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Summary: The earl has to marry an heiress for his family's sake.
Review: No matter how hard he tries to make ends meet, Mason St. Clair can't see any way out of his financial difficulties that doesn't involve marrying an heiress. His father and older brother before him devastated the estate with their mistresses and frivolities; now it was up to Mason--the Oxford college professor--to sacrifice himself to save the family honor. But it isn't until he meets Riley Fontaine, an actress of questionable reputation, that he realizes just how much a sacrifice it will be.Riley's theatre troupe owes the earl a large sum of money, and she's prepared to pay part of it back by working with his three out-of-control nieces in order to prepare them for marriage. (The idea of hiring an actress to train young women is an unlikely scenario in this period, but I'm willing to suspend belief because this book is just SO MUCH FUN!) Mason's courtship of the heiress goes rather slowly, because he finds himself constantly distracted by the beautiful, seductive, and talented Madame Fontaine. He discovers that not only is she not what she seems, but it appears that someone is trying to kill her. At this point, the heiress thing gets put on the back burner as Mason determinedly installs her in his home for protection while he sets about trying to discover the killer. Riley never thought she would fall for a college professor, but after the fact, she can't bear the thought of losing him to the heiress. She herself went through some very tough times after being abandoned by her mother and sold on the streets of Paris, but somehow she always found a way to survive without selling herself or her integrity. But Mason has to put the family honor first...or does he? A truly riveting read for any fan of historical romance...especially if you like a touch of humor applied liberally to the sexual tension. The final scene had me choking with laughter. If only every book were as entertaining as this one!
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Summary: Tedious, unfunny, and appallingly lacking in accuracy
Review: This isn't quite the worst book I've read this year, but it comes close. I don't read many books where I'm tempted to skim by about the second chapter, but this was one. The plot was straightfroward fare: new Earl inherits title, a pile of debt and three unmarried daughters from his profligate brother. How can he make ends meet and find husbands for his nieces, who are not exactly the most marriageable young women around? Then, in the first plot development requiring suspension of disblief, a woman - Riley Fontaine - who runs her own theatre company (in the 1790s?!?) visits the Earl and actually lets him know that her company owes him money - now, once she'd realised that he knew nothing about it, why on earth didn't she make her escape immediately? Anyway, be that as it may, through a convoluted process Riley is then employed to teach the Earl's nieces how to behave on the Marriage Mart. As if! A ridiculous idea in the circumstances. And the Earl and Riley are attracted to each other, but he needs to marry for money. Oh, and at the same time, through some dastardly plot by a cousin who wants the money Riley never knew she had, someone's trying to kill her. Because, as the prologue tells us - now, wouldn't it have been more interesting to keep this information hidden, Ms Boyle? - Riley is actually the granddaughter of a countess and the heir to the title and lands herself. I don't know where the comedy was. All I saw was ludicrous farce, in scene after scene which made me cringe. Cousin Felicity - how irritating was she?! And her nosey friend. And Mason, the Earl's, friends too! As for the nieces, I can't really comment, because they were so poorly drawn I didn't find out anything at all about them. They could have been interesting characters, but instead they were shadowy, caricatured sketches. And then Ms Boyle is another writer who doesn't appear to consider that it's important to make her characters *sound* authentic. I don't mean that she should pepper dialogue with eighteenth-century slang; but at the very least her characters should *not* use contemporary American phrasing! I lost count of the number of times I winced when a character said something which was completely wrong either for the country or the period. I definitely made a mistake buying this book.
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