Good news, we apparently hit rock bottom with the covers during Hello Stranger, and there’s nowhere to go but up. This cover is way better on the dress front, although…that hair. I don’t know. Let’s just be glad that she’s not dressed like she’s going to her junior prom circa 2010.
I tried to go into this book with an open mind, but…eh. It turned out to be pretty much what I expected — not great, not terrible, just a little too self-indulgent and not my cup of tea.
The main issue with this book is that it’s just…nothing special at all. Phoebe is boring. West is boring. I might have liked either of them better if they had each been paired up with someone more interesting, but together they are boring x2. I’ll admit that I’m not really one for the Rake/Spunky Heroine trope (I generally like more extreme opposites, like Rake/Fragile Virgin or Nice Guy/Scheming Woman), but even still, Phoebe and West aren’t very exciting takes on their archetypes. He’s a watered-down rake, and she’s a watered-down spunky heroine, and their whole relationship feels very paint-by-numbers. Romance is supposed to be formulaic, sure, but Phoebe and West lack the chemistry to make me enjoy seeing the formula play out.
So we begin at Pandora and Gabriel’s wedding, which took place sometime during the midpoint of book #3. This series has a lot of overlapping timelines, which would be fine if we had ever gotten a hint that any of these things were happening at the same time. So while West was hanging around making snarky jokes during book #3, he also was apparently falling madly in love. Half the events of book #4 also occur during this book and everyone sort of breezes by A) a nationalist bomb plot and B) West having a half-brother.
Also, like…surely Pandora’s wedding was something that should’ve been in Pandora’s book. But no. Anyway, the Challons are off to attend their brother Gabriel’s wedding to Pandora Ravenel. Phoebe is accompanied by her two young sons; her husband, Henry, died two years ago after a long illness. He’d been sick since childhood, but he and Phoebe were always best friends and she wanted to marry him anyway, even though they both knew that he would die young. Phoebe is just coming out of mourning now, and this is her first big social event since Henry’s death.
Full disclosure: I lowkey developed a bias towards Henry within the first ten pages of this book. I was a wannabe goth in middle/high school, so pale skinny consumptive boys are 100% my jam. I would’ve been into a book about Henry and Phoebe, tbh.
So Phoebe is mad salty about having to attend the wedding, because Pandora is a Ravenel, which means she must be related to West Ravenel, who is a “mean, rotten bully.” Is Phoebe twelve years old? Apparently West used to bully the shit out of Henry when they were at boarding school together, because Henry was a runty emo kid who liked to read instead of play sports or whatever, and Henry would write home to Phoebe about what a total dick this West Ravenel guy was. Phoebe’s hated West ever since, and Henry also stayed salty about him until his dying day.
They arrive at the Ravenel estate, and Phoebe’s older son, Justin, promptly runs off to explore. Phoebe runs after him, and they both encounter a random, extremely attractive stranger. A stranger who’s good with her son and makes Phoebe feel all fluttery inside in ways she has never felt before, not even when she was married! WHO COULD THIS MAN BE. Phoebe’s all twitterpated, but then he introduces himself as West Ravenel and she shuts down.
Over in West’s POV, he’s all, “This woman is the most beautiful woman I have ever seen! I, a cold-hearted rake, have never been more interested in a woman in my life!” He hits it off with Justin immediately by talking to him about animals and shit, and is confused when Phoebe is all huffy with him. She waltzes off and West self-flagellates about how he’s totally a cold-hearted rake and a bad influence and he was probably just going to corrupt her and her son anyway, so it’s a good thing that she apparently hates him.
Pandora rocks up and the book whacks us with some anvils about how she and Gabriel are sO pErFeCt for each other and he respects and values her individuality and didn’t at all spend their book being a condescending dick. YOU THINK I’VE FORGOTTEN, LISA KLEYPAS, BUT I HAVEN’T. Pandora lazily exposits that she thinks Phoebe and West would be just perfect for each other; Phoebe’s probably just being cold because she’s still grieving the loss of her husband. Pandora tells West all about Phoebe and Henry’s tragic relationship, because I guess that that’s just information that she had on hand and feels comfortable spreading around. West is like, “They probably just got married because she was having someone else’s baby and he didn’t have anything else to do besides waiting to die.” Pandora scolds West for being cynical and West’s like, “It’s because I’m a cold-hearted rake, bro.”
(Sidebar: for all this series’ flaws, it gave me the phrase “cold-hearted rake“, which will probably stop never being hilarious and apt.)
West and Pandora’s not-banter is interrupted by the arrival of Tom Severin, probably the hero of the next book as Cassandra’s love interest. He’s a Rake and Cassandra is a Fragile Virgin, so I hope their book will push more of my buttons than this one does. Severin is described as being lanky and hot in an unconventional way:
“Severin’s face was lean and angular, his build lanky and almost rawboned, his complexion librarian pale. His eyes were an unevenly distributed mixture of blue and green, so that in strong lighting they appeared to be two entirely different colors.”
Oh, God, he’s totally modeled on Benedict Cumberbatch, isn’t he?
West exposits that Severin started out as an engineer and eventually built a railway empire through the power of his own genius. He’s drinking buddies with all of our protagonists, but no one really likes him because he’s willing to steamroll over his friends to make money. West is particularly pissed at him because Severin tried to steal the rights to some of the Ravenels’ land for himself in book #2, and he’s all like, “You can’t sit with us, Severin!” Severin’s all snarky and arrogant about how he knows West hates him, but he had nothing better to do so he thought he’d crash this wedding anyway. Heh.
They exchange some vague threats and then Severin swans off to not hit on Cassandra or foreshadow the next book or anything useful like that. Pandora drags West over to meet her in-laws. Phoebe is standoffish, but the rest of the Challons all love West, especially Sebastian. Sebastian wants to go on a tour of the estate to learn about farming, and Gabriel volunteers Phoebe to go along, since she’s going to have to manage her husband’s estate until her son is old enough to inherit it. Phoebe gets mad and insists that her current estate manager — Edward Larson, Henry’s cousin — is doing just fine using traditional methods. West is like, “WELL, ACTUALLY” and speechifies at her that estates have to be modernized. This is the Victorian era now and the landed gentry is on a decline and they have to embrace new technology in order to keep estate farming profitable! West, all the tractors in the world aren’t going to save you from World War I and the end of the British Empire’s colonial wealth.
Phoebe’s like, “Okay, you’re right, but you’re being kind of a dick about it.” West apologizes to her and promises to be “gentler” next time, if she’s picking up what he’s putting down. They stare at each other and are all heaving breaths, husky voices, etc. Then Phoebe leaves with Gabriel, leaving West with Sebastian and Pandora. Wait, so they were doing their whole sexy eye contact thing with her family watching? Awkward. Sebastian offers to introduce West and Pandora to his friends, and he assures West that he finds West’s reformed rake thing totally #relatable. In fact, he ships West and Phoebe already! Not that he says that, but that’s where this is going.
Meanwhile, Phoebe drags Gabriel off to yell at him for making her hang out with West. She tells him that West was the one who bullied Henry in boarding school, and Gabriel’s like, “Eh, boys will be boys.” He tells her that the Ravenels were poor and had bad home lives, so there’s totally an excuse for their behavior. Besides, West only like, stole Henry’s stuff and called him names, so it wasn’t that bad. Phoebe asks why Gabriel is going so hard for West instead of her actual husband, and Gabriel’s like, “Because everyone in this book is obligated to make heavy-handed comments about what a good person he actually is to justify your relationship.” Not in so many words. He adds that West’s mansplaining was actually good for Phoebe, since most people are too cowed by their family’s title to be honest with them. Phoebe adds that Gabriel must like Pandora because she’s always honest, and Gabriel makes a bunch of over-the-top comments about how much he loves her.
The worst part of these Wallflowers/Ravenels crossover books is how ham-fisted they are — honestly, to a degree that I think is beyond even most romance novels. Previous couples have always popped up in romance series before — I’m not arguing that that’s weird — but their domestic bliss is usually shown instead of being hammered into our heads via the narration or dialogue. At worst, there’s usually just a few comments about how the rake has been domesticated and now everyone’s happy. The constant stream of characters remarking on how happy and perfect Sebastian and Evie’s kids are is…exhausting.
ANYWAY. Kathleen pops up and shows Phoebe around the house, and they bond a bit over being widows. I mean, Kathleen’s husband was abusive and died like two hours after they were married, while Phoebe married her childhood sweetheart and had two kids with him, but go off, I guess. Kathleen leaves Phoebe to get dressed for dinner, and Phoebe’s maid brings out a floral “ecru” dress that is described as the dress on the cover to a T. Phoebe’s like, “I think this whole off-the-shoulder look isn’t very Victorian, but whatever.” (ETA: Well, I guess depending where we are in the 1800s, it could be. Sigh. You win this time, book.) She’s reluctant to stop wearing mourning colors, but she puts it on and goes down to the drawing room.
The drawing room is full of characters from the Wallflowers series and their offspring. Phoebe name-checks Merritt Sterling née Marsden — Marcus and Lillian’s daughter who was born in Scandal in Spring — as her best friend, and they chat a bit about Phoebe’s encounter with West. Merritt is sympathetic towards Phoebe and Henry’s grudge against West, although she then suggests that it was probably easier for Henry to hate a specific person than to admit his disease didn’t let him be like the other boys. And thus the apologia begins!
I mean, I don’t think shit you did at the age of twelve should define you forever. I don’t have a problem with that part of the book in theory. It’s just…so blatantly obvious what’s happening. This is what I mean by “paint-by-the-numbers” — I feel like I can literally see the marks being checked off when events happen: here’s where Phoebe first thinks that West probably wasn’t that bad. Here’s where she admits that Henry wasn’t perfect. Here’s where West shows what a good person he is, and so on.
Everyone goes in for dinner, and Phoebe and West end up seated next to each other. West apologizes again and they end up bantering with each other. West asks how Phoebe’s children got their names, and Phoebe starts to explain that her younger son Stephen was named after a book that Henry liked, then remembers that someone stole the book from Henry at school. She and Henry always suspected that West stole it, which West seems to confirm when he clams up at the mention of the name.
Then Phoebe notices that West is acting weird, and he tells her that the woman on his other side keeps putting her hand on his leg. Phoebe recognized the woman as Dolly, Pandora’s unhappily married friend from book #3. (Seriously, you cannot start this book series in the middle.) She’s been having affairs with younger, better-looking men than her husband ever since she got married, and now she’s trying to feel West up under the table. Phoebe tells Dolly to knock it off, except she does it in a way that feels kind of unnecessarily mean girl-ish:
“In the next instant, however, Lady Colwick snatched her hand back. “I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about.”
Phoebe wasn’t deceived. A guilty blush had infused the young woman’s cheeks, and the set of her rosebud lips had turned distinctly sullen. “Must I explain?” she asked very softly. “This gentleman does not enjoy being poked and pried like an oyster at Billingsgate Market while he tries to have his dinner. Kindly keep your hands to yourself.”
I don’t know what I find unpleasant about this particularly. The best description I can come up with is that it feels like one of those “And then everybody on the bus clapped” stories. Phoebe subtly gets Dolly to remove her hand! But that doesn’t make Phoebe look good enough, so Dolly sasses her, so Phoebe has to sass her back and assert her superior morality and feistiness! Tag yourself, I’m the oyster at Billingsgate Market.
And then, one of the footmen finds Phoebe’s display of Spunky Heroine-ness amusing, so West threatens to demote him:
“Any more snickering,” Mr. Ravenel warned softly, “and tomorrow you’ll be demoted to hall boy.”
“Yes, sir.”
Threatening the working class when they remind you that they’re living beings and not statues! That’s hot. Phoebe legitimately seems to think so, because she and West stare at each other for a while afterwards and she gets all twitterpated by his eyes. I mean, this scene actually has convinced me that Phoebe and West are perfect for each other, although probably not in the way it was meant to.
West and Phoebe start discussing the menu, and Phoebe tells West that she hasn’t had real food in years, because Henry’s romance-novel-neosis made him incapable of digesting anything stronger than boiled, unseasoned food. Uh, I don’t see how that was stopping him from having a normal British diet? Just kidding; Phoebe says that Henry always told her to eat whatever she wanted, but she felt guilty about eating rich food when he couldn’t, so she never did. West nicely says that Henry dealt with his condition better than West would have. Phoebe warms up to West complimenting Henry.
They have dinner and Phoebe practically has an orgasm over eating real food for the first time in years in West’s company. Do you see the metaphor here? Do you? They get a little tipsy and West overshares about his alcoholic past and how he was healed through the power of responsibility. Phoebe thinks that that’s hot, again, some more.
Pandora and Gabriel’s wedding is the next day. West wakes up all sexually frustrated over Phoebe, but then he self-flagellates some more about how he’s not good enough for her. Whatever. Rhys Winterborne literally disavowed his love interest to her face for like 200 pages and he didn’t angst nearly this much. Anyway, West meets Devon for breakfast and they chat about how Devon’s successfully managed to get all the Ravenel sisters married off, except Cassandra. Aw, Cassandra 🙁 I hope her book is good, I really do. I’ve mentioned that the Rake/Fragile Virgin trope is Lisa Kleypas’s strong suit, so hopefully that’s a return to form. Devon brings up that it’s about marrying time for West, too — say, maybe he should marry Phoebe, since they were getting along so well last night. West gets all mad that marriage is a trap, and he won’t let himself be controlled by anyone again. He emos that his traumatic childhood was full of people who didn’t have his best interest in mind, and he was an outsider at school for being poor and it turned him into a bully, and he still feels like an outsider now. Devon just shrugs that life is about compromising with people, and you might as well compromise with a hot woman who you’re legally allowed to sleep with. West doesn’t like that at all.
Then West gets his finger stuck in a teacup. When he gets it free, the following dialogue ensues:
“So glad your right hand is free again,” [Devon] said in a conversational tone. “Especially since it seems that for the foreseeable future, you’ll be making frequent use of it.”
Hee. I like literally all the background characters in this book better than the main two.
Pandora and Gabriel get married. Pandora is quirky about it and the narration is heavy-handed about it. West spends the ceremony lusting after Phoebe and thinking about how good she is with her kids and how he’ll never be good enough to be their stepfather. SIGH.
The next day, the Challons and West go on their tour of the estate farms. Phoebe and West argue, again, some more, over old-versus-new methods of farming and it’s written like a manual and it’s totally boring. I say this as someone who once paid international shipping for a copy of Rilla of Ingleside with historical endnotes. Anyway, so all the aristocrats go trolling around with the tenant farmers and the poor folk are all amazed that a duke would deign speak to the unwashed masses, blah blah condescension blah. Sebastian continues to be charmed by West and the narration is totally unsubtle about how Sebastian admires West’s traditional masculinity and thinks of him as an equal, unlike Henry. Can I also just say, the way the narration is constantly stepping out of tight 3rd-person POV to drop these anvils is annoying. Sebastian isn’t a POV character. We shouldn’t know what he’s thinking so explicitly.
West shows Justin a tractor and they bond some more, to Phoebe’s disconcertion. One of the tenant farmers offers to show her around, and he unsubtly tells her that she should get with West. This is another thing I hate: when books have characters make unusually forward and definitive statements about how perfect the main couple is together. Like, why is this rando farmer telling a strange upper-class woman that she should marry his boss? Even if it were an appropriate comment for him to make, why would he even think that? He doesn’t know anything about her; he has no reason to think that she and West would be good together.
I realize all I’m doing is shitting on this book, but like…it just keeps throwing all my pet peeves and least favorite tropes into the story. I’m trying to find things to like, but it’s…it’s not happening.
Then Justin follows a barn cat into a bull pen and everyone freaks out. West saves him, injuring himself in the process. Phoebe takes it upon herself to inspect his wound, and West gets all mad that she’s fussing over him. She calms him down and they stare at each other some more and then Phoebe gets distracted by his abs.
Sebastian is impressed again, some more, by West saving his grandson’s life. Phoebe worries to him that Justin is going to get more attached to West now, and Sebastian’s like, “Not a problem, I am 500% ready for him to be my son-in-law.” Phoebe reminds him that Henry’s cousin, Edward, has expressed interest in her. Sebastian snarks that Edward is “tepid” just like Henry:
“I can’t help but question how my spirited daughter could fix her choice, once again, on a tepid Larson male. Is your blood really so thin that it calls for such milk-warm companionship?”
Phoebe stopped in her tracks, while outrage raced through her like wildfire. “Henry was not tepid!”
“No,” her father allowed, stopping to face her, “Henry did have one passion, and that was you. It’s why I eventually consented to the marriage, despite knowing the burden you would have to shoulder.”
LEAVE MY DEAD EMO BOYFRIEND ALONE, DAMN.
They go back to the house and find out that Justin’s gotten attached to the cat that he followed into the bull pen. This becomes a subplot. Phoebe decides to go check on West and walks in on him shirtless. She’s all twitterpated by how masculine he is (unlike her milksop husband! Because Henry was SKINNY and WEAK, if you’ll recall) and helps him put his shirt on. She’s all, “How can I ever repay you for saving my son’s life!” and West says that he has something to tell her. He reveals that he was, in fact, the one who stole Henry’s book at boarding school, and he returns it to Phoebe. He tells her that he meant to make fun of Henry for reading it, and especially because Phoebe had put a note in the front of the book basically IDing herself as Henry’s giiiirlfriend at the time. But instead West ended up reading the book and enjoying it, because he was just a sad lonely kid deep down, so he kept it. Phoebe left a bunch of Xs in the book as “kisses” for Henry, and West says that he used to pretend that they were for him. So in a way, it’s like he’s been in love with her all along! West apologizes and says he always felt bad about it, and Phoebe forgives him. She won’t take the book back, though, and West is like, “No, I insist!” and Phoebe’s all, “No, I insist!” and finally they start tussling and they fall on each other’s lips.
Making out ensues, and then Phoebe’s like, “We mustn’t!” and runs away. Then there’s a totally unnecessary interlude chapter featuring the OG Wallflowers. I mean, it’s kind of cute to see all the characters together again, but it has nothing to do with anything and I’m just trying to make it to the end of this book.
Evie tries to tell Sebastian to dial back his vocal Phoebe/West shipping, and Sebastian proceeds to say more dickish things about his dead son-in-law. He repeats that Henry wasn’t strong enough for Phoebe, and he’d much prefer that she get with West, who’s a “healthy young buck with sharp wits and a full supply of manly vigor.”
Full offense: the Challons are assholes. Every single one of them is like, “I loved Henry like a son! But his degenerative disease was so unmanly.”
Sebastian makes the admittedly fair point that Henry’s condition meant that Phoebe spent most of their marriage being his nurse as well as his wife. It’s rough when your partner has a long-term illness and you become their caretaker, and it does affect relationships. And of course, in the Victorian era, the fact that Henry couldn’t work and was definitely going to widow Phoebe would be a huge cause of concern for her security. But also…the protagonists are douches about someone they supposedly loved and Henry’s illness is framed like some kind of failure of masculinity. I find both of those things unpalatable.
Justin gets more and more attached to the barn cat and it’s meant to be cute in a “kids with puppies” kind of way. Phoebe refuses to adopt the cat, but whatever, you know she’s going to. Phoebe goes out for a walk with her kids and they run into West while they’re out. West and Justin bond some more and Phoebe and West flirt some more. The kids’ nanny makes some remarks to Phoebe about how awesome West is — although much less obnoxiously than everyone else in the book, because she sticks to complimenting West and doesn’t speechify that he and Phoebe are meant2b. Phoebe exposits that Henry asked her on his deathbed to marry his cousin, and the nanny’s like, “That was kind of a shitty thing to ask you tbh.” Fair enough.
West and Phoebe make plans to go over her estate’s accounts the next day. Devon also stops by and tells West that all their land is doing well except for an estate in Norfolk. They could sell it, or West could move there and modernize it and maybe…omg…get married and raise a family there. West bleats on about how his past is too shameful for Phoebe to accept, which — I mean, honestly, I’m glad that West at least feels a little bad for being a ~cold-hearted rake~, but also, I don’t really care about him or his problems, so.
Phoebe shows up to their business meeting and is all twitterpated to see West dressed nicely. She thinks about how she knows what’s under his clothes, like his various bruises and “a tan line below the waist.” I’m sorry, that just makes me picture West having a pasty ass like Hank Hill. Anyway, West shows her the Ravenel account books and tells her what to look for, and advises that she should look at her own estate’s books when she gets back. Phoebe gets all fidgety about the idea of asking Edward about money and West’s all, “You can do it! You’re a strong, independent woman!” Phoebe explains a little more that Henry’s family doesn’t believe in becoming too familiar with their tenants because they are Bad Aristocrats. West is offended by this because he is a Good Aristocrat. Phoebe keeps defending Edward, and West cottons on that she promised Henry that she would marry Edward after he was gone.
He’s all, “I can’t believe you would marry him when you so obviously have all this sexual tension with ME.” Phoebe says that she hasn’t been attracted to anyone since Henry, and West is disbelieving. He fingers her in the study to prove it, and at one point he offers to go down on her. Phoebe’s all shocked by the idea, because I guess we’re building up to the idea that she only thought her sex life with Henry was satisfactory, but once she sleeps with A Strong Man, she’s going to realize that Henry was bad in bed. Whatever. When they’re done, West is all snarky and dismissive of her, and Phoebe feels used. She snaps at him and storms off.
Over in West’s POV, he feels guilty over shaming her after they made out. He’s all, “I only did it because my self-esteem is so low!” He goes to apologize to her the next day, and admits that he was being a dick because he was jealous. Phoebe snips that she can still make her own decisions and she might not marry Edward after all. West’s like, “Well, you still can’t marry me, because I’m not good enough for you.” The Challons leave — West takes the barn cat back from Justin — and everyone is very emo.
Hilariously, Devon catches West being all emo and tells him to just go confess his feelings to Phoebe. “Sweet mother of God, can you hear yourself?” West asked without turning around. “I’d get more manly advice from Kathleen.” Hee. I bet Kathleen would kick West’s ass and I’d love to see it. Also, where are Garrett and her threats of castration? I miss her.
West goes to do some farm work and all the farmers notice he’s in a bad mood. They all drop more anvils about how he totally needs to get laid and that Phoebe chick would be perfect for him. Can any of these supporting characters talk about something besides how much they ship West/Phoebe? Then Justin’s barn cat starts following West around, and West takes that as a sign that he should go see Phoebe.
West has the the cat delivered to the train station on the way back to the Challons’ estate. Phoebe’s kids squeal over the cat, who they name “Galoshes.” Phoebe’s sister is like, “Well, maybe Galoshes can be domesticated and turned into a house cat…JUST LIKE WEST.” Phoebe sees West across the train platform and they make dramatic eye contact for a few seconds before he leaves.
Three months later, Phoebe’s settled in at her estate and is trying to get the account books from Edward. MYSTERIOUSLY, he keeps forgetting to bring them to her. Phoebe is upset and Edward condescends that he didn’t realize finances were sooo important to her. I think Edward might be a villain, you guys. Anyway, there’s some drama with Phoebe’s mother-in-law, who can’t let go of Henry and is mad that Phoebe’s trying to redecorate the house. She’s going to recuperate in Italy for a bit, and Edward is going to accompany her. Phoebe jumps at the chance to get her hands on the account books while he’s gone.
Before he leaves, Edward semi-proposes to Phoebe and kisses her. Phoebe shrugs that it was nice, but it wasn’t as awesome as making out with West. Phoebe also has a talk with Henry’s mom. She wants Phoebe to marry Edward so he can manage the estate, and Phoebe’s all, “I can do it myself, because I’m a strong, independent woman!”
Phoebe gets the account books but finds out that they use a bunch of terminology that she doesn’t understand, and some of the numbers appear to be missing. She muses that she could send for West, but then she’d have to put him up at the estate, where he’d be alone with her. She considers having him help her with the accounts AND starting an affair with him, because neither of them are married so why not. She sends off a telegram asking for him to visit, and then immediately starts biting her nails that it was inappropriate. She also receives letters from Helen and Pandora telling her a bit about the events of book #3, and mentioning that Helen wants West and Garrett to hook up. Oh, Helen, your taste is too good for this book. Phoebe gets all salty that West might have hooked up with Garrett.
But not to worry, because West shows up literally the day after she sends the telegram! He also has a beard now, which Phoebe thinks is super hot. She tries to pry a bit about his relationship with Garrett, and West mentions that Garrett is getting married to Ethan Ransom. So I guess we’re actually past the point of book #4 now? Whatever, I don’t care enough to keep up. Phoebe tells West that she’s been thinking that they should just have an affair, since she’s super sexually frustrated and neither of them really want to get married again. West self-flagellates that he’s not even good enough to have an affair with. OH MY GOD, JUST SLEEP TOGETHER ALREADY, I AM TIRED.
West thinks about a conversation that he had with Ethan before he left to visit Phoebe: Ethan’s getting married to Garrett, and West’s all like, “Ugh, but like, monogamy is boring.” Hasn’t he been bleating on about how Phoebe’s the only woman he can think about anymore for the entire book? Whatever. Ethan snarks that “[Garrett is] the delight of my soul. Also, I know better than to betray a woman with her own collection of scalpels.” Hee. I love them. West finally gets to the root of his issues, which is that his dad used to beat him, and he’s afraid that he’ll be violent with any kids he has. Ethan’s like, “Nah, probably not” and West is like, “Cool, thanks.”
Wait, so…is that the source of all of West’s cold-hearted rakitude? I totally forgot about this in the intervening years, but my impression from the earlier books in this series was that ~something~ had happened to West while he lived in London to make him an emo alcoholic. Like, he and Devon had the same shitty childhood, but it was implied — or I thought it was implied — that something dark had happened to West to make him extra-cold-hearted. But no. He has a generic traumatic childhood to match his generic rakishness.
Back in the present, Phoebe gives West a tour of the house. They stop in front of a portrait of Henry, described thusly:
“He posed next to a library table with a touch of self-conscious grace, one hand resting lightly on a stack of books. A handsome and touchingly vulnerable man, dark-eyed and chiseled, his complexion as fine as porcelain.”
If you listen carefully, you can hear 13-year-old Em putting Henry down on her list of dream boys, right under Gerard Way, Davey Havok, and Artemis Fowl.
Phoebe and West take the opportunity to discuss Henry, and Phoebe says that she doesn’t want people to worship him as a saint. Henry had his flaws, such as putting on a Phoebe on a pedestal and avoiding conflict — it used to upset him when Phoebe was bad-tempered. West is all, “I accept you as you are and would never put you on a pedestal!”
So they hang out; West spends the day looking through the account books and spends time with Phoebe and her family in the evening. Phoebe’s ovaries are set aflame by how well West interacts with her kids and she decides to seduce him. She does this via…sexy shaving. Okay, whatever. Phoebe tells West that the sound of shaving gives her tingles (seriously). Just think, if this book was set 150 years later, Phoebe could just watch a shaving ASMR video and we could avoid all this drama. West admits that he’s never let anyone shave him because of his traumatic childhood, and Phoebe promises not to hurt him and he promises not to hurt her blah blah they’re not talking about shaving anymore blah. The shaving turns them both on so much that they end up having sex. Naturally, Henry and Phoebe only had vanilla missionary sex and she’s like, amazed that West lets her be on top.
The next day, West finds a suspicious loan in one of the books. It’s for an an insane amount of money and it was borrowed against Justin’s future inheritance. Henry signed it a week before his death. Phoebe freaks out that Henry never consulted her about this, and West says that he’ll get Ethan to spy around and find out what the loan was for. Wow, way to just tell God and everyone that Ethan was a spy. West probably would’ve gotten a bunch of people killed in the Cold War. Phoebe freaks out again, some more, that West is associated with dangerous people like spies, and West is like, “Actually, we’re related, but that’s a long story in another book.” He’s hilariously casual about it.
West and Phoebe discuss farming some more and have sex some more. Then Ethan shows up and tells them that he found out what the loan was for: Edward has a mistress and a son in London that he’s been hiding for the past four years. Phoebe’s like, “Yikes.” She tries to tell West that this proves he is definitely a better person than Edward, but West self-flagellates that one day Justin and Stephen will grow up and hear all the rumors about him because he’s a terrible person and everyone hates him. I think even I was less emo than this as a teenager. They sleep together again but West is all, “I can’t do this anymore!” and runs back to the Ravenel estate.
Edward comes back and Phoebe confronts him about his mistress. Edward is all classist and sexist about how she was too low-class to marry and she chose to sleep with him, so like, it’s not really his fault. Edward says that Henry knew about the mistress and child, and he still thought Edward and Phoebe should marry. See, Phoebe’s dead husband was also a classist and sexist jerk, so it’s okay that she’s moving on from him! Can this book please stop being so mean to my dead goth bf 🙁
Anyway, Phoebe tells Edward that she’ll never marry him and storms off. And — oh thank God, we only have two more chapters left. Back in London, West has been separated from Phoebe for like a week and has already spiraled back into alcoholism and debauchery. He meets up with Severin, who’s like, “Wow, you look like shit, bro.” Severin takes West to Jenner’s and West spills the whole situation to him. Severin just shrugs that West should just marry Phoebe since he clearly wants to and who cares if it fucks her family up? He wouldn’t care about doing what was best for a woman he liked. What a cold-hearted rake, guys.
And then Edward shows up and tries to shoot West for breaking him and Phoebe up. West is all snarky and casual about it, to which Severin says, “Don’t encourage him[…]He might hit me by mistake.” HEE! Severin’s willingness to shit on West at every opportunity is really endearing him to me, I must say. Anyway, Sebastian shows up and saves West. Edward is arrested and Sebastian speechifies to West that he’s already decided to ship West and Phoebe and nothing will change his mind, so West should just shut up and marry her already. I appreciate Sebastian literally calling West’s behavior “tedious self-flagellation”, but also, yes, I get it, Lisa Kleypas’s favorite character ships West/Phoebe so we should too. My head hurts from all the anvils dropped in this book.
Phoebe shows up and speechifies to West that she was strong enough to love Henry through his illness, and she’s strong enough to love West even though he has a dark and troubled past. West speechifies that he’s going to work on his self-esteem issues and be less of a sadsack. Phoebe asks him to marry her and he accepts, and then the book ends there. Wow, that was fast and anticlimactic, but I’m not going to complain because this was such a slog.
This series sadly seems to be slipping from being a guilty pleasure to just being bad. I kind of wonder if Lisa Kleypas mentally checked out of this series somewhere around book #3 and started throwing in Wallflowers characters to make it more interesting for herself. The past few books in this series have been really uneven and I don’t get the vibe that she cares very much about the new characters. West started out interesting but is really bland in this book. Cassandra has pretty much dropped out of the series entirely despite being our next heroine. Past couples like Helen and Winterborne barely get a mention. I liked Hello Stranger, but I don’t know, the first couple of books had a vibrancy that feels lost now.
Anyway, I still have my fingers crossed for Cassandra and Severin. I did like Severin in this book, and as mentioned, I’m pretty partial to the Rake/Fragile Virgin trope. As long as I can mentally repress the interview where Lisa Kleypas compared him to Benedict Cumberbatch’s Sherlock, we should get along just fine.
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