Review- Lavender Blue

Let me start by saying I began this book really, really wanting to like it. Lavender Blue was written by Sandra Heath. I suppose you could say it's a Regency paranormal adventure romance. Light on the romance part, unfortunately.

Lady Anthea Wintour has broken off her 'arrangement' with His Grace, Jovian Cathness, Duke of Chavanage over a year ago due to his inexplicable descent into a permanent drunken stupor. His Grace, meanwhile, has a new best friend- his wine & brandy. Lady Anthea's father remarries while away, his wife dies suddenly & he sends his new stepdaughter to London to live with Lady Anthea & her chaperone while he traipses off to the wilds of Brazil- still with me?

Odd things begin to happen to Lady Anthea, the stepsister Corinna & Aunt Letitica the chaperone, several months after Corinna arrives in London. Corinna of course foregoes the usual, strict & lengthy mourning requirement via the convenient device "my ____ wouldn't want me to mourn so long/ I look terrible in mourning'.

Anthea occasionally addresses Jovian as 'Duke'. It may be correct, but I found it odd & stilted. Not to mention that I thought the correct form of address would be 'His Grace', which is what I'd call my ex beau who can't seem to stay on the wagon.

There is no adequate explanation for why Anthea dropped Jovian like a hot potato without fighting to sober him up even a little bit. One pathetic squabble & she caves. Why Anthea loves him in the first place isn't addressed at all. He's rich, handsome, titled &..well, that ought to be enough I suppose.

Needless to say, they reunite after Jovian convinces Anthea there's danger afoot. For the sake of a hot smooch or two, she believes him. Even Aunt Letitica gets into the act & gets an HEA of her own. Not Corinna though. She can settle for having survived the story.

This is a combination of Children of the Corn (S. King- you remember!) & the Persephone/Hades myth. Not nearly so scary/creepy as King obviously, but the resemblance was there. There were excellent possibilities with this storyline. However, the relationship development was pushed aside for overly convoluted plot devices. Too bad Lavender Blue wasn't a full length novel- it deserved a better telling.

I'd give this a C-/D+. It needed more relationship focus & more length to justify such a twisted plot. Too bad really. I had high hopes.