Customer Reviews

It Happened One Autumn (The Wallflowers, Book 2)

5 star:		(81)
4 star:		(33)
3 star:		(13)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

"It Happened One Autumn" is the second installment in Lisa Kleypas's "Wallflower" series which features as heroines four friends from Victorian England who band together in their search for eligible husbands. The heroine of "It Happened One Autumn" is the brash American heiress Lillian Bowman. Along with her younger sister Daisy and under the watchful eye of her social-climbing mother, Lillian has come to England in the hope of marrying into the British aristocracy. In the first book in the series ("Secrets of a Summer Night") Lillian clashed memorably with Lord Westcliff, a stuffy, autocratic member of the British peerage. In this book, Lillian and Westcliff are front and center in the story and their head-on collision and oil-and-water chemistry is a delight to behold.

Lillian is an excellent heroine--high-spirited, willful, bold, outspoken, uncomfortably direct and a bit cynical; she is a wealthy heiress by virtue of her father's business interests, but readily admits the fact that her grandmother was a dock washerwoman. Lillian is the antithesis of the demure, well-bred bride that Westcliff has always intended to choose as his countess. Westcliff, the survivor of a harsh childhood with a brutal, unloving father who groomed him to always do his duty to the earldom, is an unfailing honorable man but a bit of a prig. Westcliff has spent his life invariably doing the correct and proper thing and is appalled to find himself attracted to the American hoyden. The clashes between these two strong-willed people are tremendously entertaining, particularly watching the arrogant Westcliff completely lose his famously cool head when Lillian dares to defy him.

The plot of the story moves along very well with Lillian and Westcliff initially attempting to deny then to come to terms with their unexpected (well, to them anyways) attraction to each other and then gradually discovering the deeper facets of each other's personality. Realizing that despite their mutual attraction, Westcliff considers her the precisely wrong woman to take as his wife, Lillian begins a flirtation with the fabulously handsome and rakish Sebastian, Lord St. Vincent. Although Sebastian is obviously being set up as the hero for the next book in the series, he is far more than wallpaper in this story. His character is well-developed and he actually plays a pivotal (although rather illogical and far-fetched if one wants to quibble) role in the denouement.

In summary, this is a very entertaining and well-written installment in the "Wallflower" series featuring an unusually vibrant and interesting heroine and a complex, attractive hero. The secondary characters, the Wallflowers and Westcliff's friends and family, are well-developed and the story has a lot of sparkle. The sex scenes are smoking hot but in no way overwhelm the story.
Highly recommended.

Kleypas does it again! She dependably turns out books that deliver just the right amount of passion and drama drawn together by an excellent writing style that keeps me riveted.

Lillian Bowman, featured in the Secrets of a Summer Night, is a fiesty American heiress and having been gilted by the New York upper class is dragged to England by her social climbing Momma in order to marry into aristocracy. However as much as she tries to be refined and proper she is still retains the low brow mouth of her grandmother and can swear with the best sailors.

Marcus Marsden, the Earl of Westcliff, is a supporting character in at least two other Kleypas books. He has lived his life to a strict English code of propriety. Not living as a monk mind you but always descreet. He has single-handledly pulled his family from financial ruin by breaking with traditonal aristocracy and aligning himself with some powerful self made men (other Kleypas heroes), not of the arisotocracy, who are as business savvy as he is.

If you read Secrets of a Summer Night you remember that the animosity between Lillian and Marcus is as immediate as it is fierce. But if resistance is the measure of desire...they desire each other fiercely. Despite Marcus best intentions he can't resist the pull of someone so free, so wild, so unlike himself. Lillian on the other hand is complete flummoxed by someone she believed she had figured out. She is completely suprised by how undone and passionate the paragon of English virtue is becoming.

I liked Lillian because she is completely rich character. She is vibrantly full of life. And Marcus...sigh...Kleypas definitely has this fella right.

The only thing I want to know is where I can get some of that perfume?

i admit it. i'm a big fan of lisa kleypas' writing style. that said, i don't like all of her books. SECRETS OF A SUMMER NIGHT (first book in the series) was a disappointment. however, the character of lillian bowman shined in that book and i was eager to find out what would happen to the evident intense emotion that existed between her and marcus marsden, earl of westcliff. luckily, i was not disappointed!

lillian is an american heiress whose family is looking to get her hitched to a member of british nobility with the hopes of giving them respectibility within the rich set. needless to say, she is not the retiring, coy, well-mannered and quiet british miss prevalent in london society. she is opinionated, athletic, brash, willful, and strong. and she's proud of it. marcus is just as willful, but add to that a level of arrogance afforded him because of his social position, and a belief he is never wrong. he is proud of the fact that he has never allowed his feelings to dictate his actions and sees those who do as weak and perplexing. he thinks lillian is too loud, too opinionated, too head-strong and too uncouth. ultimately, he also finds her to be too irresistable.

kleypas is gifted in a number of ways, but what i really like about her writing style is her keen ability to create heroes who are both vulnerable and strong. marcus, the guy who tells his friends that sex with his wife should only be once a week or its glutonous, is suddenly incapable of keeping his hands off of lillian. it was wonderful watching him fight his feelings before totally losing control over them. he knows lillian is wrong for him in all of the ways that count in their society, but he can't seem to help himself.

the intensity found in the intimate moments between lillian and marcus is heightened as the reader watches marcus lose the internal war over his feelings for lillian. we see him transform from a cold, aloof, controlled, and pompous aristrocrat to a warm-blooded, passionate, sensual, impulsive and caring man over the course of this book and let me tell you, the change is amazing.

lillian also changes over the course of the book. she softens a little as she realizes she's vulnerable to love, but she retains all of her wonderfully outlandish qualities from beginning to end. she doesn't transform into the typical british miss. this is great because marcus grows to appreciate lillian's qualities.

the plot itself was little more than marcus and lillian battling against each other as they begin to fall in love. it occurs over the course of a month during a house party on marcus' estate. there is a surprising plot twist towards the end, which proves to be very effective in setting up the hero for the next book in the series.

the chemistry between the hero and heroine was wonderful, as they throw barbs towards each other that had me laughing out loud. they were both strong characters with wit, which is always appealing. their love scenes were also very sensual, although not as daring as kleypas' other books, most notably "where dreams begin" and "then came you". they were still well done and satisfying.

so if you like a hero who is strong yet unable to control his emotions in the face of true love, sexual tension that is electric, witty banter, and a hero and heroine who are strong in all areas, yet vulnerable to love, this is the book for you.

I HIGHLY recommend it!

I know it has been said before about many other authors...but Lisa Kleypas has done it again! I couldn't put it down. I didn't want to put it down. If anyone had tried to make me I would have had to deck them!

Wow, I am completely blown away and one hundred percent impressed with the latest in her wallflowers series. How could we not love Lillian Bowman, the daring, fly-by-the-seat-of-her-pants American heiress? Her intro in Annabelle's story, Secrets of a Summer Night (book # 1), more than assured us that we would be getting an enthralling heroine in which to laugh along with, cheer on and delight in. Her first meeting with Marcus, Lord Westcliff, was priceless in the first installment (Remember the game of rounders played in their knickers?) and Kleypas starts this book with a bang as well, with another game of rounders no less. Yes, Marcus is more than an observer this time, but read for yourself to see how that turns out! It's pulse-pounding! It's steamy! It's - you get the idea.

Lillian is an original, completely individual young woman, seeking, as all young ladies of good standing did at the time, a suitable husband with which to settle down. She knows that her vulgar American tendancies will do her no favors in that arena so she is depending on her massive fortune to attract the right sort of man - a titled one of course. The book takes place almost entirely on Marcus's country estate, where, the confused lord is not quite sure why he's invited the irritating miss. Despite the possibility of business with her father, he'd much rather not have anything to do with her. Fortunately for him, Lillian is of the same mindset. Is it possible, though, that something could possibly change Marcus's mind? Could this confounding tom boy-ish young lady possibly have something to offer him? He'd like to think not, but circumstances seem to prove otherwise...

I found myself laughing in utter glee before I'd even hit the first chapter, the prologue itself being thoroughly amusing. I couldn't wait for Lillian and Marcus to go head to head. I couldn't wait to see her knock him down a peg or two. Marcus comes off as a complete and utter snob in the beginning, while Lillian is exactly as we saw her in the first book: opinionated, stubborn and a true friend to those she cares about. Marcus, thankfully does get his comeuppance and makes a turn for the better. Thank goodness too, because it would have been such a waste for such a fine speciman of a romance hero to continue with the uppity path he was on in the beginning.

Never have I encountered two characters that made me feel so satisfied the whole book through. We get a revisit from Annabelle and Simon Hunt, both incorporated into the story very well and don't take away from Lillian and Marcus's situation at all. It was a complete delight, too, to have so much dialog from Lillian's sister Daisy and their friend Evie (Evie's story is next, entitled Devil in Winter - I wish I was starting it tonight!!). Both promise to be great heroines in their own right. I couldn't have been any happier with this book, wouldn't change a thing and will most likely reread it for many years to come. I truly hope Lisa Kleypas continues to produce such marvelous romances.

This book was a really fun read. Although not literature, it borrows heavily from Jane Austin's Pride and Prejudice storyline. The refreshing thing about is that her characters actually do have clever things to say; unlike most romance novels where everyone is talking about how clever they are when in reality they are boring paste. And I am sick to death of "spirited" heroines who are just bitchy. And I am tired of men who are "amused" and raise an eyebrow instead of having anything decent to say. I liked how Lillian really did seem to have a lot of spunk. The friendships, particularly between the ladies, felt genuine. Kleypas pays a lot of attention to historical detail and is one of the few romance novelists to get those details correct. All in all, very entertaining.

The Wallflowers series is turning out to be one of my favorites - and 'It Happened One Autumn' was a thorough delight.

The perfume was an excellent opening gambit, a very original twist on an old idea - and I loved the way that Kleypas carried through the theme of scent over the course of the novel.

I adored Lillian, although I definitely have my own very biased reasons for favoring mouthy, headstrong heroines. And I thought that Kleypas paced the book in the most excellent way - Lillian and Marcus fight a lot, and those fights are pretty damn sexy, but right from the beginning Kleypas writes in the most lovely, tender moments between the two - it's clear over the course of the novel that they're growing to understand one another and respect one another, to have fun together. More than in a lot of romances, I came to believe that these were two people who could have a long and happy marriage together.

I happened to really enjoy Marcus - he is exactly as described, an extraordinarily talented man who can be overbearing and arrogant. I think his flaws make him more rather than less appealing & Kleypas does a respectable job here of making a solid connection between his love for sports and his exceedingly well developed physique (a lot of romance heroes, I have noticed, really don't have the kind of devotion to exercise necessary to develop the kind of bodies they're supposedly blessed with...).

This is a series not to read out of order, and I'm glad. I like that Kleypas has continued developing characters from earlier books in the series - Annabelle and Olivia, Simon Hunt & Shaw - and does a lot of work fleshing out characters who will have their own books later.

I really cannot wait for the next installment...

I'm sure you know the plot by now, so let me reassure you of one thing. It's not just a re-telling of Taming of the Shrew as so many of this formula are. It's never annoying or and you can tell Lisa put work and effort into it, it isn't just churned out to meet a deadline.
Lisa is continuing to infuse her books with such different character and mood and tone. Despite how 'headstrong' each character is championed to be, each is a very human creation and both showed softness every now and then. Usually a story where the hero is 'tamed' by a spunky heroine, the heroine is too damn spunky to the point of being annoying and she never connects with you. But with Lillian, Lisa shows her as having strong doubts and insecurities - the hurt she feels when she believes Marcus is only attracted to the perfume and not her quite touches a nerve to any girl who might have thought at one time that she's not quite good enough. Marcus shows his vulnerable side quite early on so for anyone who hasn't encountered his cameos in other Kleypas books might wonder where all this alleged cold-heartedness and stiff-upper-lipness is, but I assure them that if you see his personality in those he is quite changed in this and it's such a lovely character arc to read.
So let's get to the reason why we're here - the romance! One of my favourite things about Lisa Kleypas is that she makes sex scenes quite smoky and sexy without being crude. She even invests the personalities of the characters into the scenes so it's quite personal, emotional and hot and it never seems like you're just reading some base, boring interaction with no passion. I've read hotter sex scenes that she's written, but the ones between Lillian and Marcus (let's just say, it's always the quiet ones!) are just perfect for the tone of this book, which is admittedly lighter than I thought it might be.
The dialogue is incredibly witty, Lisa is getting better and better when it comes to this. The exchanges between main and supporting characters are very snappy and quick-witted and more than once, mirth bubbled up from my throat - probably the first time in reading a historical romance! Marcus' most 'gracious' apology and the quite unexpectedly large comedic ability of Daisy provided ample giggles.
Group interactions between the four Wallflowers were incredibly clever and fun to read without descending to the low point of four flighty, giggling twits. Also lovely was to read about the men (all heroes past and present and upcoming) getting together for an entertaining manly chat about the one thing a group of men get together to chat about.
I awarded it four stars merely in comparison to the ones I adore as my favourites. Not quite there, but oh, it was so damn close!

Lisa Kleypas is one of the few authors in which I eagerly watch for her new release dates. After reading and loving the first Wallflower book ("Secrets of a Summer Night") I was especially excited for Lillian's story, which I thought Kleypas set up nicely in the first book. With such high expectations, I figured I was bound to be a little disappointed, but instead I discovered what I think to be Kleypas' best.

Lillian and Marcus were by far my favorite protagonists. Lillian in particular was a refreshing delight. I enjoyed being introduced to her in Secrets of a Summer Night, and she didn't let me down in this story. She is spirited and outspoken, but not so much that she got on my nerves like many other "spunky" heroines. I could totally see how Marcus would be intrigued by her indvidiuality. Marcus himself was also a wonderful hero. He was more multi-dimensional than the typical "reformed rake" hero. I just loved how he would go from arguing and wanting to strangle her to being so sweet and caring.

I almost never find myself outwardly amused by books, but several times throughout this one I found myself smiling while reading, and I actually laughed out at a couple of scenes.

My only complaint would be that the ending didn't seem to fit with the rest of the book. It was interesting enough, but I thought that the author was focusing more on setting up the next Wallflower hero than she was finishing up with Lillian and Marcus' story.

Still, this is definetly my favorite so far (and I am a HUGE fan of her other books), mostly because I thought Lillian and Marcus were great as individuals, and perfectly suited for one another.

I LOVE this book. I love it. I love and love and love it. I've read almost all Lisa Kleypas, and while I enjoyed most of them, there seemed to be something a little (hmmm what's the word) stilted about the stories. I admire Kleypas because her books stray from the aristocratic ball-and-forbidden-garden-meeting format observed so often in other books. But, so many of her heros are very similar (huge, rich, scarred industrialists) that I sometimes forget which book is which. With this book, I think Kleypas really hit a different, lighter, easier stride. The characters are less tortured and there's noticably less angst throughout the story.

The real reason I loved this book was because of the main characters: Lilian and Westcliff. Lillian was that most rare of heroines: independent and sassy but NOT ANNOYING! She has her stubborn times, true, but there have been so many heroines I want to beat over the head with their gilded hairbrushes for their sheer stupidity that Lillian was positively delightful with her fresh, deeply human character.

But it was Westcliff whom I absolutely, unreservedly fell in love with. In the end, I knew why Lillian loved him. I knew why she fell for him, unlike in many novels where the heroine is bullied, humiliated, and then - rather inexplicably - loves her tormentor. Here Westcliff is a stuffy artistocratic, though deeply kind and an honest-to-God decent human being. Not to mention YUMMY.

Also, the detail of the story are fantastic. The dinner scene with the disgusting English "delicacies" (slippery, juicy calf eyeballs) are described in all their horrid glory. The idea of the country house party is explored and researched. As in most Kleypas novels, class distinctions are plainly displayed. "Society" is shown as frankly shallow, snobbish, and petty, leaving warm-hearted individuals a rare species. Though the details are amazing, the story still happily centers on Lillian and Westcliff's romance with frequent reference to the other Wallflowers.

I took off one star because of the last big plot twist. It was just a little too perposterous for me to be happy with. The outcome for our dear hero and heroine was already decided and the extra drama seemed to be just that: extra drama. Oh, and the whole perfume sub-plot was a bit of a stretch. But, other than those small details, the story was good, the characters were great, and it was a wonderful book.

This book is Kleypas in top form, which doesn't get any better. Marcus, the aloof and intriguing Earl of Westcliff, who has appeared in numerous prior books by this author, finally gets his own love story. His object of interest is the seemingly incompatible Lillian Bowman, an opinionated, spirited, and strong-willed American heiress who is not too fond of the self-important Earl. Marcus believes she would make a most unsuitable countess for him, and yet he cannot leave her alone.

There are definitely shades of Pride and Prejudice here. Lillian is of course Marcus' perfect complement and the scenes between them are sensual and passionate and fun. This is one of those books where the story, the dialogue and, most importantly, the romance are such a joy to read that I know I will want to read it again. It is better than Secrets of a Summer's Night, the first book in the "Wallflower" quartet, and is comparable to some of Kleypas' best works such as Then Came You and Worth Any Price. I also enjoyed that the book included some of my favorite characters from earlier books, particularly Annabelle and Simon Hunt, and Marcus' sister Livia. I cannot wait to read about St. Vincent and Evie in Devil in Winter.