Wilde in Love by Eloisa James

November 14, 2017
Cardboard - not fully lifelike; shallow; two-dimensional:

http://www.eloisajames.com/
Well, this is the third book in a row with a favorite author that hasn’t met my expectations. This is Eloisa James' first book in the Wilde series, Wilde in Love. In it we are presented with a different time period, Georgian, which was refreshing. I always enjoy the heroes in this time period because their clothing is so at odds with he-man swagger and usually the stories are quite entertaining. For the first few pages of Wilde in Love I was grinning – the entrance of our hero Alaric was so much fun. Unknowingly, Alaric has acquired tons of swooning female fans because he has written books based on his travels. What he doesn’t know is that someone has written an over-wrought melodramatic play based on his books. The scene when his ship is about to dock is very funny and I was rubbing my hands in glee. Sad to say, the rest of the book didn’t continue the momentum.

This is a story of prejudice, basing opinions on nothing, and then not being able to accept the truth when it’s staring directly into one’s eyes. Most of the prejudices, stubbornness, and immaturity landed on the heroine Willa Ffynche. By the way, was the name of Ffynche a play on words? I noticed a few other names, for instance Mr. Fumble. I know that Ms. James does a lot of wink-wink at romance readers, but there seemed to be a little bit of a heavy-hand in this book. I have no problem with romance novels which have deliberate caricatures, satire or parody, but the entire book should envelope that type of humor. Sometimes ridiculous humor is very funny.

This book is also uneven; it doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. In the first part of this book I felt as if I were on a hamster wheel – going around and around and not getting anywhere. The problem for me lies with Willa’s character. I could not connect with her. She had never met Lord Alaric Wilde, but she had developed strong opinions based solely on her perception of who he was. Those perceptions seemed to be based on other women idolizing him and a silly play she’d never seen. Even after she is introduced to him and begins to know him, she still maintains her prejudices against him. She doesn’t like guys who have adventures. Yes, that’s the reason for her dislike of Alaric. It’s based on some weak do-da surrounding the death of her parents – but I found this motivation very contrived. There were so many problems with Willa that I can’t include them all in this review. I will mention Willa and her cousin Lavinia’s obsession with dirty books and talking bawdy. That could have been another funny bit, however like the rest of the book it didn’t happen all the time. I would have appreciated it more if Willa and Lavinia’s antics had been more outrageous. For me Willa was an entirely flat character, which is too bad because Alaric had possibilities.

I liked Alaric, he could have been a terrific hero – if only he’d had a good heroine to balance him out. For most of the book, he is befuddled by all the ridiculous fame his books have garnered. But once again the narrative of the story doesn’t take advantage of how outrageous this could have been. Things are mentioned throughout the tale, and if they had been written in an over-the-top manner all of these plot-starts would have worked. But, it seemed to me that Ms. James could just not break free and write absurd comedy. I for one would not think any less of Ms. James if she could let loose and write ridiculous farce.

Secondary characters. The secondary characters in this story almost steal the show and I have hopes for Lavinia and Parth Sterling in their book. In this book their relationship is full of funny banter, almost touching on farcical. Puleese, continue with the fun in their story. I was less interested in Roland and Diana, but even they had more appeal than the main characters of this story.

Bottom-line. I was disappointed in Wilde in Love. I had great hopes when the story began, but it wasn’t long before the characters became flat and I didn’t really care what happened to them.

Time Place: Georgian England
Sensuality: Warm/Hot