Review:
Mr. Jeremy Malcolm, second son of the Earl of Kilbourne, is a much sought after bachelor, but no one seems to be able to catch his eye for long. When his best friend, Lord Cassidy (known to friends and family as "Cassie"), asks him why he rejected his sister Julia, Malcolm admits that he has a list of qualifications for his future wife, and Julia didn't meet all of them. Plus, her attempts to flutter her eyelashes at him flirtatiously just looked odd.
Although Mr. Malcolm only escorted Julia to the opera once, she took his rejection hard, and Cassie's news that he has a list of qualifications that she failed to meet leaves her seething. Julia, schemer that she is, comes up with a plan: she'll invite her friend Selina for a visit, set things up so that Selina meets all of Mr. Malcolm's requirements, and then have Selina crush him with a list of her own requirements that he doesn't meet.
Selina, a vicar's daughter, hopes that visiting her friend Julia in London will allow her to make a good enough match that she'll be able to sponsor her younger brothers and sisters. She wants nothing to do with Julia's plan once she hears about it, but she doesn't really have much of a choice. Also, she figures it's unlikely that an arrogant-sounding man like Mr. Malcolm would fall for her, so she's surprised when she meets him and he doesn't seem anything like the person Julia described.
I picked this up because I saw a trailer for the movie, thought it looked fun, and then learned it was based on a book. In case those who learn about this book through the movie are interested, FYI, this wasn't written as a POC romance. Julia is described as having light red hair, pale green eyes, and a white complexion. Selina, meanwhile, has emerald green eyes and reddish brown hair, and her skin has "a golden cast" (16). Mr. Ossory is described as being fair-haired, and at the moment I can't find any description of Mr. Malcolm beyond him being handsome and looking like a Greek god, but you get the idea. I figured all of this would be the case and wasn't really surprised, but I thought I'd mention it in case the movie's casting set other potential readers up with different expectations.
Anyway, I initially enjoyed this. It was definitely pure fluff, the kind of thing that gets labeled as "frothy" by publishers, but I was in the mood for that. I also appreciated that it was a quick read.
Still, this was never the sort of thing I was going to love, simply because it was incredibly bland. Selina was beautiful and good, and Mr. Malcolm was handsome and not as strict about his qualifications for a wife as Julia made him seem. Cassie came across like Bertie Wooster, Julia was annoying, and Mr. Ossory was blandly decent and handsome. There were no indications of anything even vaguely anxiety-inducing in the story - it was just a bunch of people either being mildly witty, mildly quirky, or mildly annoying.
After a certain point, however, the story started to slide from pleasant into ridiculous. The scene in the conservatory was more annoying than appealing, and it made zero sense that the person who arranged that situation would have thought something like that was a good idea. Mr. Malcolm went from being a somewhat acceptable romance hero to being a flat-out jerk - it was made a little too clear that the only thing connecting him and Selina was physical attraction, and Allain never managed to convince me that Mr. Ossory wouldn't have been a better match for her. And Mr. Ossory would have needed a head injury for me to believe that he could fall for Julia. That woman would be nothing more than a lifelong headache for him.
This would have been a better book if the author hadn't allowed the story to move from pure fluff into ridiculous romantic comedy territory in the second half. Still, I'm not going to write off the movie, which might turn out to be better than the book. The story's shortcomings could potentially be overshadowed by any natural charm the actors possess.
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