Liz Carlyle - TWO LITTLE LIES
You know, sometimes you just don't have a lot to say about a book you liked. Oh, TWO LITTLE LIES, why are you not inspiring my thoughts to flow and fingers to type? OK, let's start with a broad overview of the series: it's about three post-Regency men whose pasts are coming back to haunt them.
Book one, ONE LITTLE SIN, was about a Scottish woman who descends on London to find her infant half-sister's father to take over custody. She falls in love with the rake she finds, which is a prob because he's her sister's dad, and somewhere in the middle manages to get engaged to this guy's friend. That friend is the hero of TWO LITTLE LIES.
Aristocrat Quin had been devastated when his proud Italian opera singer mistress, Viviana, left him when he was an immature 20-years-old. He's perhaps never quite recovered, so when she shows up ten years later at a country dinner party held to announce his engagement, his reaction is immediate and volatile.The rest of the book is them subconsciously and consciously hashing out whether the things that divided them in their youth--insecurity, pride, class, family and social expectations, etc.--still matter when their passion for each other has not faded. Quin gets to the place where's he's ready to acknowledge that she's what he's always wanted and needed pretty quickly. He's dunzo with living a Vivi-less life. She, however, is hampered by the secrets she still holds.
So. I thought Liz Carlyle did a great job with a heroine who could have come across as unsympathetic. Viviana was convincingly regal, non-British, passionate, and honorable as circumstances let her be. I thought Quin's interactions with his family were wonderful examples of his mature and more-accepting character. The bits with Viviana's oldest child were a little too precious, some of the plot points were a little too convenient, but overall this was a very good read.There was an excerpt of the next book, THREE LITTLE SECRETS, at the back. It looks like another winner based on the awesome excerpt.
posted by P.Devi @ 6:55 PM permalink
4 comments
4 Comments:
Loved TLL, but it's not inspiring me to actually write about it either. Maybe tomorrow ;-)
I'll keep a lookout. I really didn't have much to say about it but am interested to see if others did.
Hey how about that cover? Making it all bluish-green so blatantly flies in the face of the color the book itself harps on. Why do art departments do that?
I'm actually very appreciative of Liz Carlyle in general. I've only read "One Little Sin" in this series... because I'm still trying to catch up on that series with Walrafen, Rutledge, etc.
I find Carlyle's novels to be deliciously complex... the only problem being if you always pick up romances at the paperback book exchange... she actually writes books that read better in order, which is something I discovered AFTER starting out with Bentley's story and working backwards.
Hi Kate D. Welcome!
Your comment is like secret code to me (Bentley, Rutledge, What?). I should mention that, besides this series, I've only read one other Liz Carlyle: the book preceding it.
But it's good to know her books are best read in order because I see myself acquiring her backlist. I don't know why I resisted her for so long.
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