'Love in the Afternoon' Hathaways #5 by Lisa KLEYPAS

From the BLURB:

As a lover of animals and nature, Beatrix Hathaway has always been more comfortable outdoors than in the ballroom. Even though she participated in the London season in the past, the classic beauty and free-spirited Beatrix has never been swept away or seriously courted.and she has resigned herself to the fate of never finding love. Has the time come for the most unconventional of the Hathaway sisters to settle for an ordinary man - just to avoid spinsterhood?

Captain Christopher Phelan is a handsome, daring soldier who plans to marry Beatrix's friend, the vivacious flirt Prudence Mercer, when he returns from fighting abroad. But, as he explains in his letters to Pru, life on the battlefield has darkened his soul - and it's becoming clear that Christopher won't come back as the same man. When Beatrix learns of Pru's disappointment, she decides to help by concocting Pru's letters to Christopher for her. Soon the correspondence between Beatrix and Christopher develops into something fulfilling and deep.and when Christopher comes home, he's determined to claim the woman he loves. What began as Beatrix's innocent deception has resulted in the agony of unfulfilled love - and a passion that can't be denied.

‘Love in the Afternoon’ is the fifth and last book in Lisa Kleypas’s ‘Hathaways’ series. As a HUGE Kleypas fan-girl I can unequivocally pledge that this is one of her finest novels to date.

I was very sad to begin ‘Love in the Afternoon’. I, and many fans, have fallen hopelessly in love with the Hathaway clan. They came from humble country beginnings, thrust into ton society with the unexpected death of a distant relative which passed a Lordship title to the only male Hathaway, Leo. With the death of both their parents still fresh in their hearts, the rambunctious Hathaway clan traipsed to Stony Cross to accept responsibilities none of them were equipped for. Amelia, the eldest Hathaway, who was forced to become surrogate mother to her sibling brood. Winifred, who was still frail and feeble, recovering from an illness which killed Leo’s beloved fiancé leaving him to drown in grief. Poppy, the beautiful middle sister who only wanted to find contentment and safety in marriage, the same as her parent’s had. And youngest Hathaway, Beatrix, who found more in common with animals than the debutante’s she was forced to socialize with.
I've read all of their trials and tribulations, heartbreaks and triumphs. Amelia who found love with gypsy-man, Cam Rohan. Win and her childhood crush, Merripen. Poppy and her unconventional rogue husband, Harry Rutledge. Leo and his unlikely pairing with tight-lipped governess, Catherine Marks...

I was reluctant but insanely curious to see how it would all end with the littlest Hathaway, Beatrix.

I admit to going into ‘Love in the Afternoon’ with trepidation, mostly concerning the book’s heroine. For four novels now, Beatrix has been an entertaining and charming Hathaway edition... she was always in the background of her sibling’s books; a gentle-hearted tomboy who never met an animal she didn’t love. But I wondered how she’d be as a romantic heroine, rather than just a bit of comic relief. I think Lisa Kleypas had a very hard task in writing Beatrix’s story, in making her character more than just the affable little sister with a sunny disposition... and I am delighted to say that Kleypas not only makes Beatrix into a stunning romantic lead, but ‘Love in the Afternoon’ is an example of Kleypas at her very best.

Beatrix has been writing letters to Captain Christopher Phelan as he fights in the Crimean war. Beatrix writes of the Stony Cross forest, the smell of autumn, the local livestock auction and singing her stockinged feet by the hearth. Her words are a balm to Christopher who is miles and miles away, fighting in a war he doesn’t believe in. When he reads Beatrix’s letters of banal country life, creature comforts and home he is transported and given a moment of reprieve. From Christopher, Beatrix reads about fighting the Russians, disease spreading through the trenches, and Christopher’s faithful canine friend, Albert, who carries messages along the line.
Letter by letter, word by word, Beatrix and Christopher fall in love.
Only, Christophe doesn’t know it is Beatrix he’s writing to. Christopher is under the impression that he is writing to the beautiful and flirtatious Prudence Mercer. He does not know that Pru was bored by his letters and annoyed with his gloom. Christopher doesn’t know that it was Beatrix who happily took up the task of writing to him, offering him relief on the page. He doesn’t know, until he receives this cryptic letter;

Dearest Christopher,

I can’t write you again.

I’m not who you think I am.

I didn’t mean to send you love letters, but that is what they became. On their way to you, my words turned into heartbeats on the page.

Come back, please come home and find me.

- [unsigned.]

Thus begins one of the most charming and heart-rending historical romances I have ever read.

I loved Christopher and Beatrix’s unconventional and complicated courtship – the letters between them are beautiful to read and clearly a progression of feelings developing. It is a tangled web Beatrix weaves for herself, especially because Christopher doesn’t actually *like* her. Christopher is an upstanding gentleman, and before leaving for war he met and was unamused by Hathaway antics, especially Beatrix’s, commenting that she belonged more in a stable than a drawing room.

“You do not know Beatrix. You haven’t spent nearly enough time with her.”
“I know that she’s unruly, opinionated, and far more cheerful than any reasoning person should be. She wears breeches, climbs trees, and roams wherever she pleases without a chaperone. I also know that she has overrun Ramsay House with squirrels, hedgehogs, and goats, and the man unlucky enough to marry her will be driven to financial ruin from the veterinary bills. Would you care to contradict any of those points?”
Audrey folded her arms and gave him a sour look. “Yes. She doesn’t have a squirrel.”

The first half of the book is all about Christopher’s return home, and his hunt for the ‘Pru’ of the letters. But when he meets the vapid and narcissistic Prudence Mercer, Christopher quickly realizes she is not his beloved letter-writer.

Christopher’s hunt for Beatrix, his lettered love, is not the crux of the book however. The real, juicy storyline has to do with Christopher reconciling his time in the war with his new civilian life.
The Crimean war changed him – he has bouts of anger, night terrors and jumps at loud sounds. He is a man recovering from post-traumatic stress, without current psychological jargon to articulate his problems. Therein lays the heart of ‘Love in the Afternoon’, as Christopher struggles with himself in the wake of war. And who better to comfort, care and love him than Beatrix Hathaway whose tender patience has healed many winged and four-footed creatures.

I love, love, loved this book! I was worried about Beatrix as a womanly heroine, having read her for four books past as an entertaining little sister to the other Hathaway’s. But in ‘Afternoon’ Beatrix sheds all of her girlish attributes and is a dashing heroine. She and Christopher have a beautiful, burning love and plenty of sensual scenes that banish all thoughts of immaturity. I LOVED them!

I was sad to read the end of the ‘Hathaways’, but ‘Afternoon’ is a fitting conclusion to a wonderful series and I only feel a great sense of closure as the series ends with Christopher and Beatrix’s romance. I had a tear in my eye and breathed a happy sigh of relief at the last page.

5/5

'Married by Morning' Hathaways #4 by Lisa KLEYPAS

From the BLURB:

For two years, Catherine Marks has been a paid companion to the Hathaway sisters—a pleasant position, with one caveat. Her charges’ older brother, Leo Hathaway, is thoroughly exasperating. Cat can hardly believe that their constant arguing could mask a mutual attraction. But when one quarrel ends in a sudden kiss, Cat is shocked at her powerful response—and even more so when Leo proposes a dangerous liaison.

Leo must marry and produce an heir within a year to save his family home. Catherine’s respectable demeanor hides a secret that would utterly destroy her. But to Leo, Cat is intriguing and infernally tempting, even to a man resolved never to love again. The danger Cat tried to outrun is about to separate them forever—unless two wary lovers can find a way to banish the shadows and give in to their desires…

This is the fourth book in Lisa Kleypas’s ‘Hathaways’ series. The series follows a Hampshire family of siblings as they navigate their way around a recently acquired Ton title and all the societal nuisances that come with it.

This 4th instalment is the HEA of second eldest and only brother Hathaway, Lord Leo Ramsay. In the first book Leo was a shell of his formerly vivacious self. When we met him he had just lost his fiancée to scarlet fever and was walking a dangerous edge of depression, nearly slipping into suicide. It took three books for Leo to work through his grief – first by drinking and carousing, and eventually by accepting all that he had lost.

Miss Catherine Marks was introduced in the second book as governess to the two youngest Hathaway sisters, Beatrix and Poppy. Catherine ‘Marks’ was a stern woman with a love for teaching and gentle affection for her Hathaway charges. She was quickly and earnestly welcomed into the Hathaway family as one of their own – welcomed by everyone except Lord Leo Ramsay. Leo and Marks could not stand one another. In previous books their banter had a razor-edge and they were constantly at each other’s throats. Marks could not abide a member of the peerage acting in Leo’s depraved manner, and Leo could not stand such a spinster nit-picking his coping mechanisms. They were fabulously combustible!

For three books fans of the ‘Hathaway’ series have been *desperate* for Leo and Marks’s story to be told – because they were so deliciously opposite and had such a captivating tension between them. Well, fans can rest assured that Lisa Kleypas handles the Marks/Leo romance beautifully. They have heat, witty banter, sexual frustration and certainly live up to the promise of opposites attracting...

Leo and Marks are wonderful – individually and as a couple. It’s partly to do with their ‘opposites attract’ cache, and how enjoyable it is to read two characters who can’t seem to understand what is right in front of them. But it’s also the fact that, separately, Marks and Leo have two very interesting histories which lend depth to their characters.

In the third ‘Hathaways’ book there was a big reveal concerning Catherine Marks’s past and her affiliation to Poppy’s husband, Harry Rutledge. Marks and Harry are half-siblings. Same mother, different fathers. Harry discovered he had a sister when he was 20 years old, and he discovered her just in time to save Marks from awful circumstances. Not to give anything away, but Marks is quite scarred by her childhood before Harry’s rescue – and her past traumas are the basis for her sometimes severe character, and romantic hurdles Leo has to jump over in the latter half of the book.

Likewise, Leo is nursing deep emotional scars over the death of his fiancée, Laura, to scarlet fever. In previous books Leo has been an utterly tormented character – positive that Laura’s ghost was haunting him and driven to depravity to forget his heart’s loss. Leo was a very intense Heathcliff-type character, and I’m glad to say he hasn’t lost that dark and intense edge in this book... though it is cushioned by a more jovial manner and the fact that he has finally accepted Laura’s death.

Together Leo and Marks have a lot to overcome – but all of their issues raise the stakes in their relationship, and it’s wonderful to read how they heal each other. Likewise it’s wonderful to read how they try to deny their feelings – both because of their past dislike of one other, and because of individual war-wounds;

Leo’s hands went on either side of her shrinking body and gripped the edge of the dressing table behind her. He was too close, his masculine vitality surrounding her. He smelled like outside air, like dust and horses, like a healthy young male. As he leaned over her, one of his knees pressed gently into the mass of her skirts.
“Why did you come back?” she asked weakly.
He stared directly into her eyes. “You know why.”
Before Catherine could stop herself, her gaze dropped to the firm contours of his mouth.
“Cat... we have to talk about what happened.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
He inclined his head slightly. “Would you like me to remind you?”

Marks and Leo are H-O-T. It’s no secret that Kleypas knows her way around a sex scene – somehow walking the literary tightrope between smutty and tasteful. Kleypas is really writing at her best in ‘Married by Morning’ – pairing Leo’s passion with Marks’s timidity makes for some very endearing and beautiful scenes.

I am a Lisa Kleypas fan-girl, and proud of it! I haven’t read a book of hers that I haven’t loved. Even at her worst, Kleypas is superior to many other romance authors on their best day. It’s the fact that Kleypas is a literary mistress of smut; keeping things hot and passionate, but never overtly-lurid or at the expense of plot and characterisation.
But it’s also the fact that her writing is an absolute delight to read. Some people may think that ‘romance’ is synonymous with ‘trash’; but the quickest way to dispel that misconception is to read a Lisa Kleypas romance. Her writing is quick, sumptuous and down-right literary. Take this passage in which Leo describes his first impressions of Catherine Marks;

When Leo had first met her, she had been the perfect embodiment of a dried-up spinster, with her spectacles and forbidding scowl and her stern hyphen of a mouth. Her spine was as unbending as a fireplace poker, and her hair, the dull brown of apple moths, was always pinned back too tightly. The Grim Reaper, Leo had nicknamed her, despite the objections of the family.

I love that description; ‘hyphen of a mouth’, brilliant! And nothing ‘trashy’ about it.

Lisa Kleypas is the best of the romance best – and ‘Married by Morning’ is the icing on her very successful career cake. Fans had high expectations for Leo and Marks’s romance, and Kleypas delivers ten-fold.

5/5

The next, and final, ‘Hathaways’ book is youngest sister Beatrix’s story. ‘Love in the Afternoon’ comes out on the 29th of this month. I will be sad to read the end of the ‘Hathaways’ saga, but I am ecstatic over the release of Kleypas’s brand-new contemporary romance series; ‘Friday Harbor’. The first book is ‘Christmas Eve atFriday Harbor’ and is released on November 9th this year. I can't wait!

'Tempt me at Twilight' by Lisa KLEYPAS

From the BLURB:

Poppy Hathaway, who has always longed for a normal, ordinary life, has been abandoned by her true love, Michael Bayning. Caught up in scandal, she has only one way out - to marry Harry Rutledge, a handsome and mysterious hotel owner. But Harry is a man of many secrets, and eventually Poppy faces a heart-wrenching question: What does a heroine do when she ends up married to the villain?

The 3^rd book in Kleypas’s ‘Hathaways’ series follows the tale of middle-sister, Poppy. This is a very different book from Amelia and Win’s. The eldest and second-eldest Hathaway sisters married for love – Amelia to the Gypsy millionaire Cam Rohan, and the previously bed-ridden Win to the families foster brother, Merripen. Poppy has a very different marriage from her sister’s – one based on lies and one man’s selfishness. Not exactly a fairy-tale beginning.

Harry Rutledge has been a background character in several of Kleypas’s books – his Rutledge hotel being the setting and accommodation of choice for several of her previous books. Simon Hunt and wife Annabelle Peyton reside at the Rutledge in the first ‘Wallflowers’ book. The entire Hathaway clan has been frequenting the hotel for three London seasons. In ‘Tempt me at Twilight’ we finally meet the reclusive Hotelier.

Harry Rutledge makes no illusions about being anything other than the villain in this story. Upon their first chance meeting, Harry decides he’ll have Poppy for himself;

Harry felt he deserved Poppy. Any man who allowed scruples to get in the way of having a woman like her was a fool.

Harry devises a devilish plan to win Poppy for himself – forcing her into a compromising social situation that leaves her little room to maneuver. Though his intentions are deplorable, Harry’s craving for Poppy is intense and oddly flattering. Kleypas offers us little insight into Harry’s reasons behind his pursuit, which makes his actions all the more disturbing.

Kleypas is in her element when she writes rakish characters; they always end up being her most memorable and titillating. Sebastian St. Vincent is the most interesting bachelor in her ‘Wallflowers’ series, Hardy Cates the most alluring in the ‘Travis’ Trilogy and sure enough, Harry Rutledge for all his high-handedness is a fascinating new addition to the Hathaway clan. Kleypas does best with rakes because she understands that everyone has light and dark within, nobody is ever rarely entirely evil, and there are always explanations for such behavior.

I was a little sorry that Harry wasn’t more of a rake though. In the beginning his character is utterly sinister, but upon marrying Poppy he mellows a little too quickly for my liking. Considering his back-story I think Harry’s actions could have been plausibly more wicked and conniving. Granted, going into a Kleypas book you know what to expect, there’s not a whole lot of edge-of-your-seat suspense when you know from page one that you’re reading toward a happy ending. That being said, in quite a few Kleypas books I’ve had moments of ‘will-they-or-won’t-they?’ tension (‘Sugar Daddy’, for one). ‘Tempt me at Twilight’ has more of a challenge than most romances, because the couple is married fairly quickly and the story centers around whether or not they’ll find love in holy matrimony or total regret? I just think the happy-ending pay-off could have been heightened if Harry hadn’t succumbed to Poppy’s kindness quite so quickly, if he’d kept up his deplorable behavior for a little longer.

At times ‘Tempt me at Twilight’ reminded me of ‘Beauty & the Beast’. The hotel’s staff, including a genius French chef, busy-boding housemaid and assistant manager, all try their hand at matchmaking the newlyweds. Those scenes are sweet, if a little cheesy.

One of my favorite things about ‘Tempt me at Twilight’ was the groundwork Kleypas lays out for book 4. Harry has an interesting back-story, that’s made all the more intriguing for his connection to another character in the Hathaway family – the tutor, Miss Catherine Marks. I can’t give anything away, but Harry’s connection to Miss. Marks is extremely interesting. Even more interesting is Miss. Marks’ interactions with Hathaway brother, Leo. In previous books there have been opposites-attract sparks between the two, but in ‘Tempt’ those sparks are fast becoming a bonfire. Kleypas throws oil on the flames by finishing ‘Tempt me at Twilight’ on a romantic cliffhanger between the two.

I did like this book, then again I would happily read Lisa Kleypas’s shopping list. But this isn’t my favorite Kleypas book; the romance comes a little too easily and the male protagonist loses an otherwise intriguing edge too willingly.

2/5