Aunt Sophie's Diamonds
- Joan Smith
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
This was a fun romp, an entertaining farce of a plot and a good deal of humor. It has a likeable MC and a secondary pair, and a wide array of other characters. I really liked the characterization of the heroine, who showed wit and intelligence not expected by others. Aunt Sophie of the title comes across as delightfully eccentric. The standard "mean relative" is played by the heroine's mother, and her selfish and stupid behavior was one of the deterrents to the enjoyment of the book - despite knowing that this is an over-the-top farce, such behavior manages to annoy me. This was my first book by the author, and encouraged me to look out for more of her work.
Imprudent Lady
- Joan Smith
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This book has one of the wittiest banters I have read, and I have read quite a few RR books that involve witty exchanges between the MC. Moreover, the banter in this book is neither a battle of wits nor a trading of insults, just a delightful conversation between two like minds. It had me laughing out quite a bit, so that the family asked me a few times to share the funny things!
The hero and the heroine are so very likeable from the start (and well suited to each other, as we readers know ;-)), and I was really amused by his subtle flirtation. It does not even have any real villains, only the heroine's uncle who is somewhat oblivious to everything except his own purpose but is kind enough to her.
The unnecessary, avoidable misunderstanding before the HEA can be achieved, is a plot device that I don't care for, even though it is a fairly standard trope in the genre. That part of the book prevented it from being an almost 5-star read to me. Overall, I enjoyed it a lot, and encouraged to explore more works by this author.
Escapade
- Joan Smith
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
The heroine is an anonymous columnist of society, and depends on the help of her mother and aunt to 'cover all the bases'. I am not interested in celebrity gossip myself, but I don't dislike this as a premise of the novel. However, the big disconnect is the unerringly stupid way she acts, for all her intelligence we are told about - first she takes it upon himself to pull down the hero without any real insight into his character, and then she prints an unverified gossip from an unreliable source without a single thought. Her seeming to thrive upon gossip undermines both her intelligence and her likeability.
Another negative was the characterization of the potential matches for the hero - all three of them are single-dimensional stereotypes of society ladies the heroes of the genre despise. Typically, the books will have one of these in the role of the ow, but all these in the same party with the single objective of forcing the hero's hand is quite over-the-top. Which brings me to another grouse with the genre - why don't these heroes simply make their stand clear instead of being cornered into situations they despise.
Despite these drawbacks, it was fairly entertaining, with some witty dialogs and amusing incidents - which is what saved this book. And the hero is quite a honorable and sensitive gentleman, with a wonderful sense of humor making the readers root for him.
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