Ursula's Reviews > Wilde in Love

What an unusual story and style for an HR! It was strangely charming yet also seemed to leave me curiously detached from the characters. I will explain. But first to the story.

Lord Alaric was an explorer extraordinaire who had spent years travelling to strange and wonderful places and writing books about them, with rather catchy titles like Wilde in the Andes or Wilde Sargasso Sea (great wordplay) or even Wilde Latitudes. Our heroine, Willa, has not read any of the books and is not a member of the hysterical fan club of females who have turned Alaric into a Georgian version of a popstar.
"You don't like Wilde Sargasso Sea? he asked, glancing at her. "That's my favourite title."

"I prefer Wild Latitudes, if only for the boldness of renaming a significant part of the world after oneself".

"Ouch."

Women are crazy about him, but this is also largely due to the insane popularity of a play that has been running for months in London, a fictional version of one of his adventures. It is called Wilde in Love and includes missionaries and cannibals. Alaric had no idea of this play, not having been in England for some years, and is appalled, especially as it is completely fantastic and has no basis in fact. It also means that the one woman he actually finds interesting and very attractive, Willa, simply does not take him seriously.

Willa is beautiful, as is her friend Lavinia, and the two of them have worked out a method of attracting suitors, but always refuse their offers. (I think Willa had had 14 offers in the last season or two.) It was quite strange to me. They were playing a game and only they knew the rules, so they always won. I am all for rubbishing the notion that a woman's only goal is to marry well, but I felt these two had purposely hidden their real personalities behind a pleasant, interested and decorous mask and it made me a bit uncomfortable. Willa's childhood experiences are supposed to explain her need for order, predicability, security and privacy, yet I still never felt I truly believed in her passion or love.

I did enjoy the hero, (view spoiler)[even though he planned bedding some random trollop early in the book to "get Willa out of his system". (hide spoiler)] and LOVED his commitment to chasing Willa and winning her. (I am over the woman loving hopelessly and yearning for the man or chasing him down. (I am old-fashioned enough to like the idea of being chased!)

The writing style was articulate and clever, with lovely wordplay and hilarious descriptions of the worst excesses of Georgian fashion, complete with monstrous wigs and buckets of hair powder and cosmetics. Furthermore, the Yorkshire setting was lovingly described and I was able to visualise so much of the detail., something not all authors mange to achieve for me. I certainly enjoyed reading the book. I just felt that Willa was too calm, too practical and detached, to really be a heroine I could get emotional about. But Alaric was gorgeous, and the epilogue absolutely sweet and wonderful. Loved it.

We have also had an introduction to other characters who will no doubt appear in future books, and I am definitely looking forward to the next one about Alaric's brother, North. A massive reveal at the end of the book has SO whetted my appetite!
A thoroughly enjoyable read by an author I love.