Customer Reviews

Memoirs of a Scandalous Red Dress

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

When Elizabeth Boyle first introduced Lady Philippa and the American pirate captain, Thomas Dashwell in This Rake of Mine four years ago, I was instantly smitten by this couple. In the next three consecutive novels featuring Philippa (who went by the nickname Pippin) and her two cousins, the sisters Langleys, Elizabeth teased her readers with small scenes of Pippin and Thomas Dashwell interacting with one another. Pippin fell instantly in love with his older and dashing bad boy and it looked like Dashwell felt the same. Pippin became his Circe, which was the name of his beloved ship and Pippin called Dashwell her Dash. This secondary story was the main reason I would read these books and when I heard Elizabeth would soon write Pippin and Dash's own romance, I was over the moon.

Memoirs of a Scandalous Red Dress has a beautiful cover and is very fitting because the red dress part is due to the time Pippin broke Dash out of prison while she was wearing that color dress. Things between these two were left as a cliffhanger in Confessions of a Little Black Gown when Dash was to be executed and Pippin, who found herself pregnant by Dash, ended up marrying another man to save her reputation. Because Pippin sacrifices herself for the man she loved, her new husband was able to free Dash with the promise that Dash would never step on English soil or contact Pippin again. Dash kept his promise and left without ever knowing about Pippin's pregnancy.

I think my expectations were a bit too high because Memoirs of a Scandalous Red Dress was so lacking in so many ways. This is a story of reunited lovers, but not five, ten or even fifteen years later. It takes place twenty-three years later where Pippin is now a widow in her late forties with two grown children. Dash is a broken down drunk with a son from a woman he married in America as he was romancing the fair and innocent Pippin. I wish I could say it is so romantic for a man to turn to a bottle of booze because he lost his heart's desire, but the Dash I have grown to like is certainly not this man in this book.

Even though Pippin married another man, even as her heart belonged to another, her life has been a pretty good one. She became a Viscountess who had a lovely marriage. She did come to love her husband who was smitten with Pippin the moment he saw her. Her son John is a captain and will be the youngest commander in the Royal Navy in almost twenty years. Her daughter Ginger is settled and married. Pippin is a bit depressed because she is finished with her mourning and longs to be the young woman she once was when she was being romanced by that pirate captain she has never forgotten. Dash was larger than life when she first met him as a girl of barely sixteen and for the next few years until she was twenty-one, he was her whole life. She has no idea what happened to him and feels adrift in her life. She longs to be that woman she once was and wear that red dress she has packed away when she saved Dash from so many dangerous situations.

A young man comes to Pippin asking for help. He is Dash's son Nathaniel who says that she is his father's last hope. Nathaniel tells Pippin a little fib about his father dying and Pippin can't help it but rush to her former lover's aid. What Pippin doesn't know is that Nathaniel leaves a ransom note to make it look like Pippin has been kidnapped by Dash. What Dash doesn't know is that Pippin has come aboard his ship. When Dash and Pippin reunite after all this time, it is not a loving reunion. Dash is a bitter drunken old man and Pippin can't believe she has been lied to. Dash is not dying and he can't stand to see Pippin. He feels betrayed because she married another man even though he was married to another woman at the time he seduced Pippin and left her with child. But keep in mind he never loved Nathaniel's mother. It was to save him and because his now dead wife's father had money. What he didn't count on was Pippin coming into his life.

Pippin has no choice to stay on the ship because Nathaniel wants her to talk some sense into his father. And he has already set sail to America. Until they reach Baltimore, Maryland, Pippin and Dash are stuck with one another. Dash is insulting and Pippin realizes she never knew that man she fell in love with. She is heartbroken and Dash only cares about drinking himself to death. But Dash does care and becomes lost in those memories he has kept with him of Pippin and the short time they had together. If only these two can get passed the hurt and lies, then Pippin and Dash can finally be together as they have always longed to be.

I am a big fan of reunion stories but I felt Memoirs of a Scandalous Red Dress failed to live up to the hype. Again, it could have been because I was anxiously awaiting Pippin and Dash's own story, but these two characters seem to have lost the desire and drive that made them such great characters. The chemistry and witty interactions between these two are missing. The flashbacks were the best part of the book, but the present day Pippin and Dash were just too dull for me to care. If I had read this without reading the past books leading up to this one, I would have not finished because I found myself bored. I also think part of the problem was the tone of the book. The past books in their series were lighthearted and cute reads. Having Memoirs of a Scandalous Red Dress fast forward to almost a quarter century later seems so out of place.

I also had some questions about Pippin and her marriage to her Viscount. I find it odd that after being married to her husband for some twenty odd years, she didn't have any children with him and only had the ones because of her union with Dash. She says she loved her husband, so wouldn't you think there would be more offspring other than John and Ginger?

This latest by Elizabeth had too many questions about certain situations and a lackluster love story. At least I will always have memories of Pippin and Dash before Memoirs of a Scandalous Red Dress. This is one read I will put to the side and will soon forget.

Katiebabs

This Rake of Mine (Avon Romantic Treasure)
Love Letters from a Duke
Confessions of a Little Black Gown

In finally writing Dash and Pippin's romance, Elizabeth Boyle had a lot of expectations to live up to. I think this book was born out of a realization that there was no way she could possibly satisfy all her fans, so instead she embraced a fairly bold and ambitious plot. This was certainly not your average romance, as others have mentioned, the bulk of the action takes place with Dash and Pippin in their forties. The story flips back and forth between 1814 and 1837, allowing us to see both events which were alluded to in past novels and also the interaction between current day Dash and Pippin.

This is definitely a bittersweet romance. Dash has lived a relatively disappointing life and although Pippin loved her husband you get the distinct impression that she feels unfulfilled and stifled by the life she has lead. Memoirs is unusual not only for it's forty-something protagonists but also because it gives us genuinely flawed characters. Dash has become a drunkard who unrepentantly used his first wife and never really expresses remorse for his behavior towards her. Not a terribly savory history and one that crushes both Pippin's and our idea of Dash as a noble "gentlemen pirate". Ultimately, I enjoyed Memoirs because it was the story of two people, older and wiser, realizing they loved each other even after youth and the magic of first love had faded and despite their past mistakes. I gave the book 4 stars because I did have very high expectations. Realistically, I don't think there was a way for Boyle meet those expectations and she deserves a lot of credit for being willing to write a story for these characters that was so out of the box.

The book opens with Pippin attending her 23 year old son's promotion to captain. She sees a sailor who reminded her of Dash. She faints. Her son, John, and married daughter, Ginger (Virginia), are concerned that she has reached her dotage and should now go and live with Ginger and her stuffed shirt husband. Pippin sees the Dash-like sailor again and talks to him. It turns out that he is Dash's son, Nathaniel. Nate tells Pippin to help save Dash.

The rest of the story took place on Dash's ship. Lots of flashbacks were used to detail the events in Love Letters and Black Gown. Some of Dash's backgrounds were flushed out. Basically, Dash had married soon after his first meeting with Pippin. (Pippin is still on his mind but Dash was already told she is far above him in everyway and not to even think about it.) Dash married for money. He had no love for his wife. But, his wife hoped that Dash will come to love her. She died a few days after childbirth. Dash was not by her side during the childbirth. A couple of months after his wife's death, Dash met Pippin again. The rest of the book is pretty much Dash recovering from alcoholism and Pippin falling in love with Dash again.

The problems I have with the book are:

1. Dash from the previous books won't have gone down without a fight. I just can't see Dash riding off without at least an attempt to speak to Pippin. Maybe this is Dash's way of being noble and letting Pippin lead the life she chose. Or, maybe in Black Dress, when Gossett said to Dash that he never had Pippin, finally sunk in. Dash becoming a drunkard? Inconvincible. I can see Dash turning into a cold, cruel, hard man, not a drunkard. Therefore, this Dash is a stranger to me.

2. Pippin was very happily married to Gossett. However, she has become a dull and proper matron. She is no longer the same girl who saved Dash. I can understand maturing, but, she has lost her spark. John and Ginger, her children, also lead dull and proper lives. What a waste to raise her children up to be the carbon copy of the ladies and gentlemen of the time. Supposedly, John was much like Dash before he gained his title. But, he "is" Gossett's son, through and through. John comes off as a snobby, arrogant, know it all.

3. Other than knowing Pippin loves Gossett and the life she led, we know nothing about Pippin during these 23 years. I can only assume that Pippin has no regret marrying Gossett. If anything, she regrets meeting Dash. I came to this conclusion because in Black Gown, Pippin's love for Dash is already waning. She wishes she met Gossett first. She enjoys her garden parties and balls. She knows an easy life is not what she will get with Dash.

4. Unfortunately, the passages with Pippin saying she is not old, not over the hill, does not have lines on her face, and has the same figure of her youth, etc, just make me feel Pippin is looking to recapture her lost youth and hopes to find it by going to Dash. She is horrified that Dash is no longer the pirate of her youth.

5. Pippin is upset that she was not told that Dash is a widower with a child; she is upset that Dash is no longer dashing; she lives a worry-free live; she loves Gossett. So, what is it about this broken down Dash that Pippin falls for?

6. The readers were steered to think poorly of Dash. Dash never did anything to win Pippin's love. So, what did he do now to win it back? Teach her to be a pirate? Dash was bitter over Pippin. The bitterness disappeared quickly even though Dash knew Pippin didn't purposely seek him out.

7. Since this is a book about a 44 and 49 year old heroine and hero, they really should be portrayed as such. I can't see Pippin, at 44, looking like her early 20s even though she lived a stressed free life. I can't see Dash, a 49 year old drunkard, recovering so easily and having the muscle tone to let him run about on the ship like a young buck. After all, it sounded like all he did was drink for the past 23 years. Since this is not a typical romance, more real life, then they should be portrayed as such.
8. Nathaniel, Dash's son, seemed quite wimpish...ever eager to please. He was upset that Dash started wooing Pippin just a couple of months after his mother's death, but, got over it quickly. The readers were not given a reason why Nate is so loyal to an absentee father.

This is not a light hearted read that Boyle's book are known for. I am left with many unanswered questions and feels the book is incomplete. The Dash and Pippin in this book are far removed from the Dash and Pippin of the previous books. I wish Ms. Boyle had never written their story and let the readers make up their own instead. This book is more suited about a couple we have no previous history with.

I wanted to like this book and took a few weeks to digest it before writing this review. Unfortunately, my opinion didn't change. I think Pippin and Dash fans will be sorely disappointed.

First of all, I have to say that I have been waiting and waiting for Dash and Pippin's love story....and I'm still waiting. This is one of the most disappointing books that I've ever read. I love Elizabeth Boyle, but this book does not do her writing, her imagination, and her characters justice. To write this type of "happily ever after" for two beloved characters is wrong on so many levels. Normally, Ms. Boyle conjures up a story that I never could have dreamed of writing! However, I would rather have left their love story to MY imagination. It would have been so much better and cheaper....and that is the truly disappointing part.

I really enjoyed this book. The word I use for it is "bittersweet". This is not a fairy tale romance, but more complicated than that. The characters are mature, have more life under their belts, and aren't perfect. Can they overcome what life has thrown them? We do get our HEA, though I worry a bit that Dash will be able to maintain his steady course.

This a different tone that the other books in the series have been, but to me it was enjoyable and thought provoking. I finished it several days ago, and I'm still thinking about it, and chewing over the characters. To me, that's a good thing. It made me think.

It was instant attraction for Lady Philippa Knolles when she met daring American Captain Thomas Dashwell. But even as Pippin and Dash fall in love, an uneasy political climate eventually leads to their separation, leaving Pippin with only a scandalous red dress and two lives growing inside her as mementoes of the pirate she loved.

Twenty-three years later, Pippin is widowed and the image of propriety. Then a stranger appears on her doorstep, claiming Dash needs her. Time hasn't dulled Pippin's love for her pirate, but when she sees Dash once again he is nothing like the man she loved. Faced with a bitter, drunken lover from her past, it's up to Pippin to remind Dash what was and what could still be; with the help of a certain scandalous red dress, of course.

Of all the books in Elizabeth Boyle's Bachelor Chronicles, Memoirs of a Scandalous Red Dress is the story I have waiting to read the most. I finished reading the story with mixed feelings that time and re-reads have not been able to sort out. Memoirs of a Scandalous Red Dress weaves in and out of Dash and Pippin's past and present. On its own, this would have worked beautifully. Yet as part of a series, after seeing parts of their love story in earlier books, the cruelty of their twenty-three year separation broke my heart. I can understand why Ms. Boyle did it and even am glad at the resulting introduction of Dash and Pippin's children, whom I adored and would love to read stories for. Still, I mourned the years lost between the two and never felt the joy of happily ever after was fully captured. With the older Pippin and Dash certainly fit their situations, the parts of the book I enjoyed were those set in the past, where the more daring and hopeful hero and heroine appeared.

I do not wish to imply that Memoirs of a Scandalous Red Dress was an unpleasant read, for it certainly was not. It just did not live up to my expectations for these characters. However, I am pleased Pippin and Dash did end up finding their happily ever after together, even if it was delayed. I am also hopeful Ms. Boyle decides to gift readers with stories for Pippin and Dash's sons, John and Nate.


Shayna
Reviewed for Joyfully Reviewed

I wish that I could recommend this as a good read. I am happy Boyle writes about a mature heroine and the perils of grown children and their misconceptions about their parents. What bothers me is that I really wanted a story about Pippin and her viscount. That to me would have been the greater love story involving selflessness and mutual growing together. I think making the story about Dash was an interesting concept but a lukewarm read.

I have loved Pippin and Dash since the moment he stole a kiss from her innocent lips in "This Rake of Mine". My favorite parts in the other books were the brief moments these two were together. I have been not-so-patiently waiting for years to read their story, and I must say it was a huge disappointment.

Captain Thomas "Dash" Dashwell was everything you could ever want in a pirate, and more! I find it hard to believe that after everything Pippin and he went through to be together, he would would give up just because of a little marriage certificate. The pirate I know would have snuck into her bedroom that first night and stolen her away, not retreated into a drunken stupor to drown his sorrows.

This book is set over 20 years after Pippin married Lord Gossett, and she is now a widow with two grown children. Dash's son Nate comes to find Pippin so she can 'save' Dash. Lady Gossett, assuming Dash is incredibly sick and dying, runs to his rescue only to find that he has become a pathetic, nonfunctioning alcoholic. The two spend the voyage from London to American overcoming past hurts and rekindling their romance.

I have three major problems with this book:

1) I didn't think it was necessary to add the story of Dash being married to someone else (it happened in between his first kiss with Pippin and when he ran into her on the frozen Thames in "Love Letters from a Duke"). These two are supposed to have the grandest romance of them all, and here they both are married to other people at different times. It killed the image I had of Dash back in those previous stories.

2) The most passionate parts of this book were the flashbacks to when Pippin and Dash were young. It was incredibly sad reading this novel because I wanted to go back to when I really felt they were in love and create a happy ending for them then, not 20-some years later.

3) I just can't see Dash turning into an alcoholic. He has always been such a charming rogue with a certain joie de vivre. To portray him this way just seemed so out of character.


I would have rather watched their love grow through other people's stories and continued my love of Pippin & Dash than read this. I am a huge fan of Elizabeth Boyle and enjoy most of her work, but this one I cannot recommend. If you are a true Pippin and Dash lover, create your own ending for them and avoid this book!

I am sorry I bought this book. I have never been so disappointed in the end of a series (or if it isn't the end of a series it is for me)or a book. It didn't work for me for two reasons.

One, the magic of Pippin and Dash's relationship was gone. I fell in love with these characters three books ago and I was eagerly awaiting their story. I was completely heartbroken by what happened at the end of Tally's book. It made me sad to think that Pippin and Dash were lost to each other. Yet, they do end up together twenty-three years later but neither of these characters were likable. Thank you, Elizabeth Boyle, I completely snapped out of being sad. Within the third or forth chapter I didn't Pippin or Dash. I was no longer sad about them not getting together sooner because I just didn't care about them.

Two, it had way too many flashbacks and the flow suffered. I was nice to know what happened to the characters in the earlier books but it was done in a sloppy way.

The storyline was one I had never read before and I suppose that could be considered a positive. Unfortunately that is the only positive side to this book. I don't think I will read any other books by this author.

Ms.Boyle boy do I agree with everyone who was disappointed with this last book in the series. I was so anticipating Pippin and Dash's love story, but I didn't think it would take place 23 years into their future and with a son missing out on knowing and growing up with his real father. I thought their reunion would have taken place maybe 5 years later at the most. Still young enough to envision their grand passion and still young enough to grow old together, to have a family together.

Why didn't she just go after Dash and follow him to America and forget about her promise to marry a man she didn't love? That's what I would have done as well as a lot of your loyal readers, which along with me were extremely disappointed on the outcome of this supposed love story.

Maybe the whole story of this book was a nightmare that Dash had in one of his drunken dreams? That would be a great way to begin a re-write. It all really didn't happen and they did re-unite much, much earlier in life.