It’s done – the final book in the Pennyroyal Green series. The epic of Olivia Eversea and Lyon Redmond, and the love that will mend a rift between families that is nearly a thousand years old.
Plot: Lyon was suffocating under his father’s expectations, but because those expectations have been part of his life since birth, he thought first about what he was supposed to do and only second of himself. In other words, he didn’t really examine what he wanted out of life, what he valued most, and what he would do to uphold those values. And then he got hit with a big dose of insta-love the minute he set eyes on Olivia Eversea across a crowded ballroom and his brain got rewired. Lucky for him, whatever broke in his head also broke in hers, and they were instantly and passionately in love. But our Romeo and Juliet are from warring families, and the conflict created tension that drove Lyon underground and Olivia into a 5 year mourning period. And now she’s engaged to another guy, and Lyon is forced back to get some much needed closure. Shenanigans ensue.
Olivia is generally speaking precisely the sort of heroine I adore. She’s a huge bitch with a massive chip on her shoulder about stuff most people find boring, like slavery. Tommy, the heroine of a couple books ago, actually took her down several pegs by pointing out that she’s just like every other hand-wringing gently-bred lady who talks a good game but doesn’t actually do anything about the problems she sees and here we see this play out in real time. Olivia is less unique than she thinks she is, certainly. She has a lot of thoughts and spends much time in introspection, but she is at her core a coward who lacks the imagination to act on her convictions. This does not make her a bad person, just a product of her time and circumstances. Indeed, the entirety of her arc in this story can be described as – Olivia finds a spine. It’s a good arc, especially coming off of Elise, who is perfection personified from minute one.
Lyon too has a lot to learn, but given that he’s the only one with a spine for 95% of the book, he’s also the driver of the plot, and this is where things get a little dicey. He’s apparently been keeping tabs on the family, and certainly enough to know that Olivia has been turning away suiters for five years, but not enough to wonder if she regretted their last conversation? He got rid of the picture of her he carried for more than four of those years, but we never find out what led to that decision, or why he still wanted to go see her when she did get engaged (after the picture made its way back to her)? Also, Lyon is described as a planner, but based on this book it’s far more accurate to call him a drama king. Having read the entirety of the book, I still can’t say I understand his motivations for pretty much anything he did or why he did it when there were tons of opportunities and a thousand easier, simpler, less bonkers ways of achieving the same means. A planner knows that the more moving parts there are to a plan the more opportunities for failure. If it’s simpler than any of the Mission Impossible or Ocean’s movies, Lyon’s not interested. Also, big man was super ready to let the girl of his dreams marry another dude, possibly carrying his child, because the one thing he did not plan for was pregnancy prevention, and the obvious solution of just not coming inside a fertile woman did not appear to register.
Then there’s the epilogue. It’s set in 2015 and is basically just two strangers listing the companies the various people and their descendants created (which are all of course unbelievably successful), and the rockstars in the family, and how many kids everyone had, and who was whose kid or grand-kid or whatever. Just, the most boring parts of these people’s lives recounted in passing over a very, very long epilogue. Turns out Olivia never got to make a difference, even once she got that spine. The conflict between the Everseas and the Redfords never got explained nor did it get properly resolved. Baffling and skippable.
I think this book was immensely well positioned as the final book, as well. Because so much of what happened between them was rooted in Olivia’s fear of the unknown, her inability to see a future for herself beyond what was prescribed, having her story be the last one was necessary. Not only did the reader get closure for for epic story that we’ve been getting teased with bits of over a dozen books, but Long makes it clear that Olivia would not have been able to make the right choice sooner. Her newfound courage did not come from age, or the pain of having lost Lyon once, or her desire to pursue a different life. Rather it came from the Everseas and Redmonds who, over the five years that she withered away, found love in unexpected places, with improper matches, braved censure and poverty and the loss of their families, and have found joy in living a life unlike the one they were on a path for. It is, in a way, what I think people mean when they say that representation matters. It isn’t that things are impossible, but for the vast majority of people, an unmoored imagination will simply not extend beyond what is easily available. To pursue a path, we must first know it exists, and for most of us, we must also know that it is traversable.
This book is a love letter to love stories. It is a reminder that to love boldly is not only a gift of joy to yourself, but a gift of courage to everyone around you.
On the whole, I still think it’s one of the best, most consistent series in romance, in large part thanks to Long’s compassionately rendered characters and razor sharp wit. Some of them, I will absolutely be returning to over and over.