Customer Reviews

Daphne's Diary (Signet Regency Romance)

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"Daphne's Diary" has, I think, the distinction of being one of the worst books I've ever read. The heroine (Miss Daphne Hightower) is a melodramatic twit, and the hero (Lord Alexander Heathercott) is a silly fribble -- there was nothing redeeming or likable about either of these two characters -- while the main plot is one of the weakest I've ever come across. Truth to tell I found it hard to believe that the same novelist that wrote "An Unsuitable Match" & "An Inconvenient Wife" (two novels I really loved) also wrote this really trite piece.

Daphne was a starry eyed fifteen year old when she saw something nasty in the folly. Shaken (and terribly stirred), she decamps from her sister's house (she had, up until that point been living with her heavily pregnant sister, Sophia), and makes for her grandfather's home, firmly determined never to marry. Men, Daphne's decided, are all brutes and cads and have unspeakable lusts. The novel than moves ten years forward. Daphne is now twenty-five, and considers herself to be an intelligent and sensible young lady. But she still has two particular bees in her bonnet -- 1) that she was 'damaged' by her youthful experience, and 2) that all men, except her grandfather, are beasts. Now however, her beloved grandfather, whom she had always considered her rock, is making noises that she must get married. Daphne is aghast, but her grandfather seems adamant. Will she be able to sway him to her way of thinking?

And this is where our 'hero' enters the picture. The younger son of a duke, Lord Alexander Heathercott spends his time moving from conquest to conquest. And one day while he is in the park, and on the lookout for his next mistress, he spies Daphne with her dog, and falls promptly in love with this mysterious but aloof beauty, and that she will be his next conquest. (What a gem, this man is!) What follows then is rather predictable storyline that follows Lord Alexander's attempts to woo Daphne, and her attempts to freeze him out. Will Lord Alexander succeed in his plans to seduce Daphne? Will Daphne overcome her fears of men and their lusts and give in to the handsome and intriguing Lord Alexander? And what will happen when Lord Alexander finally realises that Daphne is not some young lady who lives on the fringes of society but is actually an heiress in her own right?

Do we even care? I certainly didn't. I just didn't take to either Daphne or Lord Alexander at all. Take Daphne for example. She saw something shocking. I understand that as a gently nurtured young girl, what she saw really distressed her. But what follows is high melodrama at it's worst. Suddenly she has to flee from Sophia's home before she's 'damaged' more. She departs without leaving a note for Sophia (remember that Sophia is about to give birth at any minute), and flees as if the hounds of hell are after her. Never a thought of how this disappearance would have affected Sophia, because Daphne feels that Sophia is at fault for not having protected her from such sights and knowledge! (And why Daphne's abigail and her grandfather keep indulging the nitwit in her tantrums also flabbergasted me.) Daphne is so bitter at Sophia that she refuses to write or see her for ten years! Talk about holding a grudge. And then there are her diary entries: for a 25 year old, these ramblings are really juvenile, and were written in a mock-gothic manner. At least I hope they were mock-gothic. That Patricia Oliver may have meant for Daphne's musings to be taken seriously is almost too much to bear. As for Lord Alexander, he's just the typical rakish hero I have very little time for -- the kind of [guy] who assumes that every woman not of his social class must be open for some kind of liaison. And his sudden ascent into likeability and responsibility, towards the end of the book, cut no ice with me.

"Daphne's Diary" also had several other minor plot thread involving Daphne's inheritance, the return of a dirty dish of an uncle, and Patricia Oliver's attempts to make Daphne more grown up and likable, and to justify Daphne's behavior towards Sophia. But none of these threads made me change my original opinion of the book or characters. My advice: if you must read it, find a library copy, and save your hard earned money for some other Regency novel.

Having read several quite cutting reviews and also the list here, I realized this book was panned badly. Finally I have been able to get a hold of it and found it to be far better than most of these reviewers have allowed.
Daphne is indeed a young woman who allowed a shocking experience to cloud her life for ten years. However I do not think this damns her as a believable or sympathetic heroine. I suspect this violent antipathy by critics to be more a case of modern sensibility being unable to cope with a revulsion for sex by a very young girl's experience. Maybe a trifle too strong, but understandable under Daphne's circumstances. For her grandfather leaves her to hide from it and so the problem is left to fester until first, she meets Lord Alexander and second, her grandfather finally realises his own mortality.
From then on, she is pushed and pulled into the real world and does indeed grow from her enforced private world that had no counter to the folly experience.
Oliver does this well, if a trifle fast. The diary plays a role here to reveal Daphne's progress. It also helps in her final resolution with Alexander.

I have no idea what has happened to Patricia Oliver. I had just re-read three of her older "Seven Corinthian" Regencies when this one hit the bookstores, and so the difference between her older work and this one was particularly striking. Daphne is a ninny, you get no sense of the individual personality of the "hero," no one's motivations make any sense AT ALL, and this book is just a mishmash. I honestly wondered several times if this really WAS written by Oliver at all!

I am submitting this review anonymously because I'm a coward and don't want to offend someone whose work I normally enjoy tremendously. I strongly suggest reading her older books instead.

I bought this book on the strength of my previous enjoyment of Oliver's Corinthian series and on the interesting premise of the "dear Diary" device. However - I'm surprised I bothered to finish it. I can't believe in a heroine who is such a twit, nor in her equally silly relatives - it's as if they didn't really ask her what happened to her at 15; in these day's of realism and with many other authors tackling difficult subjects, I would have found this plot a LOT more interesting and believable if anything bad had acutally happened TO Daphne, rather than her just witnessing something shocking to her upbringing and expectations. Plus Alexander is a real jerk with his search for "beautiful" women. I found I didn't care at all what happened to the two of them. I read this book to the end to find out what happened to the secondary characters (from previous Oliver books that I enjoyed).
Don't waste your time and money on this one.

It feels a bit like piling on, but I must concur with most of the other reviewers of this book. It is dreadful.
I don't care how sheltered a child Daphne was, her over-reaction to seeing her brother-in-law committing adultry was just way over the top. I re-read the first chapter twice trying to figure out if there were more to the story - if for example, he had accosted her - but there is no indication of that. So the starting premise is utterly unbelievable to me. Nevertheless I pressed on, to encounter a hero who is one of the shallowest creatures in the world. The characters are inconsistant in their attitudes and behaviors, tedious in their opinions, and all together make for a very discouraging read. I kept hoping the story would take a turn for the better, but it never did.

The heroine is a twenty-five-year-old spinster who is still traumatized ten years after seeing her wastrel brother-in-law commit adultery. Now if it had been SHE who had been the recipient of his adulterous attentions, I could understand how the experience might have warped her emotionally to such an extent that she would refuse to marry. But only a silly ninny would react in such a dramatic way TEN YEARS LATER to what she saw that day in the folly. You can almost hear the organ play whenever she refers to "the Secret" (note the capital S) that she fears will turn any potential husband against her.

The hero isn't credible either, being a rake and a libertine with the reputation of going after only the most beautiful women. After determining that Daphne is the most beautiful woman in existence--and that her background is somewhat doubtful--he determines to make her his mistress. It is only when his father--at the request of her dying grandfather--insists that he marry her that he even begins to consider the possibility of marriage to anyone, and then suddenly, he is in love and excited about having a family.

Why the hero's father--a duke--would comply with the grandfather's request to the extent that he would order his son to marry a girl with a murky background is another problem that is not adequately explained. The multitude of pregnancies and impending births at the end is rather overdone; I'd much rather see more development of the hero and heroine's relationship at that point.

Except for the references to characters in Ms. Oliver's other books, I would not have believed that this one was written by the same person. Could this be a case of identify theft?

And then there are the errors in referring to the titles of various noble characters, but one sees those in many of these novels.

But by far the biggest problem is that the most interesting character in this silly Regency is the diary!

I have to concur with the other reviews on this book. Daphne was a completely ninny, not at all up to the usual par of an Oliver heroine. I was vastly disappointed to see the story of Richard and Regina's brother, when their own stories had been so entertaining, be so bland and frankly stupid.

The only part I really enjoyed was the competition between the expectant mothers, especially Regina.

When I saw Patricia Oliver had a new book coming out I couldn't wait to read it but this one is not up to her usual standards. As much as I hate to say it, this is one of the worst books I have read this year. It was a huge disappointment

Overall, this is a pretty average Regency. I liked the characters and the setting, though Alex is pretty shallow and Daphne a bit hysterical. I just have one question: What Happened in the Folly? It reminds me of the book and movie Cold Comfort Farm, where the grandmother says over and over again "I saw something nasty in the woodshed" and no one knows what she is talking about. I hate loose ends like that. This is an entertaining book even so.

I have to concur with the other reviews here. This is one of the worst books I've read in a long time. From some writers I would expect to read something as bad as this; when it's from a writer of the (one-time) calibre of Patricia Oliver, it's immensely disappointing. What makes it even worse for me is that this book is linked to her Seven Corinthians series; Alex Hethercott, the hero, is one of the brothers of Robert, Marquess of Gresham, of Lord Gresham's Lady, and characters from at least two previous books appear in this.

Daphne is quite the most silly and childish heroine it's ever been my misfortune to encounter. She's twenty-five, and yet still lives in a childish fantasy world in which the real world doesn't exist. She believes that all men are monsters simply aiming to destroy her. Yet, if she believes that, why even get to know Lord Alex?

The plot did nothing for me, but it wasn't even redeemed by sympathetic characters. Most of the book is written from Daphne's point of view, and we get to see her entries in the eponymous diary. However, that only confirms in my mind how unsympathetic a character Daphne is; throughout the book, I wanted to tell her to grow up and stop being so self-indulgent.

And what happened to Oliver's lovely writing style? This book is full of what can only be described as purple prose. Furthermore, I was amazed to see several grammatical errors creeping in; could it be that Oliver has a new editor who simply isn't as diligent as his/her predecessor?

I simply can't recommend that anyone buy this book. If you really want to catch up with other members of the Hethercott family, borrow it, as I did. You won't want to re-read it - for me, it was all I could do to finish it.