Customer Reviews

A Gift of Violets (Candlelight Regency #216)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Cinderella and Beauty and the Beast all rolled up into one story. But this is no fairytale life for our lovely Viola Marchmont. What a sweet, loving heroine. She prays for the scarred Giorgio Michieli who was somehow betrayed by her father during a diplomatic mission years earlier. Giorgio comes to her father who is on his second tour as ambassador in Italy, and demands 100,000 pounds and marriage to one of Sir Anthony's three daughters to atone for the betrayal.

So Giorgio becomes part of their life as he courts the young ladies. Viola, the youngest at 17, is not yet out. She is more of a household drudge catering to her two lovely and pampered older sisters! Yet, she is the first to have greeted Giorgio and her loving attitude towards him seems catch his attention. We get to see them interact on many occasions before he tells Sir Anthony which daughter he wants to marry. Eleanor and Bernice are appalled at a possible marriage to the penniless and horribly scarred Giorgio, so it is a great relief to them when he selects Viola.

The sisters actually become jealous upon the realization that Giorgio is quite wealthy and showers Viola with jewelry, beautiful clothes and a lovely hilltop mansion. But Viola feels she is living a lie since Giorgio has married her only for revenge and has not made her his true wife. She harbors deep love and affection for him but the closer she draws towards him, the further away he withdraws! He has not loved anyone since her father's betrayal caused the death of all in his family (parents and young sister).

You will be entranced by the descriptions of Italy. Since I have rarely read a Regency locale outside of England or perhaps Vienna, it was very interesting. Plus, there is a mystery to solve and Viola's life is endangered by the intrigue surrounding Giorgio. Can he learn to love again? And what of her rather obnoxious sisters? Other side characters, Viola's maid and other assorted friends are well fleshed out and a pleasure to meet.

As always, enjoyable reading from this author who also writes as Janet Louise Roberts and Rebecca Danton.

This book has already been nicely summarized by the other reviewers. My only contribution is to say that this is a sweet, feel good novel that is often read and re-read at my house. It's a fairy tale for grown ups. The novel is short enough for a quick lift in the spirits but long enough to do a good job telling the story. Radcliffe's other novel, Lord Stephen's Lady, also fall's into my "read often" category for the same reason. Sometimes a person just needs a story that can be counted on to make the world go away for a few hours.

The other reviewer did a very good job on describing the plot so I need not repeat it here. Except, I would like to add that this story also heavily ladened with generation of hate and revenge between two Italian families in two cities; Accusation of betrayal and some espionage for the Napoleon. So this was a mixture of love and war.

I liked the heroine, Viola's transformation from a sweet girl, not yet out, turned into a brave and loving wife. She turned out to be a strong character, really an asset to her husband. Other characters were also likable or believable.

What didn't work for me was the style of writing. It was too simply written--the words were not descriptive enough; the tone of story was as if it was a translated version of a foreign story (or American tried to imitate a foreign tongue), it was rather jerky and not flowing--The whole time I felt I was reading a "Young Adult" version of fairy tale.

Another thing did not quite agree with me was the book cover: The female looked too old and cold for our heroine--in fact, she reminded me of Agnes Moorhead, and he of Clint Eastwood, believe it or not.