Signet, $4.99, ISBN 0-451-20482-4
Historical Romance, 2001
The very existence of this book is a spoiler to the related book Libby’s London Merchant. If I explain more, I will be a spoiler as well. So if you want to go read these two books, I suggest you stop now and read that other book first.
I mean it. Stop.
One last warning.
That’s it. I wash my hands off you. One Good Turn is the story of Libby’s rejected suitor, the more typical drunk/hurt/psychologically wounded war hero archetype named Benedict Nesbitt, whom Libby rejects for that adorable country doctor of hers. Now, if your enjoyment of that other book is ruined, see, I told you. I TOLD YOU. Hah!
Today, Nez is minding his own sweet ways, still a rather self-absorbed twit but also now an eager-puppy-like dude willing to be more gentlemanly for the sake of being a gentleman. He’s a new man now. Not that boring guy in Libby anymore. When his sister faces some domestic problems, petty ones caused by an outbreak of chicken pox but ones she cannot handle, Nez decides to take care of his niece for a little while. While minding his own sweet ways, he comes across your obligatory woman-in-trouble Liria Valencia, a foreigner who through Nez’s charm will soon learn that there is no finer land in the world than wonderful, sensible England. (Until Ms Kelly writes an Irish/Scotland romance, I’m sure.) Liria soon mothers everybody when the chicken pox spreads, and Nez soon offers unemployed, under-financed Liria a job as housekeeper.
Liria accepts. Of course, she has some secrets tied up to intrigue in dirty furriner lands that she and Nez must untangle and smash because she can become a true-blue permanent resident of Ye Lovely England, and Nez, your war hero, has some tortured mental baggage that Liria must kiss and make better too.
Mind you, Nez becomes the usual tortured-hero-who-behaves-badly-in-the-past-because-of-his-hurt in this story, but to Ms Kelly’s credit, she has created a really irresistible hero in Nez. My, he really lays on the charm thick in this, his starring role. His wit is pretty sharp, and I, who find traditional Regency novels dry as breadcrust too often, am charmed. Liria is a more familiar heroine, whose baggage is not because of what she did, but because of who she was – you know, heroines that are virtuous and passive and gets hated by baddies because of who she is. Unlike the hero, who got hurt because he did some things.
Tiny pesky nitpicking, I’m sure, but when an author writes as fine as Carla Kelly, it’s still disappointing that these tiny, pesky matters exist. Still, this author still remains the only regency author whom I can read without falling over and snoring by page 50. When is she going to write a full-length historical? I want to read about guys like Nez doing the dirty in their finest birthday suit.
