Review: Beguiling the Beauty by Sherry Thomas

Venetia Easterbrook is in America with her sister Helena and sister-in-law Millie when she hears about a lecture being given by a renowned naturalist, the Duke of Lexington. Venetia, who is trying to get her sister away from the married man she’s been seeing, hopes that Helena will be so taken with the Duke that they will fall in love immediately and Helena will forget all about her scandalous affair.

When the trio gets to the lecture everything goes well until the duke relates a story, without using names, about a woman back in England who was beautiful but ultimately a greedy person and possibly one that killed her first husband. Venetia is stunned and almost in a fog as she realizes the story is about her! She goes about her trip in America but eventually decides to leave her family in Montreal and head to New York a few days early trying to get away from her own thoughts . Who is at the hotel but the duke. She’s is completely hidden behind a driving hat and veil and because she doesn’t want the duke to know it’s her she speaks in German and gives a false name. While at the hotel a set of circumstances makes Venetia even angrier at Lexington than she was before and she ends up booking passage on a steamer – the one that the duke is on. She plans to keep herself hidden behind her veil, make the duke fall in love with her and then reveal herself, making him look the fool. Unfortunately Venetia ends up falling in love with the duke but knows that she can never reveal who she is – even when the duke asks her to marry him.

This book was so not what I expected – it was better. I admit that I thought that Venetia’s reasoning wasn’t all that sound when she first devised her plan for revenge but it was thought up so quickly even she realized that it wasn’t all that great of a plan. Despite my misgivings in the plan itself the execution of it was wonderful. I loved seeing Venetia and Lexington getting closer – their long talks and the time spent together – it was wonderful.

I can’t say I thought that there would be any man that would not take the opportunity to see what his veiled companion looked like when given the chance but Lexington was honorable in that way. He truly wanted to get to know the woman who had become his lover without seeing what she looked like – just knowing her from the inside was enough for him and that’s what made me love his character so much more. When the couple disembarked from the ship my heart ached for Lexington as he was so gone on this veiled woman and he had no idea how to get in touch with her.

A little back story – Lexington had seen Mrs. Easterbrook when she was married to her first husband and had fallen in love with her. He had been tormented for 10 years by her astonishing beauty and couldn’t help himself from getting a little glazed over whenever he saw her. To say he got hypnotized by her looks – as well as resented the fact that he turned into mush around her was an understatement. When Lexington ran into Mrs. Easterbrook after his affair with the “baroness” he hated himself a little more for again turning to mush and then feeling like he betrayed his love. Again, my heart ached just a bit more for this man as I wasn’t sure exactly how things would work out.

Venetia was a woman who had lead a difficult and completely unfulfilling life. When she met Lexington on the ship under the guise of the Baroness von Seidlitz-Hardenberg she had absolutely no intention of falling in love with the man. Love was the furthest thing from her mind as she thought he was a unfeeling cad but once she got to know him she realized that he was hiding a wonderful person under all that stuffy intelligence.

There were a lot of things that I liked about this story but one of the main things was the twist that Thomas took with beauty. In most historical novels where the heroine is a beauty it’s mostly portrayed as a wonderful aspect of the book. But in this story it was more a hindrance as it kept people from seeing the true person Venetia was. Everyone except Venetia’s true friends thought she was a simpering mindless beauty when really she was a highly intelligent, thoughtful and caring woman. It’s probably hard for anyone to think that beauty would be an obstacle but in this story it was and it worked wonderfully well.

I thought the love story was fantastic; the writing compelling and amazing. Despite just a couple of niggly issues I had with the story I adored the book. I can’t wait to see what happens in the next book – thank heavens I only have to wait a few months.