How to Win a Wallflower
Grade : B

Samara Parish’s Rebels with a Cause series continues with How to Win a Wallflower, the story of a second son and a social butterfly whose forbidden love turns cross-continental. The romance is fun, sparkly, and has just the right kind of banter, but the plot is so overcomplicated with conflict that it feels like far too much is going on at any time and in any place. But it’s still a fun book.

Ex-pat Englishman John Barnesworth was never supposed to inherit a viscountcy. In fact, he fled England after he finished his schooling at Eton, hating his family and their tendency to tease him over his stutter. He’d assumed he had the freedom to do as he pleased, and moved to a one-room cabin in the wilderness of Massachusetts to pursue his scientific studies in silent peace. But when his older brother Walter dies a notably ignominious death (head first into the Thames off the side of the king’s ‘pleasure barge’ under suspicious circumstances) John returns to England to take up the title and to settle the family’s financial matters. Unfortunately, Walter has caroused the estate into the ground and their assets are literally crumbling, leaving John with few options. He realizes that the best way out of this is to marry money. Who better than Walter’s fiancée, Luella Tarlington? Only Luella is a nightmare on every level and is manipulative to boot. Surely, someone can get him out of this?

Enter Lady Charlotte Stirling, sister of John’s best friend, Edward. A fiercely loyal and highly-regarded lady of the ton, Charlotte has been friends with John since they were young, and she has always admired the boy next door. Too much so to see him suffer in a lousy marriage. She also hates the rude and snobby Luella, her social rival. Unfortunately, her brother Edward disapproves of a match between Charlotte and John in spite of their friendship due to the estate’s debts. Charlotte comes up with a way to both relieve John’s debts and the astronomical debt placed on her own family’s fortunes by her gambling addict brother – they will patronise the local gambling hells and count cards until they earn enough money to pay everything off. That’ll spring John from the marriage trap, right? Neither of them expects to fall in love along the way – or for things to get even more dangerous when their scheme is found out.

I have to give points to How to Win a Wallflower for originality’s sake alone – kudos to the author for avoiding the immediate marriage of convenience route. Instead, we get a peek into the gambling world and into the fascinating minds pf the leads as they get themselves sunk ankle-deep in their brilliant-but-terrible idea. A lot of the book is fun this way, with quiet but deeply lovable John and social and firmly brilliant gadfly Charlotte pas de deux-ing their way through London. The romance is great and bantery and, at times, heartbreaking.

But I have to say that Parish overindulges in the obstacle game. It’s not enough that John has debts, that Charlotte has debts, that Luella hates Charlotte and would love to see her ruination, that Edward disapproves of them, that John wants to move back to America as soon as he’s settled the estate and Charlotte loves London society and all its parties and balls. They also have to risk ruining their reputations by becoming card counters, and deal with the fact that Walter’s death might have been murder. I wish that Parish had picked a single conflict and concentrated on it instead of going obstacle-a-palooza on the book.

But the relationship here makes it worthwhile, and I really adored Charlotte as a heroine. Ergo, How to Win a Wallflower absolutely worked for me as a romance, even though the plot is very overstuffed.

Buy it at: Amazon or your local bookshop

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Reviewed by Lisa Fernandes
Grade : B

Sensuality: Warm

Review Date : December 20, 2022

Publication Date: 12/2022

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Lisa Fernandes

Lisa Fernandes is a writer, reviewer and recapper who lives somewhere on the East Coast. Formerly employed by Firefox.org and Next Projection, she also currently contributes to Women Write About Comics. Read her blog at http://thatbouviergirl.blogspot.com/, follow her on Twitter at http://twitter.com/thatbouviergirl or contribute to her Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/MissyvsEvilDead or her Ko-Fi at ko-fi.com/missmelbouvier
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