Grant, Tracy - Daughter of the Game
Wed, Feb. 25th, 2004 08:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
oyceterVery intense book about spies during the Regency, a marriage and the consequences of secrets.
I've read![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
melymbrosia's comment that the book twisted various Regency conventions and showed a darker side of the era, but not having read many Regencies or knowing much about the era itself, I really can't attest to that.
Charles and Melanie Fraser are a happily married couple who met during the Napoleonic wars, living well in London while Charles holds a seat in the Parliament. Their son is kidnapped one day, which eventually leads them on a wild chase for a legendary ring to meet the ransom demand.
The book has more plot twists that I could shake a fist at, almost all of them unanticipated (although eventually I managed to partially guess one of the villains of the piece). The first big reveal is a jawdropper. The Very Big Secret comes out in the first few chapters, and the consequences of it and of keeping it through seven years of marriage resonate throughout the book. Thinking of this from a romance point of view, or even from a general thriller/suspense point of view, it's very nice to see that even after Grant gets her big moment of surprise with its revelation, she allows it to keep affecting Melanie and Charles, not just dropping it like a moot plot point.
That's what I liked the most about the book, the underlying examination of a marriage and of what holds it up or tears it down, the examination of childhood pains and the real effects of secrets in a way that most romances brush off. It is a Big Secret plot in a way, but Grant gets away with it because there's a very good reason the secret was kept for so long and a very good reason to finally have it out in the open.
The part I didn't like as much was that by the end, it felt like there were almost too many plot twists and big reveals, so I was almost rolling my eyes at some of the last of it.
Bonus: some twisty sexual politics, if one stops to really think about all of it.
Links:
-coffeeandink's review
-![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-syndicated.gif)
rilina's review
-pocketgarden's review
I've read
melymbrosia's comment that the book twisted various Regency conventions and showed a darker side of the era, but not having read many Regencies or knowing much about the era itself, I really can't attest to that. Charles and Melanie Fraser are a happily married couple who met during the Napoleonic wars, living well in London while Charles holds a seat in the Parliament. Their son is kidnapped one day, which eventually leads them on a wild chase for a legendary ring to meet the ransom demand.
The book has more plot twists that I could shake a fist at, almost all of them unanticipated (although eventually I managed to partially guess one of the villains of the piece). The first big reveal is a jawdropper. The Very Big Secret comes out in the first few chapters, and the consequences of it and of keeping it through seven years of marriage resonate throughout the book. Thinking of this from a romance point of view, or even from a general thriller/suspense point of view, it's very nice to see that even after Grant gets her big moment of surprise with its revelation, she allows it to keep affecting Melanie and Charles, not just dropping it like a moot plot point.
That's what I liked the most about the book, the underlying examination of a marriage and of what holds it up or tears it down, the examination of childhood pains and the real effects of secrets in a way that most romances brush off. It is a Big Secret plot in a way, but Grant gets away with it because there's a very good reason the secret was kept for so long and a very good reason to finally have it out in the open.
The part I didn't like as much was that by the end, it felt like there were almost too many plot twists and big reveals, so I was almost rolling my eyes at some of the last of it.
Bonus: some twisty sexual politics, if one stops to really think about all of it.
Links:
-
coffeeandink's review-
rilina's review-
pocketgarden's review