Title: The Maid of MilanAuthor: Beverley Oakley
First Published: February 2, 2014
Publisher: Choc Lit
Pages: 356
Genre: Historical Romance, Regency, Romance
Format: eARC
Source: Blog Tour
Rating:
Synopsis:
Adelaide Leeson wants to prove herself worthy of her husband, a man of noble aspirations who married her when she was at her lowest ebb.
Lord Tristan Leeson is a model of diplomacy and self-control, even curbing the fiery impulses of his youth to preserve the calm relations deemed essential by his mother-in-law to preserve his wife’s health.
A visit from his boyhood friend, feted poet Lord James Dewhurst, author of the sensational Maid of Milan, persuades Tristan that leaving the countryside behind for a London season will be in everyone’s interests. But as Tristan’s political career rises and Adelaide revels in society’s adulation, the secrets of the past are uncovered. And there’s a high price to pay for a life of deception.
Get the Book: AmazonReview
The Maid of Milan was a pleasant surprise, a love story about regret and finding new love in unexpected places. Adelaide is a young wife with a scandalous past, forced into an arranged marriage to save her reputation. While at first she doesn’t care for her husband Tristan, over time she gets to know the good person and even better husband that he is and falls in love with him. Her life is turned upside down when her former lover steps back into her life, determined to win her back.
The story does a good job of distinguishing between different kinds of love. There are so many love stories where characters fall in love at first sight and forge a fiery bond overcoming obstacles. This is the kind of love I think everyone envisions, even though in reality the fire often burns out and couples struggle with each other’s imperfections. Adelaide and Tristan’s love for each other was born out of compromise, patience, and respect, and through that passion grew between them. The story explores how blind love built on passion alone can destroy the people you care about most despite having the best of intentions.
There is of course a whole lot of drama to keep tensions high. I didn’t care for the convenient timing of certain events that bordered on being unbelievable, and the fact that every character had some dirty little secret that justified the cheating that happens in this story. Adelaide was both an intriguing heroine and a frustrating one, falling into the trap of third act conflicts being easily avoidable if people just talked to each other. Despite a few of my frustrations, The Maid of Milan was overall a pleasurable read that stands out among other books in the genre.
Quote
“She’d hated herself for what she’d been given to believe were wicked traits. She’d been told so many times she’d been born to sin, it was inevitable she’d fulfill the prophecies.”
Content Warnings
View Spoiler »About the Author
About Beverley Oakley
Beverley Oakley writes wicked historicals dripping with scandal, mystery and suspense. That’s when she’s not writing humorous Regencies, knitting, or making historical costumes.
Although she calls Australia home, she was born in the remote African mountain kingdom of Lesotho, and has lived in twelve countries, including Botswana, where she met a handsome Norwegian pilot while she was managing a safari lodge in the Okavango Delta.
Beverley now counts this lovely Norwegian husband, two beautiful, nearly-adult daughters, and a dim, darling Rhodesian Ridgeback, amongst her most prized blessings. She also writes under the pen names as B. G Nettelton and Beverley Eikli.
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