Hello everyone!
I'll admit that, at the moment, I'm actually back into the ice hockey side of reading lists, because it's been a while since I picked up any of Catherine Gayle's books. But that aside, I kind of feel like continuing with my recaps of Danelle Harmon's books, at least up until the point I've actually read them.
Yeah, yeah, I know, I made such a fuss about getting to Lucien's book and now I'm putting it aside. Why, again?
Well, I kind of want to savour the anticipation, you know?
That said, however, there are still two books for me to both read and then review, so I suppose it's not THAT bad, all in all. Besides, between driving my mother around this week and trying to ensure my grandmother doesn't burn all her pots while my dad's away, I kind of have my hands full to begin with.
But anyway, without further ado and me monologuing into nothing, let's get to it with The Beloved One.
Again, I simply can't get over how those original covers looked ... I mean, the new ones aren't that much better anyway, but those old ones!!!
Ahem.
As we've seen in The Wild One (the review of which you will find the link to at the bottom of this page), at the very end of the book, Lucien recieves word that Charles is in fact alive, and not dead as everyone has thought for the past one or two years (two I think). AND that he's also on his way home, on top of everything.
If we recap, however, his younger brother Gareth has since married Charles' former flame, Juliet, to give his niece Charlotte a name and a father, and Juliet is actually currently expecting their first child together.
Yikes!
But let's backflash to what ACTUALLY happened in America.
There was in fact someone who got buried in Charles' name, but that one was a local rebel. See, the royalist army was ambushed on their way back from battle, and Charles, while trying to save his ensign, got himself nearly killed by a young lad, William. But because Charles was being gallant, instead of shooting William after the kid missed, he sort of managed to shoot into the air, slip on the muddy ground, and bang his head on the rocks behind him.
Yeah. Totally dignified.
Anyway.
Terrified and guilty, William changed the top clothes of the two men, and dragged Charles back home with him to where his half sister Amy, in a Cinderella storyline, was being verbally and mentally abused by the other two daughters, with their reverend father just sitting there letting her take it, to punish her for the sins her mother committed (we'll get back to this in a bit).
Charles, unconscious, is brought in for some rather crude head surgery, which he DOES survive, but by the time he wakes up it's pretty apparent he's got a big problem.
Namely, he's blind.
The bash of his head apparently clocked some things around, so now he has to re-learn everything, and stay put where he is until he can get word out to his superiors in the army, to his brother, and to Juliet, about his fate. He enlists Amy to help him do this, because he senses she's the only one truly sympathetic in the house, and also because, as a gentleman and a reasonable man, he kind of doesn't like her family for the way they're treating her.
So Amy writes the letters he dictates, but her two sisters overhear everything and hatch a plan of their own.
With the letters sent off, now it's just a waiting game during which time Charles' presence is revealed in the village, on his urging, because he doesn't want any harm to befall the family who took him in, and he and Amy start growing closer. To the point where he's definitely feeling the guilt, don't you know - he has always been considered as 'the perfect one' and, until getting Juliet pregnant, he'd honestly never made a mistake.
But now the letters begin arriving, and one after the other they sort of deepen his depression because all the people who have replied have sort of just chucked him away.
So Charles goes to do what Charles does best - which is wallow and try to drown himself, only to have Amy attempt to rescue him, and he in turns rescues her, and then they get to it on the riverbank because they're both out of control.
You know what I mean.
Anyway, this helps Charles very little, but we do learn why Amy is so shunned - she's part Native American, because her mother had fallen in love with a Mohawk warrior and Amy favours her father's looks as opposed to her mother's. Ah well, people will always be the same, no matter which century it is.
Thinking Charles might feel better with his old horse returned to him, William goes to fetch Conqueror, who takes offense to something his owner says and bashes his head one more time for good measure. This, in turn, unlocks whatever got locked before, returning said owner's sight (I know, I know, it's a bit stretchy, but at least it's sort of believable? And in any case, okayish I suppose).
Now, Charles decides to go tramping through the wild in America as opposed to catching a ship back to England, so he does that for a year before returning to rescue Amy from would-be rapists and learning that her half-sisters were responsible for his letter responses.
Oh, I forgot to mention, didn't I? When I said they hatched a plan as they listened in to him narrating the letters, they intercepted the original ones and never sent them, but they did write the responses, causing Charles to think that everyone he loved had forsaken him so that one of them could marry him instead.
Tough luck, girls, as pissed-off Charlie takes Amy and heads back to England first chance he gets now, landing at the family castle just as everyone's at dinner and drawing exactly the wrong conclusions when he sees Juliet. Not to mention, the family's kind of shocked at seeing HIM, since he isn't necessarily the man they knew when he first left for the war across the ocean.
Lucien, in his usual devil's advocate role, sort of jiggles the pieces and decides Charles will just have to marry Amy, since he's already half in love with her already, so what he proposes is a big ball in his honour, also giving Amy a chance to feel like a princess.
Because, you know, the Duke kind of doesn't tell her he has no intention of having her train for a lady's maid, just for a wife, but that's unimportant.
Charles is floundering, thinking that he doesn't really have much of the old Charles left in him, until the day of the actual ball arrives and, after everyone and their mother had apparently come to him for advice, he can honestly relax, or try to. He's astonished at Amy's transformation (you know Lucien got her a whole new wardrobe, obviously), but the celebration is cut short when an accident sparks a full-blown inferno in that wing of the old manor.
Right back into commanding everyone, like he'd never left, Charles organises the bucket brigade and ensures people leave the ballroom safely, but there are still people missing:
baby brother Andrew and the King of England himself.
See, Andrew the inventor wanted to unveil his flying contraption that night, and went to show the King, so they got stuck on the roof. Charles manages to get the King out safely, but Andrew falls behind. Literally almost tying Lucien down (because, be still my heart, but the man decided he was the expendable one so he'd go get their brother, loving the lot of them so much it hurts and causing every female reader to swoon), he hustles back up to find an inconscious Andrew in the laboratory.
Somehow, the younger man wakes up, and the two stagger to the roof, flying off with the rig Andrew had previously prepared, and Charles is once again proclaimed the hero.
Also, he marries Amy. Because obviously, those two are in love.
But there's more to come about Andrew and the consequences of him inhaling the fumes while unconscious! Which means book three is a must read.
I kind of enjoyed the second book, but I kind of didn't. See, Charles just struck me as too perfect for a character, and when he wasn't trying to be perfect, he was kind of moping around, so not really being proactive about anything. Amy, on the other hand, was super sweet, and I really liked how the heir presumptive of the duke (Lucien is currently not married) is now married to someone who looks part Native American.
I did, however, still enjoy the machinations and family dynamics, though, because one thing that makes this series extra strong is that the other siblings aren't just there for props, they actively participate.
So I do still recommend reading these, even with all that said!
xx
*image not mine
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