This is my second foray in Tracy Grant/Teresa Grant's Charles & Melanie/Malcolm & Suzanne series. Chronologically I believe this is the last book, although I believe this is the first book written in publication order.The only other book in the series I've read so far is Vienna Waltz which is a several books prequel to this one. In that one Charles and Melanie had only been married for about a year and a half and were still learning each other. In this book they've been married for about seven years and have a settled relationship.On the one hand I like these people. I like how twisty Charles and Melanie's minds work. They are shady agents for the crown, they carry around pistols and knives, they can speak several languages (always unaccented like a native), they get shot or shivved and grit their teeth and carry on only with a whiskey soaked bandage, and they have fraught conversations about 'Honor' and how 'war is hell' and they quote Shakespeare a lot.I also liked the central plot which involved Charles and Melanie's young son being abducted. To get him back they must use their unique skills to retrieve an old and valuable heirloom ring the kidnapper wants.But on the other hand there is something about this book that prevented me from just hands-down loving it like I feel like I should. I think there is just so much...stuff... going on that I feel like the author is trying too hard to make me gasp in shock. Dizzying revelation follows after dizzying revelation after shocking twist. All of the action in the book takes place in roughly a two day span. It felt like it was almost against the laws of physics for everything to have happened in the time that it did. Not just the physical wear and tear of the characters careening around England with no sleep and with various bullet or stab wounds, but the emotional stuff as well. There were some pretty devastating secrets revealed by quite a few characters that profoundly affected their close relationships and yet two days later later...pouf! all is forgiven. One thing this book made crystal clear for me is that I have no interest in going back and reading the other prequels. After all the stuff that was revealed in this story, any relationship that the author builds for Charles & Melanie in the preceding years simply won't satisfy me, any more back-story she chooses to explore will not hold my interest. I need to see where they go from here. I couldn't go back and read about what they did before knowing what I know now. Added to that there is a level of continuity that feels like it is missing with the prequels being written after this book. For instance the central mystery of one of the earlier prequels, Vienna Waltz involved a character Princess Tatiana that had a close personal relationship with Charles. The events in that book had a huge personal effect on him. And while Charles & Melanie's time in Vienna is alluded to in this book, at no point is Princess Tatianna ever mentioned. There were some key points where Charles is musing about his life and childhood and his family where Tatianna really should have figured in his thoughts. And there is especially a point at the end of this book when a character very important to Charles dies that would have been a natural point for Charles to reflect on Tatianna as well. So that is a major flaw in the continuity for me.So I did enjoy this book enough to want to read a follow up that follows this book chronologically, but I really think I will pass on the prequels.
Good fiction is something that has always inspired awe in me. Writing fiction - especially good one - is the ability I myself do not possess and, therefore, admire even more in others.Tracy Grant's "Secrets of a Lady" (the first novel in the Charles and Melanie Fraser series) is, in my opinion, one of the best examples of fiction. It is intelligent, painstakingly researched, and beautifully written. Not only does the book have a plot that keeps one turning the pages and not wanting to set it down until the very end, and the characters that are complex, three-dimensional and supremely alive, but also a kind of edge that is frequently missing from historic adventure novels written by female authors.While clearly fond of her characters, Tracy Grant is not afraid of being hard on them and of putting them in situations that leave emotional and physical scars that may not ever heal, even if the situations themselves eventually become resolved. She reminds that the good old England and, specifically, its capitol that we tend to romanticize so much based on Jane Austen novels, had a meaner, darker and grittier side to it. There were splendid mansions and elaborate gatherings, where the wealthy tried to outdo each other in showing their style and sophistication. But there were also rat-ridden slums, drunken brawls, prostitution, theft, rape and murder.As the story progresses, the author puts her heroes through every circle of hell that was early 19th century London, stripping away the layers built up in the course of their recent upper class life, and forcing them to resort to skills and habits acquired during their more distant and far more bloody and dangerous past. This last bit of information is intended specifically for the male readers of historic adventure fiction, who might overlook this book, mistaking it for yet another romance novel filled with corsets, heaving bosoms and not much else of substance.Having grown up reading Dumas, George Sand, Maupassant and other masters of historic fiction enhanced with vivid real-life details, I am glad to see that the genre is not only remembered, but very much alive and well in contemporary literature, Tracy Grant being one of its most staunch sentinels.
Do You like book Secrets Of A Lady (2007)?
Really my rating is 2.5 stars. I thought the actual mystery was a good one. I did not guess who did it. There were other twists & turns in the story that surprised me in a good way. So Tracy Grant has a clever plot going for her. However, something about the 2 main characters bugged me. I didn't find them as enchanting as I was obviously supposed to. They just rubbed me the wrong way, which is a large problem when the two main characters are on almost every page. They seemed too modern, too twenty first century. The story was set in the early 1800s during the Regency period in England - one of my favorite periods in history. However, it could have been set at any time. I didn't get a feel for London at that time. And Charles, the husband, was just too too understanding and open minded. I could not suspend my disbelief enough to accept he would respond the way the author had him responding. It veered to comedy, the way he was so liberated and understanding.
—Julie Barrett
I really liked Vienna Waltz and Imperial Scandal so I wanted to read more books by Tracy/Teresa Grant. Secrets of a Lady/Daughter of the Game was the debut book by the author. I think she wrote it close to ten years ago. The characters in this book, Charles and Melanie Fraser, are supposed to be the same characters in her newer books (Vienna Waltz and Imperial Scandal), but renamed Malcolm and Suzanne Rannoch. I was really excited to read about what happened to them as the books were not written/released in chronological order. However, I found Secrets of a Lady not to be as well written as the more recent books. Truly, that is not unexpected since she wrote it ten years ago. I would expect that her writing would improve over the years. My real problem was that I found Charles and Melanie much less likeable than Malcolm and Suzanne. I just couldn't wrap my head around the idea that these were the same characters. There were some similarities, but Grant's more recent writing made Suzanne and Malcolm much more approachable and sympathetic. I was rooting for Suzanne and Malcolm to work it all out. I understood their struggles and conflicts. With Charles and Melanie, it was just painful. Things happened too fast, Charles was a jerk, maybe justifiably so, but it didn't make me root for them to work it out. He came across very much holier than thou. I appreciated that Melanie essentially pointed that out to him, but you would think after seven years of marriage he would cut her a little slack a little sooner once the shock wore off and not have her have to spoon feed him all the reasons for doing the things that they did back in the day when they were fighting for what they believed in. Bottom line, if you have read about Charles and Melanie and loved them, I think you will love the newer books about Malcolm and Suzanne even with the name change. If you love Suzanne and Malcolm, be warned that Charles and Melanie are little rougher around the edges.*The re-release as Secrets of a Lady did include some changes which may make a difference to some readers. I read and reviewed the original version- Daughter of the Game.*
—Julie
Tracy Grant’s Secrets of a Lady, set in the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars, starts off interestingly enough with the kidnapping of a young boy from his wealthy family’s house and the slow revelation that his parents’ seemingly idyllic marriage isn’t all that it seems. But I find the main characters boring and paper thin – Mélanie is impossibly beautiful and refined (despite the life that she’s revealed to have lived) but simultaneously, a totally kickass fighter who can shoot and stab people w
—Bibliophile
