Customer Reviews

My Lady Mischief

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

 

 

Oh the Scottish temper of Miss Mary MacGregor. She is horrified to arrive at her fiancée's home only to find out he had married another! He had sent her money to travel and she had quit her position as governess and all-around drudge to a large family to do so. Stephen, Lord St. John meets with her and tells her that Christopher has just married and left on his wedding trip. Her temper erupts and she tells Stephen she will sue for breech of promise! Instead, he offers himself up to marry and before she can think twice, she is Stephen's wife ... and also very ill from the hard and rainy trip. Stephen is very caring of her during her fever.

Stephen proves to be very kind to Mary but dictatorial. He loves to provoke her by saying he will tame her. They are a passionate couple too, even though Mary thinks to reject him - she cannot. He enjoys calling her "My Lady Mischief" since she stirs up trouble! Finally her hate and anger turn to love. But does he return her love? Christopher returns and offers Mary an affair. She just slaps him (loved that). But there are others in the household to stir up trouble. Christopher's mother Lady Helena lives with the family (step-mother to Stephen), Christopher's plain wife Georgiana and an old family employee Mr. Basset. These secondary characters are well-fleshed and interesting in their own right.

Besides the tribulations of Mary, there are some illegal activities going on. Plus what happened to Stephen's former fiancée Angela who was murdered? Was he responsible? Is he smuggling, killing ... just what is going on? Can Mary trust Stephen? You will have to read this delightful book to find the answers!

I seldom give two-stars, especially when I managed to finish reading the book. It did have an interesting and spirited beginning (which plot has already been described by two other reviewers), but half way through the book, the author started to show some fatigues--the plot started to loose its focus mainly because many mischievous happenings to many second and third characters stirred up some confusions ( I personally thought it was a method of diversions), by the last 1/3 of the book the heroine became so cynical and ridiculous (so she appeared to me)that she kept questioning her love for Stephen, he for her, was he a smuggler, a murderer...etc. was so maddening. Yet the whole time I have already suspected the master mind.

Beside the unexplained happenings, reviewer "Cilla" did a good job on pointing them out, I also found the language in this book was too simple: it gave me an impression of a "young adult" level of read. Ms. Roberts also liked to use "Irish temper" "Irish red hair" a lot; unfortunately the heroine did not capitalize on her Irish intelligence much. All these contributed to my deductions of ratings. One other complaint: the book cover was so 20th-century-like, there was no Regency atmosphere at all, which was a surprise for Dell's "Candlelight Regency Romance". The publisher usually was pretty good about this.