The Harlow Hoyden: A Regency Romance
Series: Love Takes Root, Book 1
By: Lynn Messina / Narrated By: Lucy Rayner
Length: 10 hrs and 36 mins
Not the best or funniest heroine, but definitely enough for me to ask: Yesssss? And where’s Book Two?!!!!!!!
First, lemme just get my standard snit outta the way: We all KNOW I’m very much an ABASHED prude, am not proud of it, but there you go. So, I went into The Harlow Hoyden HOPING my toes wouldn’t curl in embarrassment. And I s’pose they TOTALLY didn’t, but they did indeed twitch a bit.
Cuz see, Emma, the Harlow Hoyden, is just that: She’s QUITE the hoyden, doesn’t give a fig about what London/Society think, can’t understand the starched-suit ways, can’t understand why people would choose to live in such constrained fashions. And her sister? She ADORES her twin sister, but her sister very much lives by Society’s rules to the point where she’s about to marry the biggest dullard in the nation.
Emma isn’t happy with that. She teams up with a Duke (actually, she initially thinks Trent is the Duke’s Country Bumpkin Cousin) to show twin sister Lavinia what a loser Sir Waldo is. It doesn’t help Emma’s frame of mind any that Sir Waldo keeps thinking SHE is Lavinia and keeps telling HER things like: When we’re married, you will NOT see your hoyden of a sister so much; when we’re married, you will NOT grow orchids any longer; when we’re married, you will exist ONLY to support meeeeeee.
Emma hears all of that, seeeeeethes through all of that, and by God! she WILL dig up the dirt on the man. The man could be a liar! The man could be a traitor to the nation! The man could hold the lives of tens of thousands of patriots in the palm of his blackguard hand! He could be vile, villainous, duplicitous! Heart of black stone!
But MOSTLY!!! To Emma?
Well, the man is a toad (No offense to toads), and yes, maybe the fate of the nation hangs in the balance as she and the Duke make their investigations, but whatEVER! Death, chaos, lies! WhatEVER! All she wants in the world is for her sister NOT to marry the wretch; she’ll deal with the fate of the nation laaaaaater.
Naturally, she and the Duke fall in love with each other, NATURALLY they roll in the hay which is MOST simply NOT done, and here’s my prudish squirming: Yes, I squirmed. Odd that since I juuuuuust listened to Band Sinister, and if I could handle THAT, how on EARTH am I railing about poor Emma and the Duke hitting the sheets? After all, to Emma, she really does NOT care for society’s strict rules or narrow-minded ways of thought, so to her, it’s all natural and based on wants and curiosity. Stiiiiiill, pleeeeeease do forgive me if my toes curled for this one while Band Sinister, with aaaaaaaall its gasping, moaning, groaning left me relatively unscathed.
I can only claim to be reMARKably inconsistent!
A charming story, all in all, and both sisters were likable, and even the Duke was likable. Which is saying a whole lot because through most of the story HE’S just as bad as Sir Waldo in how he views a woman’s place in the home and in Society. TOTAL pig… no offense to pigs…
Bring on Book TWOOOOOOO!!!!!
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