The Devil's Back

My favorite book of Lisa Kleypas' Wallflowers series is Devil in Winter.  It might be because Sebastian, Lord St. Vincent is so supremely confident before Evie pops around and changes his whole world.  It might be that Evie, despite her stammer, wins the heart of the calm and collected Sebastian.  Either way, the two incredibly stubborn people find their happily ever after with each other.

I was incredibly excited when I found that Kleypas was going to be revisiting Sebastian and Evie and their children within her new series, the Ravenels.  It began just a little bit in last year's book, Devil in Spring, but this year we were solidly in the world of the Challon family again with Devil's Daughter.

Now, I got a bit of a surprise last night as I was waiting for another book to download when Devil's Daughter showed up on my Kindle!  It was wicked exciting.  I read the other book I was waiting on first, but then I stayed up super late last night to read this one as well, and it was 100% worth it.

In Devil in Winter's epilogue, Phoebe is born with her mother's red, red hair and Sebastian remarks that it appears to be his destiny to be surrounded by red haired women.  Phoebe and her father certainly have a very special relationship that's seen through the whole book.  Phoebe is also as unique a heroine as her mother was.  While Evie had a stammer, Phoebe is a young widow with two children.  It's a first in historical romance for me, quite frankly.  There have been young widows before, but they don't usually have children.  The addition of young Justin and Stephen make the book a lot of fun.

When Gabriel, Lord St. Vincent, married Pandora Ravenel in Devil in Spring, we never saw the actual wedding.  That's because it forms a gorgeous setting for Devil's Daughter.  Everyone descends on Eversby Priory for the nuptials, but if there's one person that Phoebe absolutely doesn't want to see is West Ravenel.  Her husband, Henry, Lord Clare, had known West at boarding school as a child, where West was a bully.  He made Henry's life miserable.  Phoebe isn't ready to forgive this man, whom she's never met, but she also isn't quite ready to be back in Society after the death of Henry.  It's been two years since Henry died, but Phoebe loved him   There's was a sweet love that stemmed from childhood friendship, and, although ill all his life, Henry's passion was really Phoebe. 

West has spent the last few years at Eversby Priory, working with the tenant farmers and learning how to manage estates.  It's pulled him from the life of debauchery that might have killed him if he'd continued on that path, which would have been a real shame.  Through the last few books, West has proven himself to be a kind and caring man, although he may be the only one who doesn't see it.    His first introduction to Phoebe is when young Justin runs off at the Priory.  He falls instantly, although he fights it just as much as Phoebe does.  But it's almost as if Sebastian, now the Duke of Kingston, knows something and is trying to engineer a relationship between them.  It's actually rather funny when he does a bit of gentle banging of heads together.

It doesn't take much for the pair to fall for each other, but they both fight a relationship.  West doesn't believe that he's a good man or has the ability to be a good father because of how he grew up.  He was beaten by his father and wasn't wanted by anyone else.  Phoebe made a promise to her dying husband, and wants what's best for her children.  But West gives her enough to think about so that when she returns to her husband's, and now her son's, estate in Essex, she starts to take control of her destiny, and right when she needs help she reaches out to West. They try having a casual relationship while West is sorting out what exactly has been going on on the Clare estates.  But it's just too much for them and they break it off, with Phoebe staying in Essex and West running off to London where he receives the great advice from Sebastian that I mentioned earlier.

Phoebe made a fabulous heroine to me.  She's a wonderful mix of her parents, with all of her mother's stubbornness, and her father's sense of humor and ability to know when change is a good thing.  Sebastian ended up learning about Jenner's in Devil in Winter when it became his responsibility.  Phoebe learns all she can about estate management when she finally decides that the Clare estates, her son's inheritance.  There's something comforting in the kind of dedication that the Challon family brings to everything they do.  I can't wait to see who is up next in the series (My guess is going to be Cassandra, as she is the only unmarried Ravenel left....) but we have no news on that yet!

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