Lover be Mine
New York Times bestselling author Jordan plans to follow five aristocratic Wilde cousins in Regency England to their true mates. This second book concerns rogue Jack Wilde pointed in the direction of Miss Sophie Fortin, who is set to marry a widowed duke to restore the fortunes of her family, destroyed by a Wilde ancestor. The Legendary Lovers conceit is that the matchmaking Wilde women have pointed their cousin in this direction because the families’ feud is like Romeo and Juliet, and he should play Romeo to Sophie’s Juliet. There’s an abduction, the inheritance of a (fictitious) princedom, a buried past in the French Revolution and plenty of Jordan’s sensual sex. Her prose reads like silk sheets.
Jordan commands the earlier era in ways of which we get only glimpses. She has to rein herself in to fit the form of an American costume romance. Those who find their buttons pressed with this form will delight. Those who like their Regency because they can’t get enough Austen or Heyer will find this a pale substitute, however. Witty repartee sealed – only at the end – with a kiss is thin on the ground. Dialogue must work overtime within the genre’s constraints to fill in back-story. Feud? Rogue? History? Legend? We are only told these things, never get into the scenes, alas.
