Customer Reviews

True Colours (Historical Romance)

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

 

 

Harlequin / Mills and Boon have some gems in their backlist and this is one of them.

From the back cover of the Mills and Boon large print edition:

They shared a past... The first person the Marquis of Mullineaux meets upon his return to England is the very last person he wants to see - Lady Carberry, the woman who scandalised the haute ton by breaking off their engagement. She is just as displeased to meet the man who sacrificed her reputation to save his pride. Thrown together by circumstance, Alicia and James find themselves constantly at war with one another. James is determined to discover the truth about their past and only then does he also discover that behind their anger lies a passion that has never died.

Glittering Seasons... country estates Matchmaking mamas...a Regency delight!

This a stylish and enjoyable debut Regency. I have read all Ms. Cornick's books and what I like about them is their originality in such a popular genre. Perhaps TRUE COLOURS a little over-written in places - every noun seems to have at least one accompanying adjective - but this could be put down to the author's inexperience. The plot is exciting and the characters engaging. Ms Cornick is a fresh and welcome addition to the Regency writing scene.

Is there a better romance than an old-flame story? If you love reading about a hero and heroine with a shared past, but unfinished business, then this is definitely the book for you. Almost the first person the Marquis of Mullineaux meets on his return to England, is the one person he hoped never to see again - Lady Carberry, the woman who cruelly broke off their engagement a few years earlier. She's not too happy about the encounter either. From that point onwards they are constantly thrown together by circumstance and constantly at war with each other. This is, of course, because of their unresolved issues and ambivalent feelings towards one another - love & hate - ingredients that make a poignant romance. It deserves every one of those 5 stars, without question.

This story has many elements typical of the regency genre: a beautiful, spirited heroine, handsome brooding aristocratic hero, a cast of relatives both kind and unkind, friends of both the hero and heroine who appear to be kind and supportive but amongst whose ranks lurks a wicked villain waiting to be unmasked in his true colours ...

James, Marquis of Mullineaux and heir to his grandfather, the Duke of Cardace, has just returned from a period of seven years abroad. He is barely back in England when he runs into (almost literally, there is a carriage accident) the very woman who he went abroad to avoid, his former fiance Lady Alicia Carberry.

Several years, before the then Miss Alicia Brosely had been forced by her manipulative father to break her engagement to James Mullineaux and marry instead the wealthy Sir George Carberry, who then died on her wedding night, leaving her a rich widow. These former events left both James and Alicia with what appear to be good reasons to think the worst of each other, and when they are initially flung together again by circumstances both respond with angry disdain.

Yet each also proves unable to ignore the other - some spark of what they once had stubbornly refuses to die. As the Marquis and Lady Carberry walk an uneasy line between anger, passion and scandal, her father and one of her closest friends are plotting, unbeknown to Alicia, to make her part of their latest scheme ...

Reasonably entertaining and well crafted regency romance: this one came out in 1998 and IMHO the books the author has written since then show a significant improvement, but it's OK for a little light amusement. It just scrapes a fourth star because I like the characters and the perspective on several stages of their lives.

There is a sequel, "The Larkswood Legacy (Lords & Ladies Collection)" set a few years later, in which the heroine is Alicia's sister Annabella. Both Alicia and her friend Caroline Kilgarren are important characters in that book, in which the two sisters have to deal with and move on from some of the consequences of the events of this one.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED -- Don't pass up this book or any other by this author -- the stories are so refreshing and a delightful change from the contemporaries.
You will thoroughly enjoy these characters and their story.
Find out the truth behind the troubles and confrontations of James and Alicia and how the resolved them.

I have been reading more of Nicola Cornick's books, after finding and loving her LARKSWOOD LEGACY (published by Harlequin recently). TRUE COLORS is the prequel to that story - the story of Alicia, sister of the heroine Annabella, and how she became estranged from her sister Annabella. Unfortunately, this story is a disappointment. [As are the other books by Cornick I have read recently].

Why? The story begins very promisingly - Cornick's stories are all very promising. A stagecoach accident leads to the unexpected meeting of a young marquess with the lady who apparently jilted him seven years ago. She chose instead to marry a wealthy old man, recently knighted, and is now a wealthy widow. This sounded quite promising, especially when you realize that in Regency England, a marquess ranked much higher in the social scale than did a mere City knight. Furthermore, this marquess is apparently a courtesy marquess only, as the heir apparent of an elderly Duke.

It turns out that the story of the estranged ex-lovers is far more complicated than simple greed (with the lady choosing immediate wealth over the promise of a great title and wealth in the future). There is a scoundrelly father, a rapscallion cousin, and a sinister suitor of the lady. Not to mention accidents happening to persons around the lady. And yes, there is Annabella, the flighty spoiled younger sister, who is delighted to have caught her baronet's heir who is clearly a scoundrel himself.

Unfortunately, while Alicia is made to look quite sympathetic, much of her past actions - and those of her father - make little sense. Why should the daughter of a merchant (albeit maternally the granddaughter of a late earl) pass up the chance to become a duchess? Why should she believe that her father has the chance to ruin her young lover? Why should her father be able to more successfully coerce virtuous Alicia than flighty Annabella? These and other questions kept racing through my mind. And as in LARKSWOOD LEGACY, I was distracted by a more attractive young couple - Marcus and Caroline (although they are more interesting the later book).

The book simply degenerated into melodrama for me by the middle. It was not that anything particularly unnatural happened to the heroine, but there were far too many stock characters and very little made of the supposed estrangement between the sisters that so troubles Annabella in LARKSWOOD LEGACY. And the actions of the hero and heroine made little sense for much of the novel.

Rating for the book - 3.4 (corrected December 18, 2001)