gareth and Jenny have sex early and often. but I’ve long since stopped trying to use covers or titles to clue me in to anything.)

To take another example, Ned believes in Madame Esmerelda, a gypsy fortune teller, with the voluminous skirts and and scarves and incense. So why doesn’t he bat an eye when she attends a ball with him and Gareth, and knows exactly how to comport herself?

Gareth complains constantly that “the specter of his title robbed everything good and convivial from his life”. We are told that Gareth feels at odds with English society, but in scenes where he is in it, he seems totally at ease and in command. I guess he just didn’t gel for me as a character, having so many overlapping explanations for why he was the way he was: was it shyness? A hyper-rational mind? Childhood trauma? Rejection of the superficiality of English society? The burdens of wealth and privilege? I had a pretty hard time sympathizing with the last one, although luckily Jenny did too, saying at one point (way too late for my tastes) “Do listen to yourself, Gareth. Poor Gareth — forced to be a marquess.”

The writing wasn’t lovely enough to distract me from the things that didn’t work. For example this is the kind of line I personally felt did not do a service to the story: “Pleasure propagated down his stiff cock and out his groin.”

I will work myself up into something if I keep going, and then this review won’t reflect the fact that I did, overall, enjoy the book, mainly for the uniqueness of the story, so I’ll stop here and suggest you check out the following positive reviews:

All About Romance, B-

Azteclady at Karen Knows Best, 8 out of 10

Babbling About Books, B+

Book Pushers, 5 stars

Dear Author, B+

Mrs. Giggles, 83

Smexy Books, B+

Except for JMC, who had reservations.