I used to read and love the Pink Carnation book series. I was happy with it through book 4. But that was around the time where I started to think things like, "I dunno how well you can keep stretching this premise, it kind of feels like it's wandering away from the whole Pink Carnation spy plot in the future," and "Maybe this should be a series with an end date?" Also, I flipped through the beginning of book 5 in the series (and was thinking, "Who is this girl? I don't even remember her in other books"), wasn't feeling terribly into it, and then I decided that maybe I'd wait on going back to this series. (Update: I did finally read book 5, it's over here.)
I recently got gifted with book six in the series, so I read it. And....?
On some level, I do think that the plot has drifted away from the Pink Carnation plot-- indeed, this one takes place in India with another ring of flower spies entirely-- and that bothers me. But on the other hand, it was an interesting plot, and the lead characters in this one were so interesting that I mostly stopped caring. Penelope is a fun girl and I enjoyed reading about her quite a bit. I think this series does better when it's focusing on the more feisty heroines, and god knows Penelope is one!
This starts with a twist you don't see much in romance novels. Before the start of the novel, Penelope Devereaux was a mad flirt. Unfortunately, one of her flirtations went far enough that she got forced to marry him. Now eight months into marriage, she's "Lady Frederick Staines" (and hates it, and hates having no name, and I really like that someone finally noticed how creepy this is), and she and Freddy are thoroughly not fond of each other except for sex. It's a bored mismatch, and now they're stuck going off to India to flee the scandal to boot. However, Penelope ends up taking to India quite well, as it fits with her fiery, gutsy personality. She's a lot of fun to read about, since she'll hop on a horse and ride like hell or jump into a river to save a guy's life without compunction. It's a shame that her flaky-ass husband only cares about cards and cheating. (But uh, given the novel's situation, one can't help but suspect that Freddy won't be living a long, happy life.)
The hero is Alex Reid, an English guy raised in India by a charming manwhore dad who has two legitimate twins and a bunch of illegitimate kids after that. Alex is very sensitive to the proprieties of such things, seeing as his brothers are essentially screwed for legitimate military careers and his sisters have had to be sent off to England to keep them safe. He also suspects his brother Jack is Up To Something, but he's willing to cover for Jack no matter what it is. Meanwhile, Penelope's gotten a letter from Henrietta mentioning a spy in India called the Marigold*, and after her letter disappears, Penelope's ready to jump in and look around for whoever it is and make Alex go along too. It's all kinds of fun and I enjoyed it.
As for the Elise chapters...sigh. I still feel about them pretty much the same as I always did: compared to the spy games, they are just flat out boring, like the duller excerpts cut out of chick lit books. You don't see enough of Elise to make her life interesting, and she doesn't get enough plot in her 4-5 chapters per book (or whatever it is) for you to care about what she's getting up to in between researching heroes and heroines of the 1800's. 90 percent of her plotline involves her slowly-creeping-along relationship with Colin, and that's it. I realize that the series is pretty much stuck with having to keep a framing story going at this point, but I keep thinking that I wouldn't miss a thing if it disappeared.
In this book, Elise and Colin are now together, and Elise is primarily concerned with getting his sister Serena a love life so she'll leave her and Colin alone. Which is uh... kind of sweet and kind of oogy at the same time. As usual, I was all, "I don't CARE, let's go back to India!" Except at the end, suddenly we find out that the modern day Selwick clan is straight out of a 90210/Jerry Springer episode and well... there might be plot yet in the Elise storyline after all? Well, I can hope. I'd like to have a reason not to be thinking, "Why am I not skipping these chapters already?"
Overall, the book gets four stars.
* According to the author's note in the back of the book, the publisher though marigolds were not a sexy enough flower to make it into the title. There are no blood lilies, whatever they are, in the story so much as it's a comment on Penelope's personality. The More You Know....
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