Of the three authors I was looking forward to Marlowe the best. I've read her previous titles (An Improper Aristocrat by Deb Marlowe , Her Cinderella Season by Deb Marlowe) and enjoyed them immensely. McCabe and Gaston I know I've read before as well, but not as recently.

As a concept I think it was intriguing and full of possibilities. Its also possibly one of the more outlandish premises I've read in any historical novel. Its a 'Yours, Mine and Ours' set up--Manning had his 2 legal sons by his legal wife (Nicholas and Stephen), and his out of wedlock daughter Justine (from a previous liaison), the Duchess has her one legal son by her legal husband (Brenner) and together Manning and the Duchess had 3 children--2 girls and 1 boy (Leo, Annalise and Charlotte). Of all the children Brenner is the only one not to have grown up as part of the 'Fitzmanning Miscellany' as the group is called.

Gaston tackles the story of Brenner, made messenger by his recently departed mother the Duchess (having died on her honey moon trip with Manning) and his romance with Justine. Its a rather dry romance, with both being uncertain and afraid for their own reasons, but sweetly responsive to each other. The more interesting tale was of the Fitzmanning brood and how Brenner dealt with them. His stable, steadfast personality is a wonderful thing for the household and all the children had grown up in awe and respect of him even though they never met him.

Marlowe's story about Annalise and Ned, a friend of Nicholas', is far more spirited though still oddly subdued. The title is misleading as Ned is less of a rake and more like a regular young man of the ton. He doesn't purposely set out to seduce Annalise and is almost resistant because of the secret he harbors. The story takes place roughly a year later, but things haven't changed overmuch with the brood it would seem.

McCabe's story is about the youngest, Charlotte and her long time crush Drew. This story rather hot and cold for me. On the one hand I'm always in favor of long time crushes coming to fruition--who doesn't want their first crush to turn out to be their true love? On the other I think that Charlotte came off less of an ardent admirer and more of a stalker at times. It wasn't any one thing exactly, but she just seemed obsessive in a bad way.

I would have preferred if this had been a series of novels instead of three short stories--this easily could have been 6 books long, one for each kid's romance and it would have given me a better view of each of their individual personalities and traits. As it stood however the three boys--Nicholas, Stephen and Leo--were almost interchangeable at times. Less so in Marlowe's story, where Stephen is clearly the one who plays the most jokes on his siblings, but the fact remained that the overall premise didn't feel like it ended. ( )

Amazon preorder,Amazon received