Secondary character-gitis strikes again
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The Girl with the Sweetest Secret, by Betina Krahn, is the second story in her Sin and Sensibility series. Because it is a series, a couple of her secondary characters from A Good Day to Marry A Duke have been promoted to leads. It just so happens that one of those leads, Reynard Boulton, aka the Fox, was one of my favorite supporting people from A Good Day to Marry A Duke. Reynard was a fun guy in that book. He is a collector of gossip. He is always sticking his nose in to other people’s business. He watches for any juicy stuff which might come his way, and which he could use to his advantage. Our heroine is another one of the Bumgarten sisters, Frances, aka Frankie. The rough and tumble Bumgarten family are from Nevada, and they have landed in England so one of the daughters can land a Duke. As far as their mother is concerned, it doesn’t really matter which one of her daughters it is – just one of them will do.
The story gets off to a good start. A complaining Reynard has to lug Frankie’s drunken Uncle Red home. He promised to look out for the family while his friend Lord Aston Graham is on his honeymoon with Daisy. Daisy is the eldest of the Bumgarten sisters. At the same time Reynard is hauling Red home, Frankie has decided she cannot sleep. In this case, Frankie doesn’t go to the library for a book like most heroines do. No she goes to the kitchen to warm up some milk. Frankie is still wearing one of those semi-transparent nightgowns which is a prerequisite of romance novel heroines. Those nightgowns are handy for standing in front of a fireplace. While Frankie is warming the milk she hears a noise, and suspecting a burglar she grabs the handy-dandy bread paddle and aims it at the housebreaker’s head. Lucky for Reynard, it is only a glancing blow. After surviving the bread paddle, Reynard and Frankie immediately clash. They just do not get along. That doesn’t stop Reynard from staring at Frankie when she stands in front of the fireplace though. While he may not like her attitude, he’s got nothing against her hum-dingers.
Frankie is a free-spirit; she isn’t particularly fond of the closed in spaces of London, nor suppressing her outspoken ways. She is used to having her own way, and was happy riding her horse across the desert in the wide-open spaces of Nevada. She’s one tough hombre. She doesn’t take well to having people control her, which is what Reynard tries to do. Because of the promise he made to Aston, he is constantly underfoot. Frankie finds him an irritation. There are some pretty amusing point-of-view narratives which go on when these two are together. I made note of one of Frankie’s charming mental impugning’s when she referred to Reynard as a “lowdown, kipper-suckin', sidewinder." The story is peppered with a number of amusing reflections by both Frankie and Reynard. However, even with all of the funny dialogue I had a hard time staying with the story. There were toooooo many distractions. There were duels, vicious women trying to trap men into marriage, going to France, running all over the country, a pushy mother, a drunk uncle, and a heel-clicking Prussian villain. There was just tooo much going on.
Back to Reynard and Frankie. As much as Reynard irritates Frankie, she saves him from a fate worse than death – marriage. A really obnoxious young woman tricks Reynard into appearing in her bedroom. The obnoxious woman throws a fit, and her horrible father shows up. This woman doesn’t really care which man she’s trapping into marriage, just as long as he is a man. She has to get married because she’s the eldest. She had her eyes set on the heel-clicking Prussian but he was too smart. Which leads me to why I am mentioning this scene. There was a note written by the horrible woman. She intended it for the clicking Prussian, but Reynard intercepted it. Remember he is a snoop. So, he goes to the woman’s bedroom, the woman screams, the father appears, and Reynard is almost trapped into marriage. However, Frankie has witnessed it all and she blurts out the truth to allllll of the witnesses. While Reynard doesn’t have to marry the woman, he does have to fight a duel with her father. This whole scene struck me as odd. Supposedly Reynard collects information by using a great deal of stealth. He’s supposedly smarter than everyone else, able to avoid allll kinds of traps and tricks. I have to ask if he’s so good at doing all this covert activity, how could he be fooled by the note he intercepted. Why did he step into the trap? Didn’t make too much sense. But this storyline sort of disappears after the while, the heel-clicking villain blackmails the obnoxious woman and her family, and they just kind of fade away as the chapters flip by. The villain doesn’t disappear, but the family does.
Even though I am a great fan of Betina Krahn, this book is not one of my favorites by her. There was just something lacking in the narrative. All actions in the book seemed to have a number of directions they were taking. Plots were started, then just sort of disappeared. While I thought Reynard and Frankie could have been great characters, their romance was lost in all the hubbub. It was just an ok read, and not what I have come to expect from Betina Krahn. I was disappointed that Reynard and Frankie did not have a better story. And, I’m growing weary of pushy mothers.
Time/Place: 1880s England
Sensuality: Warm
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