The comic premise is a decoy and the real book is very quiet
A wish on a balcony, a man falling out of the ivy, a wager, a wedding. All of that is the marketing. The novel is actually about a man alone in a library discovering he can do the job, and it never raises its voice about it.
This review was drafted from a sampled pass at 55, 70, 78, 87, 88 and 90 percent, plus the opening and the ending, with page numbers recorded on the plot page. That was enough to judge structure, character and how the ending is built, though not pacing minute to minute. The book has since been read cover to cover, and the verdict below has not been revised yet.
Where a normal review would smooth that over, this one says which is which. A review you cannot check is just a vibe with confidence.
The short version
Better than book one, and book one was good. Where A Little Bit Wicked hid a story about coercion inside a merry-widow romp, this one hides a story about inherited expectation inside a rake comedy, and it hides it more skillfully.
The premise is deliberately silly. A woman on a balcony asks the universe for a hero out of a novel, and a man drops out of the neighbor’s ivy with a husband shooting at him. That is the cover, the blurb, and the first twenty pages.
The transition is so smooth you can miss it happening.
What it gets right
Genuinely strong
- The library scene. Nigel reads his father’s estate notebooks, finds he can follow them easily, suspects he could do the job, and tells nobody. Nothing explodes. It is the most consequential scene in the novel.
- The marriage sits in the middle. The wedding is the complication, not the resolution, so the second half has to find a real problem inside a marriage rather than another obstacle in front of one.
- Felicity finds her own steel late. She is icily calm through the fight and notes she had no idea she had that kind of strength. Honest about a woman who has never been in a situation that required it.
- The star callback. She stops on the steps on her way out and thanks the star she wished on in chapter one. Half a page, and the best writing in the book.
- The proposal. He kneels to a woman he is already married to, because nobody ever asked her. The title pays off exactly.
Genuinely weak
- The father dies offstage. The single most important event in Nigel’s arc happens between chapters. It works structurally and it still feels like the book flinched.
- The woman on page one. Shot at, ruined, discarded by page ten, never named. Covered at length in the rant.
- The middle sags. Between the wedding and the fight there is a stretch of comic business, and the emotional plot goes quiet while it runs.
- He is forgiven quickly. Ten days of estrangement for fifteen years of avoidance and one genuinely cruel line. The reconciliation is lovely and it is not expensive.
The thing worth the price of admission
At page 209, in the middle of defending something indefensible, Nigel says the sentence the whole novel is built on. He had long believed the way he had lived his life was a disappointment to his father. It is only recently that he learned that was not the case.
He was wrong. There was no verdict. There was never a verdict. He invented one at an age when nobody makes good decisions, arranged fifteen years around avoiding it, and the person delivering the judgment was himself the entire time.
That is a better observation than most of this shelf manages, and it is doing real work for anyone who has organized part of their own life around a disappointment nobody actually expressed.
Who should read it
Read it if
You have ever avoided trying at something because failing would have settled a question you preferred left open. You liked book one and want the same trick performed better. You want a marriage-of-convenience where the marriage is the problem rather than the prize. Or you want to watch a very polite woman take somebody apart without raising her voice.
Skip it if
You need the hero to suffer proportionally, because he does not. You have no patience for a comic first act before the real book starts. Or you want the rake’s past treated as a cost rather than a character note, in which case the opening will annoy you and it should.
Where to start
Read A Little Bit Wicked first. It is not required, but Nigel is at the club table in book one and the closing toast there turns out to be a running order rather than a joke. This lands harder if you were at that table.
The verdict, without a number
No score. A number on one book of a five-book wager implies a confidence this review, drafted from a sampled pass, does not claim.
What can be said: it is a better book than its premise, a considerably better book than its cover, and it does the same trick as book one with more control. The comedy is real, the ache underneath is real, and the ending earns itself by asking a question instead of making a speech.
It also has the single most quotable exit on this shelf. He asks where she is going, and she tells him it is no longer any of his concern, and that he has forfeited the right to ask.
Read directly from the novel, Kindle edition. · The book hub · The series · The rant