Brie’s guest review of Mistress by Amanda Quick.
After a year of grand adventures touring the classical ruins of Italy and Greece, Iphiginia Bright returned to England to discover that the real excitement was at home. It seems that her Aunt Zoe has fallen victim to a sinister blackmailer and only Iphiginia can hope to stop the culprit before he can do more harm. Her plan is inspired: Imitating history’s most legendary beauties–Cleopatra, Helen of Troy, Aphrodite–the former schoolmistress will remake herself, and descend upon London Society as the dazzling mistress of Marcus Valerius Cloud, the infamous Earl of Masters. Rumors hint that the Earl has disappeared at the blackmailer’s hands, and by posing as his unknown mistress, Iphiginia is convinced she can ferret out the villain. Overnight, Iphiginia is transformed into a vision with a host of eager admirers, including one she does not expect — the Earl of Masters himself, who strides into a shimmering ballroom one evening to cooly reclaim his “mistress”. He is everything they say he is… arrogant, attractive, devastatingly seductive, and Iphiginia can’t help but be enthralled. But when Marcus agrees to play along with her charade, she doesn’t know that the determined earl has plans of his own: to tease and tempt her, until the beautiful deceiver becomes more than his mistress in name only.
Inphignia Bright’s aunt, Zoe is being blackmailed. Letters have been sent to her demanding money and telling her if she doesn’t pay up she’ll end up dead like the elusive Earl of Masters. Wanting to get to the source of the blackmailing, Inphignia decides to pose as the dead earls mistress in order to insert herself into the social circles of the ton, where she believes the blackmailer roams.
Inphignia does not expect that the earl she has spent weeks studying up on, and essentially falling for, to be alive. So when he walks into a party she is attending, alive and well, she thinks her plans of finding the blackmailer to be ruined along with her reputation. What Inphignia does not count on is the earl agreeing to keep up the facade, or the passion that he incites in her that is sure to make her his mistress in more than just name.
I’m currently trying to work my way through authors that I’ve heard good things about but haven’t yet read. Amanda Quick was one of those authors. I have noticed that her books normally garner good reviews, and was curious about her writing. That said, I’m not sure if Mistress is the best book to judge Quick by. Mistress was very up and down for me. There were moments when I was completely enthralled with the story, but mostly those moments would come to an abrupt end, and I’d be jarred out of the story by a string of thought or dialogue that seemed to drag on forever.
Often Inphignia and Marcus would have conversations that I found to be very tedious and I’d end up skimming pages of their overwrought conversation to get to a more productive area of the story. Something that I found very irritating about their dialogue was the passages where one would try to make a point but was continually cut off by the other before that point could be made. I think I screamed “Out with it, already” more than a few times.
And while I’m critiquing, I have to point out that the mystery surrounding the blackmailer is rather boring and considering that most of Inphignia and Marcus’s conversations consisted of talks about the blackmailer, it’s no wonder I was skimming pages on end. I also found the discovery of the identity of the blackmailer to be anticlimactic. After reading the whole book about the blackmailer, I was disappointed that the final “unavailing” was so underwhelming.
Marcus and Inphignia’s initial meeting and interactions were sexy and fun, I just wish that the steam between the two had lasted. Where the chemistry at the beginning of the story started out hot, with the progression of the story it became lukewarm and the characters became less interesting. I was left feeling a little deflated with the romance aspect of the book, and removed from the characters.
I did find Quick’s writing to be engaging for the most part. There was a point in the book where the mystery about the blackmailer was pushed to the background and her characters were able to shine. I enjoyed that while it lasted.
Overall, I wasn’t very impressed with Mistress. It had its good moments, but unfortunately they were overshadowed by the less interesting ones. Grade 3.5.
This book is available from Bantam. You can buy it here or here in eBook format.
Read more from Brie at Cupid’s Chokehold.
I’ve always found AQ to be really hit or miss. Some of her books are very well done, and others are just..blah.
I think she has a hard time incorporating a mystery into a romance (or vice verse). But I have read a few really good ones, so you shouldn’t give up, I don’t think.
I’ve never read an AQ book before but I do have quite a few of them. I know that I won’t be trying this one out right off the bat, that’s for sure.
And her name was Inphignia? Wow, what a name.