Towards the end of June Nart reviewed What I Did for a Duke by Julie Ann Long and I had an immediate urge to drop what I was doing and go find my nook so I could start a re-read. I don’t do a ton of re-reading but there was something about this story that has kept an urge to visit it again simmering in my brain. I had visceral memories of the way the characters spoke to each other being delicious, and the house party setting providing plenty of opportunities for the entire cast of characters to shine.
The party hosted by the Everseas becomes the place where Alex Moncrieffe, Duke of Falconbridge, has decided to enact revenge on Ian Eversea for taking Alex’s now former fiancée to bed by seducing and abandoning his youngest sister Genevieve, the only Eversea to have avoided scandal thus far. Genevieve is preoccupied with her own broken heart as the man she loves, Harry, has just announced to her that he is going to propose to their mutual friend Millicent. Everyone is (deliciously) on edge, including Ian being on hypervigilant watch for whatever the duke has planned, and Harry is putting off proposing and visibly upset about the attention Alex is paying to Genevieve. There is disquiet amongst Genevieve’s parents including the amount of gambling that is going on, her sister remains in many ways removed from the world and possible suitors, save her causes. Eventually Alex and Genevieve have a frank conversation about what is going on as Alex abandons his plans to ruin Genevieve, but that does not mean he does not still want to seduce her.
When I read this a few years ago, I boiled it down to being the story of two people coming to terms with the public versions of themselves while finding the places that those personae line up with their interior lives, and then finding (and deciding they have found) the match for who they really are, beneath the artifice. I still think this book is unpacking that idea, that who we purposefully show the world isn’t necessarily truthful, to a variety of degrees, but that our people will and can see through it and make themselves known to our truest selves. What I didn’t clock last time, or just did not write down since I was so swept up in Genevieve and Alex, is that all the characters are showing this to some degree in the book. I still loved the pace of this book, of the ludicrous made relatable, of the way the May-December dynamic is handled (he’s almost 40, she’s 21 if I’m remembering correctly) by neither having to act differently than their age just more themselves, and how sharp-tongued Long wrote her characters. This time I did notice the flaws though, of things that contradicted themselves within the text, of how long the love triangle (quadrangle? Is Millicent really part of this?) goes on, but it didn’t make me love it less, it made me fonder of that first read where none of it stood out to me and I devoured the book whole.
CBR Sweet 16 Book: Cozy. I am not a summer person and have been actively seeking out things that feel cozy and comforting to me and indulging in a re-read of a well-loved book is that.
Bingo Square: Horses. There is an ongoing joke throughout about horses and whores.