The Temptation of the Night Jasmine

By Lauren Willig.

This is a book that I never could get into when flipping through it in the bookstore. I finally just put it on my wish list and hoped someone would buy it for me so I wouldn't be standing around going "eh, I dunno...." about buying it myself. And it's okay, but definitely not as sparkling as most other books in the series to me.

(Note: plotwise the book seems to fit in after this one, in order of publication it's after this one.)

Charlotte Landsdowne is a duke's daughter, an orphan, and a dreamy book nerd. She had a mad crush on the heir to the family title, Robert, when she was 9 and he was 15. Many years later, she's an adult and he's come back to town. They hit it off as much as they ever did, but in a more adult way. However...the reason Robert's in town is to chase after the guy who killed his mentor, and he doesn't tell Charlotte this. Nor does he explain to her why he's hanging out so much with the guy who runs the local Hellfire Club. Robert is a super-honorable man, so the whole Hellfire thing is Not Fun For Him, but you can pretty much figure out why he doesn't explain to her why after having a hot moment, he totally bails.

Left to her own devices, Charlotte's doing a 3-month stint as lady in waiting to the queen. While looking for a book in the library, she comes across the king, who appears to be going mad again...except this time Charlotte is pretty sure that something is really fishy with this situation. With her best friend Henrietta, they find out that the king's new doctor isn't a doctor... And VERY eventually, the two plots tie in together. Robert's is a fizzle, but the king plot is actually interesting and gripping, under the circumstances. And Charlotte handles it beautifully with her inner knowledge of the palace and the king.

I forgot to mention that this is the book before The Betrayal of the Blood Lily.  You see Penelope in the first half of the book, then she uh...seems to publicly ruin herself? Outs herself, at least. Then she drops out of the book entirely. I found this kind of annoying.

Frankly, this is my least favorite of the books. Robert and Charlotte are very nice people and kind of sweet, don't get me wrong, but they're not exactly a sparky couple like most others in the series. (I'm reminded of reading Vision in White, it's a similar sort of "too good of a match to be interesting" situation there.) I enjoy seeing the couple in love getting into plots together, but (a) due to Robert's standards, that's not going to happen unless it has to, and (b) it takes a long-ass time for the two mysteries to coincide. And I really didn't give a crap about why Robert had come back from India to chase after this dude. That plot was never made interesting to me.

The book didn't get super interesting to me until Charlotte stumbled across the king in difficulties. I do love how the author used a historical loophole to come up with a secret plot that very well might have happened under the circumstances. And it's nice to see Henrietta and Miles again, even if they don't get to have the awesome sparkitude that they did in their own book. But for the most part, I just don't find it as memorable or interesting as the other books, and it does wander off the flower spy plot (ties in tangentially). The Pink Carnation is pretty well forgotten except in Elise's framing plot. Argh.

Oh yeah: the Elise framing plot. She thinks Colin might be a spy. Yeah, right. I just don't care.

Three stars.