Ravishing in Red

I LOVE Madelene Hunter's books and this one is no exception. The characters are well-written, believable, and memorable. Her heroines are smart and filled with common sense and her heroes are real men that can show tenderness and love to the people they care about. No stupid, vapid dialogue or misunderstandings. This a very nice start to another great series. I can't wait for the rest!

Loved it! Madeline Hunter is able to capture the essence of the years she so eloquently writes about. The dialog, the formality of the relationships, and all the details are written in a way to whisk the reader to another time. Ravishing in Red is a lovely start her new romance series about the ladies of The Rarest Bloom.

After reading many forgettable historical romances over the past few months, it was a true pleasure to pick up Madeline Hunter's latest. She has always been one of my favorite authors, but lately even that usually safe method of selecting investments had not always paid off. How relieved and happy I was to find that this book was a delight! This first installment of a planned quartet involving "The Rarest Blooms" - a group of women who live together in a country house raising flowers, hiding their pasts and attempting to forge their independent futures- did a good job of introducing a series of interesting and compelling characters. "Ravishing in Red" focused on Audrianna, a not-so-young women seeking to clear her father's name in a war-time scandal. I found her characterization, motivations, thoughts, and dialog particularly believable and sympathetic for a woman of her time. From details regarding her relationships with her mother & sister, to her sometimes awkward yet beautifully poignant confessions to Sebastian, I felt I truly understood and respected her as a character and a Woman. Sebastien is a gentleman and a rake, forced to give up his wild times, in order to look into the war-time scandal for his disabled brother, a Marquess and an influential member of the Commons. The brothers' relationship is a refreshing and pivotal plot point of the story, underscoring Sebastien's character and motivations. Though I have read this type of story before, Ms. Hunter's characters are fresh, honest, and compellingly mature. I can't wait to read the next in the series.

What a thoroughly enjoyable book. Good, even by Madeline Hunter standards. The plot is solid, the characters are fully developed. Audrianna is the daughter of a government official who committed suicide. He was implicated in a scandal resulting in the deaths of soldiers on the battlefield. Sebastian is the brother of a marquess, an MP, and Audrianna's father's accuser. They encounter each other as the result of a newspaper advertisement soliciting a meeting with Audrianna's father. The result is Audrianna and Sebastian being caught in a compromising situation and their eventual marriage. The understanding and love between them grows gradually, hampered by their adversarial history. Well-written, great attention to detail. I always appreciate an author who can get the titles and addresses of British aristoracy right. A breath of fresh air in a genre crowded with poorly written dreck.

After a few weeks of reading historical romance releases that everybody but me seems to like I finally found a winner. I buy without reservation any book written by Madeline Hunter. For me, even the ones others say are bad, are good. She puts me back into the historical period her characters are living in, whether it be Victorian, Regency or medieval, and gives me a good romance at the same time. I don't skim or skip pages but rather savor the whole reading experience and don't want the book to end. In contrast to the characters found in many other romances, her characters speak and behave much more closely to the way I imagine people would at that particular time. If we do find a heroine doing something inconsistent with what is expected it is not an annoying, cutesy, immature action, but rather something circumstances have forced her to do in spite of customs of the times. Because of this, the dialogue in a Hunter book is not full of contemporary American speech patterns and vocabulary and may sometimes sound a bit stilted to the fans of certain other historical romance authors whose characters speak and act in a way that makes me feel as if modern-day people had time-traveled back in history. So, this review is not a summary of the plot. That can be found here online or on the back of the book. Suffice it to say that this is a great Regency romance with an interesting plotline and a great cast of characters in addition to our heroine and hero. I'm looking forward to the next book in the series which will develop the love story of two of the secondary characters we meet in this one.