Yasmin’s reputation is tainted by her mother’s association with the Emperor Napoleon, and Giles certainly doesn’t need more scandal in his family. If only he could stay away from her…
In a paradoxical way, though the author gave me more of the drama I’d complained was missing in How to Be a Wallflower, I disliked this book more. Indeed it made me grind my teeth I was so irritated with it sometimes.
It is well-written, yes, which is true of pretty much all of James’s books. The relationship between Yasmin and her grandfather is adorable. I like that Yasmin is confident in herself and her worth, despite being rather looked down upon by most of society.
But the hero shames her, and shames her often – about her reputation, the way she conducts herself, especially the clothes she wears – he teeters between admiring her and then slut-shaming her for those very qualities. And though Giles does end up coming round on his opinion of her, I did not feel that he really understood how horribly he treated Yasmin, and I don’t feel he ought to have been forgiven.
The character that really put me in danger of going to see my dentist, though, was Giles’s sister Lydia. When we met her in the first book, she seemed like a timid but likable debutante, which only makes her appearances in this book that much more shocking. She has it out for Yasmin as she believes her to be a loose woman, and her virulence is only the more alarming because she also happens to be a massive hypocrite.
I don’t care that Lydia is sexually active – but it did make me steam how neither she nor Giles acknowledge how obviously she holds Yasmin to a different standard than she does herself. And the fact that she does not ever repent in the book, and that Yasmin doesn’t hold anything against her is the icing on the cake. The author does make it clear how Lydia’s upbringing and life experiences led her to behave as she does, but it’s really not an excuse. People like Lydia certainly get away with this kind of behavior in real life, but it’s a bummer to see it echoed in a Regency romance, of all places.
