Customer Reviews

Love's Charade

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

 

 

Jane Feather is a talented writer, but I just could not get into this book. Perhaps it was because so much of the story seemed familiar from other books. I agree that the first scene of the book was *very* reminiscent of the first scene in Georgette Heyer's masterful "These Old Shades", when the Duke of Avon rescues Leon/Leonie from a beating on the streets of Paris (but without the detail of the Leonie's distinctive hair color to catch Avon's eye and make the rescue more believable.)

The heroine of "Love's Charade", Danielle de St. Varennes, is a 17 year old French aristocrat who has been surviving on the streets of Paris disguised as a boy (her entire family has been killed by a pre-French Revolutionary mob) and the hero is Justin, the Earl of Linton, a 34 year old English peer. I confess that I tend to *hate* books with this kind of age disparity between the hero and heroine, particularly when the hero affects a paternalistic attitude toward the heroine and calls her childish nicknames (this book is guilty on both counts and "Brat" is the appellation of choice.) "These Old Shades" had even a greater age disparity between the hero and heroine, but worked better for me because of the development of the characters and the lack of overt lusting by the hero for the teenage heroine. (Justin actually tells Danielle's grandfather "...the woman in her still sleeps. I look forward to the very pleasant task of awakening her." A bit icky, in my opinion, but some might find it romantic.)

The real problem that I had with this book was that Danielle was *such* an incredible "Mary Sue" of a heroine (i.e. outrageously beautiful, amazingly intelligent, wise beyond her years, and good at absolutely *everything* she does)--and even more irritating than the original Leonie with her (supposedly charmingly) reckless behavior and brash speech. Combine this with a relatively bland Justin (who is like the Duke of Avon "Lite") and over 400 pages makes for a long book.

I liked the French Revolution setting and the story is well-written, but I preferred Jane Feather's "Virtue" (an engaging story of a brother-sister team of gamblers bent on revenge--a bit like Georgette Heyer's "The Masqueraders" but without the cross-dressing!)

One of the frequent problems with many romances that I've read is that the author has devotes a great deal of her creative energy in devising magnificent and fantastically complex heroes. In comparison, the young woman to be paired with this perfect specimen of tormented masculinity is usually bland and uninteresting. The author has already spent her creative juices. The interesting thing about Jane Feather's LOVE'S CHARADE is that we have the opposite problem.

Danielle is a stunning creation. At 17, she's beautiful, educated, strong-willed, and a witness to horrors that have brought her maturity beyond her years. The traumas of her past leave her driven to provide succor to the gentry dispossessed by the French Revolution, efforts that she pursues with ingenuity and charisma. And on top of that, she is witty, and oh yes, as we mentioned before, stunningly beautiful. Given such a glowing heroine, the 34-year-old hero, despite being twice her age, and allegedly clever and well-connected, is bland in comparison. He is your basic British Earl/Duke/Whatever of near total economic success, with a secret passion for aiding the Crown and no real interest in marriage until he's found the perfect post-adolescent. Their age difference is more than countered by their comparative weight in personality.

Balance! That's all I want! Just a little balance

The plot is fairly pleasant, offering a slight twist on the usual Pimpernalia. It is a bit drawn out, with a couple of clearly unnecessary episodes, including the usual Jealous Misunderstanding, Resigned to Lonely Marriage, and Kidnapped By An Evil French Rapist bits. These only serve to pad the book. Maybe target audience readers feel like they need these steps and I am simply out of synch, but I'm sure that at least two of these three could have been eliminated.

The basic problem with this book is that most of the suspense in a romance is in trying to figure out how the disparate hero and heroine will ultimately be bound together. Since that is resolved fairly early on, the rest of the novel is devoted to whether Danielle will get herself killed in her recklessness.

Polished prose keeps things moving along, and Feather introduces a couple of interesting bits by tying the plot so closely to the French Revolution. The aristocracy that stayed in France was not all wiped out overnight, and those that escaped often found themselves in more dire circumstances than the urban impoverished that they fled. Feather offers another view of the Revolution, one that fills in some of the gaps left by Les Miserables and The Scarlet Pimpernel. For that, there is no reason to regret reading this book.

I adored this book! I read it for the first time two years ago and have since re-read it once every couple of months. The age difference between the characters is handled so well that I felt it enhanced the love story rather than detract from it. So many romance novels portray marriages with large age gaps as horrific ones in which wives suffered abuse, neglect, oppression or worse. It was refreshing to see a novel that positively portrayed what was an inescapable historical reality for the eighteenth century. Brava Ms. Feather! You have created a wonderfully spirited and independant heroine and given her a man mature enough to appreciate and understand her strenghth and drive instead bieng threatened to the point of unreasonable domination, as I believe a younger man of the period would have been. This is a thoughtful and deep novel with many levels. It is not a light read but a wonderfully touching one that reminds me, particularly after reading one of Ms.Feather's more current 'light' novels, why I love the author enough to buy her with no additional endorsment but the name Jane Feather on the cover.

If this book was judged on the implementation of historical facts, it would receive 5 stars. However as a historical romance it only receives 2 stars. First of all I realize that older men married teenagers in this time period, and in other books the age gap is glossed over. In this book it was not the case. It was reiterated multiple times that Justin was 17 years older than Danielle. That in and of its self would not have bothered me, but Justin kept referring to her as a child even after they were married. The whole thing just gave me the creeps.
Now if you looked passed the age thing the story was choppy at best. There were like three distinct stories, and they didn't seem to flow very well. In the last third of the book she introduced a character that was seeking unholy retribution for acts Justin's father committed, and then she didn't even explain it that well. What was that?
There was a good book buried in the nonsense, about 200 pages needed to be chopped out.

Jane Feather has no problem recreating a period of history as an exotic setting to frame the story of her heroine and hero. Where she often fails is to produce a pair of characters that have a convincing reason to fall in love with each other. I enjoyed the heroine; the hero was a pompous prig and the language was often very authentic, but stilted. Around about page 130, Lord Linton suddenly declares that he is in love with his small charge, when there has been no evidence of this in any of the narrative up to this point. It's not convincing, and our suspicions are further raised when, after this point, he seems intent on breaking the very same free spirit that made him fall in love with her in the first place. As a consequence, I was resentful that he was successful in taming down an otherwise delightfully bold and intelligent heroine into the 'missish' mold that the two of them had sneered at earlier, in the novel.

The history's okay, if you like the French Revolution period. This just wasn't my cup of ratafia.

This book was absolutely my favorite of Jane Feather's. It was so captivating and once I started it I felt torn every time I had to put it down. It is a nice length of 478 pages and by the end you feel as if you have shared so much with Danny and Justin. She holds her own and is a very strong heroine while she loves Justin with everything she has. He feels the same for her and it is just an all around amazing book that you will NEVER regret reading. The story never grows boring and when it is finished you feel sad that it is over. I highly recommend this book to any romance reader who likes to be transported into a whole new world....

I really enjoyed this book because Danny and Justin were in love despite the fact that he was 34 and she was 17. It's great that love can overcome the boudaries of age. It made it interesting and unique to read.

What did bother me was that Danny had no say in the arrangement. They arranged the marriage because Justin said he loved her and because it was proper. It didn't seem to matter to the grandparents whether she loved him or not, just that he loved her. And it irritated me that she just went along with it. All she said was "why would you want to marry me?" not "why should I marry you?" Didn't she care that they were doing it all without asking her opinion? Other than that I loved the book. There was still a lot of romance despite all the conflicts they faced and they really loved each other.

Also Justin and Danny are are charming, I couldn't get past the fact that while Danny was 17, Justin was 34. To add to this - a year before Danny was born, Justin was the lover of Danny's mother. Till the end I kept thinking that he will tern up to be Danny's father!!!! It was just too much for me.

This book was a challenge to read. I can't say there was anything wrong with the book. It was intelligently done, the relationship between the main characters was realistic - perhaps too realistic for my taste. There was passion but mostly there was this constant tug and pull between Danny and Justin. He loves her for who she is, but who she is keeps him in a near constant state of worry.

The writing style used for the book was difficult to focus on as it was so foreign from what I'm used to. I felt like I was trying to decipher good portions of the story, and not just the french parts.

Once I got past Part One, it became easier to become emotionally connected to the characters, but I still felt a kind of distance between myself and the story. Perhaps because the French revolution is as far from my realm of experiences as contemporary times would be to the characters. I'm not sure.

Overall I have no real critism of the book - though I feel quite fatigued after having finished it. It was like eating escargot when you're used to hamburgers, different and unusual but not necessarily bad.

Don't listen to the"Nay" sayers. This is a great story. I loved the characters, etc. Ms. Feather's stories are so rich in detail and description. To me the hero wasn't bland and the heroine perfect. Justin was a man of the world and Danielle a very accomplished young women who is often impulsive. If you want a fast paced romance you will enjoy this story.