Kinsale, Laura - Lessons in French

Lady Callista Taillefaire is a perpetual wallflower who has been jilted by three fiances, and she's quite content to stay a wallflower and concentrate on her cattle. But then, her childhood friend and not-quite-sweetheart Trevelyan d'Augustin returns, and he still has the habit of dragging her into every adventure he has. Soon, they are concealing cattle, attempting to evade various authorities, and getting into numerous scrapes.

This is so adorable! I didn't used to appreciate romantic comedies as much as I do now, given my predilection for Teh Angst, but a good romantic comedy is very much appreciated these days. Callie is a Kinsale heroine a la Olympia from Seize the Fire or Merlin from Midsummer Moon; that is to say, she's shy, retiring, and extremely cute in a non-treacly way. And while Trev has his angst, he is nowhere near as broody or as controlling as Sheridan or Ransom, and I love him to pieces.

Amazingly, given that this is a Kinsale, the plot does not contain penguins, desert islands, Hawaiian ninja (thank goodness), assassins, shipwrecks, or amnesia. It does have an agricultural show though!

There are several points in the plot that I thought were glossed over—(spoilers) I wanted a better explanation for the blackmail than "Trev's mom did it and since it was for the better, no one was hurt;" I felt Kinsale made Mrs. Foster as unsympathetic as possible so she could figure out a way to get Trev a pardon; Trev's mother was healed too easily; and I wasn't entirely satisfied with the treatment of Major Sturgeon. I also felt there was a little too much "I will not get involved with Callie for her own good" from Trev. Even though he had a good reason for it, after a while, I just wanted to whack him over the head and at least tell her his reasons and let her decide rather than run hot and cold all the time.

However, the book worked for me because of the absolutely charming interaction between Callie and Trev; I laughed aloud at quite a lot of the dialogue. I also adored Trev's relationship with his mother and Callie's relationship with his mother; the mother is awesome and I loved her. I do wish we could have seen a little more of Callie's relationship with her sister, as there seemed to be a good deal of rapport between them.

In conclusion: so cute! And I enjoyed the epilogue's version of the requisite baby scene, (not-really-spoilery spoiler) though it would have worked better had there not been Callie and Trev's actual baby as well.

(no subject)

So the first day I got back from Taiwan, I had a bowl of soup... and then promptly threw it back up. Thankfully, I was able to keep down some egg cakes and therefore crossed out the Dread Wiscon Stomach Flu, but my stomach was really not too happy for a few days after.

Also, my netbook has been infected by the Antivirus Live virus. I am going to try uninstalling it before wiping the entire hard drive, especially because my disc with Windows XP on it may be somewhere in Taiwan.

California is getting flooded right now, and I have zero appreciation for the rain given that I have to walk a mile to school every morning. My umbrella has turned inside-out 6 times already. And alas, wearing rain boots doesn't help much when the rain is coupled with giant gusts of wind, nor does taking a bus over walking, as I discovered yesterday while waiting half an hour outside for a bus that never came.

On the plus side, jet lag is making me wake up at 6 in the morning! Very handy for 9am class.