I haven’t been in the mood for anything too “hard” right now. So just delved back into some Julie Garwood books. I still own the “Crown’s Spies” books in paperback. My mother bought them for me when I was a teen and I have been touting them from apartment to apartment, and finally my house. I don’t re-read this particularly series as I do some of her standalones though. I have to say that I thought that Garwood did a nice job of showcasing Christina’s past and her First Nation family. I will say though that this book was written in 1998 so there is some problematic language included in this book. And as some reviewers noted, others in the book are pretty racist about Christina’s family and many were upset she didn’t correct them. I also don’t know anything about the whole, cut your hair off thing after someone dies. That feels like something I saw in a movie once, but no idea if this is a thing or not. Also Lyon kind of sucks. I liked other heroes in this series much more than him. He and Christina only pop up in another book, but thankfully you don’t really deal with them again.
“The Lion’s Lady” follows Christina Bennett. She’s an American who has taken over as the young woman to meet during London’s newest season. Lyon, Marquis of Lyonwood ends up meeting her and finds himself attracted to her. Most of the book follows as Lyon tries to find out more about Christina and him deciding that he will marry her to keep her safe.
The character of Christina I really did enjoy. She was actually probably one of the smartest heroines that Garwood wrote I think next to some others I will discuss in later reviews. I actually loved the prologue in this book (and most other readers would agree) on how Christina came to be raised and what caused her to be sent back to England eventually.
As I already said, Lyon kind of got on my nerves. There’s a whole thing going on with what he “does for the government” that goes into more details in later books in the series. I think it never works for me when a character’s wife is fridged like his was and the reasoning behind it too. It just made me roll my eyes a bit.
The other characters in this one were memorable, Aunt Patricia is a garbage person.
The writing though in this one reminds me why it wasn’t my go to re-read over the years. It’s just bad in places. And the flow was awful in a lot of spots. I never really read the first book in a series and went on this is filler, but this one really is when you it compare it to books #2-4 in the series. There’s better flow and callbacks between those books/characters.
I also really didn’t enjoy the ending. I really wish that we could have had some sort of epilogue that includes Christina seeing her other family or something. It just stops very abruptly. At least it read that way to me.
I also read this for Cannonball Read 14 Book Bingo. This fits the following bingo circle:
- Series: A book that’s part of a series or, contains a series of essays, short stories, etc.; a book about a series of historical events.
- This book is book #1 in the Crown’s Spies series.