AztecLady does Mary Balogh, Slightly Dangerous
Tuesday, February 10, 2009Posted in: AztecLady Reviews
Tags:Mary Balogh, Slightly series
Slightly Dangerous, by Mary Balogh
In my recent review of Slightly Married I alluded to my favorite novel in that six-book series-Slightly Dangerous, the last title of the sextet, is it.
It has excellently done humor, great characters, and excellent pacing, as well as clever plotting and much better writing than the other five titles put together. Plus, we finally see the Duke we all love to hate get his comeuppance 😀 what’s not to love?
Here’s the awful blurb:
All of London is abuzz over the imminent arrival of Wulfric Bedwyn, the reclusive, cold-as-ice Duke of Bewcastle, at the most glittering social event of the season. Some whisper of a tragic love affair. Others say he is so aloof and passionless that not even the greatest beauty could capture his attention. But on this dazzling afternoon, one woman did catch the Duke’s eye-and she was the only female in the room who wasn’t even trying. Christine Derrick is intrigued by the handsome Duke… all the more so when he invites her to become his mistress.
What red-blooded woman wouldn’t enjoy a tumble in the bedsheets with a consummate lover-with no strings and no questions asked. An infuriating lady with very definite views on men, morals and marriage, Christine confounds Wulfric at every turn. Yet even as the lone wolf of the Bedwyn clan vows to seduce her any way he can, something strange and wonderful is happening. Now for a man who thought he’d never lose his heart, nothing less than love will do…
Dear lord, that blurb? what a load of melodramatic bullshit-and again, where’s the actual novel in all that? Other than the names and rank of the protagonists: nothing whatsoever.
The set up for the conflict is this: to celebrate the engagement of her sister, Lady Renable organizes a house party during the summer. Finding herself short one lady, she presses her dear friend Mrs Christine Derrick to attend the same. The lure is the opportunity to meet that most mythical of characters, the cold, arrogant-and still single, nacth!-Duke of Bewcastle.
While Christine is quite indifferent to his grace’s social standing, fortune or influence, she is leery to attend a high society meeting, and certain she’ll be bored in the best of cases, and upset in the worst. For his part, Wulfric is not pleased, at all, to find himself attending a traditional house party instead of the gathering of intellectuals his friend Hector, Earl of Mowbray (Lady Renable’s brother) had led him to believe he could expect.
The ensuing hijinks are both hilarious and moving, as these two clash over everything-and nothing. Being, as they are, so utterly different in position and outlook, they themselves find it nigh impossible to believe that any sort of relationship between them could develop, let alone work. And so the reader has a first row seat as both Christine and Wulfric are, first, baffled by their mutual attraction, and later, resistant to give in to it.
Most of the conflict in the novel is, therefore, internal. There is a smallish, secondary plot thread, involving Christine’s marriage that both informs her character and provides opportunities for her and Wulfric’s interactions to become deeper, more significant.
Despite the name, Wulfric is actually a wonderful character. He is as cold, impassible, arrogant and high-handed in this novel as he is purported to be in the previous five-yet he is also shown to be human and, as such, vulnerable to human frailties. Part of what makes the novel work is seeing for the first time the full extent of Wulf’s loneliness-and follow him as he realizes that he wants, needs, and deserves, more.
Christine is one of the best heroines Ms Balogh has ever created. Her sense of humor and personal integrity are just off the charts. Widowed fairly young and estranged from her late husband’s family, she now leads a very limited life with her mother and spinster eldest sister. While not happy, Christine is content with her lot-mostly because she is able and more than willing to find joy in small things around her.
What makes her such an excellent character is that she is not all sunshine and flowers, at least in her internal dialogue. She is very aware of how shabbily her political family has treated her, and is occasionally bitter over it-as well as over other, perhaps a bit shallower things, such as how other members of high society perceive her.
The plotting and pacing are excellent, and the writing voice has improved greatly in the intervening novels. There are several moments in the novel where my breath stopped in my throat and I marveled at how well a scene, a confrontation, a revelation, were done.
There is a rather large cast of secondary characters, many of which were introduced in the course of the previous five titles in the Slightly series. A similar number are recurring characters from two previous interconnected novels, One Night for Love and A Summer to Remember (both of which are great, by the way).
For a newcomer to Ms Balogh’s oeuvre, some of these characters may seem slightly cartoonish-a tad too exaggerated in their defining characteristics, such as the harridan of an elderly female relative determined to arrange her nephew’s marriage; the double-faced villain; the vain and vapid misses, etc. Yet, all of them create a vivid portrait of a world in which one’s actions were in a very real way defined by one’s social station and financial circumstances.
Slightly Dangerous is a wonderful novel on its own merits, and a great conclusion to the Slightly series. 8.25 out of 10
This novel is available through amazon.com here and through amazon uk here.
GrowlyCub
February 10
3:28 pm
By the time I got to Wulfric, my only thought was ‘not *another* mesalliance’, which more or less made it impossible to deeply enjoy this book.
And you’ve put your finger on why I’ve had such trouble with both the Slightly and the Simply series!
I have a majorly bad reaction to all things slapstick so this insight finally crystallized why I cannot connect.
That’s exactly it. I cannot get past the cartoonish-ness. I think those 10 books were such disappointment because the two preceding ones ‘One Summer to Remember’ and ‘One Night for Love’ were so fabulous.
Thanks for putting your finger on it for me. Fictionwise just sent me an email with a 50% micro-rebate for the new book and I think I’ll take the plunge and hope she comes back to her old glory.
Btw, have you ever read ‘The Double Wager’? If so, I’d love to chat about it.
AztecLady
February 10
3:37 pm
Hey, Growly!
I haven’t read The Double Wager, sorry–and I’m not sure I’ll get the new title anytime soon (between the overwhelming TBR mountain and a certain fatigue with Ms Balogh’s work…)
I hope to review both One Night for Love and A Summer to Remember at some point–they are really good novels.
BevQB
February 10
11:55 pm
It’s been quite a while since I read this series, so bear with me if I get some details wrong. But I remember being pleasantly surpised by this final book. As a reader, I always suspected that Wulfric hid a little core of warmth underneath his aristocratic chilliness, but I didn’t want him to suddenly turn into a hot mess upon meeting his “twue wuv” either. If I remember right, Balogh played this just about right. Eventually Christine’s influence allowed him to let his guard down every now and then, even in front of his younger siblings. In fact, wasn’t it his sister, Freyja, who THANKED Christine when Wulfric actually cast off some of his haughtiness to PLAY with his siblings a bit?
Speaking of Freyja, now THERE’S a character that I both hated and liked. But I have to give her props because NOBODY wanted to piss Freyja off! You just can’t completely hate a young woman in that time period who scared grown men, now can you?
Tuscan Capo
February 12
8:06 am
Ok, totally off-the-subject-of-review question here, but can one of you kind ladies who are familiar with this author please tell me how Balogh is pronounced? My Aunt says she wants to order this series and her English isn’t the best in the world and her book shop order person can’t speak her dialect (she detests ordering online – gotta forgive her, she’s almost 111). So if I make the trip to her local book store I want to get it right for her. Thanks and appreciate it!
GrowlyCub
February 12
1:42 pm
TC,
from her website:
“How is my name pronounced? It is the question I am asked most often, apart from “Where do you get your ideas?” Balogh is a Hungarian name. The a is short, the h best ignored. My husband tells people to rhyme our name with Kellogg’s Corn Flakes. I tell them that as long as people are saying my name, I don’t much care how they pronounce it!”
Janet W
February 12
2:55 pm
My bad but I just can’t love One Night for Love enough because I LOVED A Summer to Remember — that’s why ding ding ding it’s so important to read books in order! Even know when Neville shows up, I get a bit of a hmmmm, you sure put Lauren through Holy H*ll! Which is wrong of me I know!
OK, who’s thinking Lady Muir’s book is going to rock. I’ve read speculation that her marriage was pretty ghastly, and that the fall and miscarriage were part of it: how about she marries Viscount Kimble? I always liked him! I just wish we could see Jocelyn and Jane again, what a marvelous couple! Maybe an epilogue to Jocelyn’s sister’s book. That would be great.
I’ve read Then Comes Seduction — liked it — it’s a very English summer book (the setting) and the heroine reminded me a little of the younger Bedwyn sister. Intellectually strong and centred with a bedrock belief in love, the power of, as it were.
GrowlyCub
February 12
3:16 pm
I keep seeing references for Viscount Kimble and I have zero recollection of him. Refresh my memory, please? Thanks! I just started a re-read of ‘One Summer to Remember’.
I haven’t read those later books in a while, but I always thought Lady Muir was in a love match, so I’m really surprised to see that hypothesis! I hope she writes Gwen’s book first. I didn’t care much for the mistress books, and prequels are always iffy.
Janet W
February 12
5:14 pm
Visount Kimble — More than a Mistress. Plus he danced with Aiden’s wife at her ball in Slightly Married. Kimble, blond I think, gorgeous, would gladly have taken Jane off Jocelyn’s hands LOL!
I can’t remember WHERE I read that about Gwen but she NEVER talks about her husband.
Tuscan Capo
February 12
5:38 pm
Thank you GrowlyCub! I’ll look up her website, too.
Janet W
February 12
5:52 pm
Not to flog a dead Viscount (sorry about the spelling!) but I’d love any insights into Gwen’s story … maybe I read them on marybalogh.com OR her yahoo mail group (which is really fun) … sometimes she has draws for new books which is so great!
AztecLady
March 24
3:37 pm
For GrowlyCub: have you read Tumperkin’s post on too many dukes and too much scandal in historical romance? 😀 If you haven’t, you sooooo should!
Karen Knows Best
April 25
6:59 pm
[…] you, I’m fond of many of Ms Balogh’s work—to wit, my review of Slightly Dangeorus. And, while I’ve yet to review Lord Carew’s Bride, it’s a favorite with one of the most […]