Meredith Duran is one of the most creative, insightful and interesting HR authors currently releasing new works.
While her newest release, A Lady's Code of Misconduct, won't ever be my favourite Duran title, it's a very fine effort and any aspiring HR author would do well to check it out, if only to see how a talented romance author gets it right.
Duran's writing is sophisticated and well honed. Chapter Two of ALCM, is, for example, a reader's dream. I re-read it immediately, fascinated to figure out why it was so good. But right throughout this work, Duran provides prose that well illustrates a disciplined approach to refining and editing and more refining - on her part alone. (It's my guess that she has a wonderful editor and a great set of beta readers, as well.)
In my view, there is only one mild weakness to ACLM - that is when Duran deliberately uses italicised single words to emphasise the passion in her sex scenes and is somewhat "flowery"/overdone in those same scenes. No matter - I am forced to forgive her. After all, she is just so darned better than nearly everyone else writing historical romance.
On the other hand, in ACLM Duran demonstrates a wide range of talents. For example, she "does" politics in a way that illustrates a fine understanding of the nuances, manoeuvrings, idealism, shabbiness and fascination of that life.
Duran explores the way power corrupts and how the impact of that corruption impacts on government, aristocrats, the general populus, and (very significantly, for this story) the criminal - both rich and poor. She outlines how the h (Jane) judges power and how she is tempted by it when first given the chance to wield it. In an elegant contrast, Duran creates a H (Crispin), who is forced to look backwards - to confront just how low he was prepared to go to grab power and manipulate it. Duran does this cleverly, without any touch of the preachiness or superficiality of many other HRs when they evaluate the morality of the suppressions of the time.
Duran is also a master at creating characters who resonate with authenticity. In a Lady's Code of Misconduct she pulls off a very unusual occurrence in HR land - Jane and Crispin are equally riveting and of equal importance in the unfolding of the plot.
Jane is formidable - she hides her true nature for SIX YEARS (!!) while she plans her escape from her evil uncle's household. And then she has the courage to commit a fraud that makes the escape possible. And further courage, right to the end of the book when she rushes to Crispin's rescue. Most importantly, Duran makes Jane a complex character who is forced to acknowledge her self-delusions, her capacity for dishonesty (when it suits her) and her eager willingness to blame Crispin for her own failings. Jane is a well-rounded figure and no sweet and clever do-gooder who can hold herself as superior to others. While her adventures and emerging relationship with the "new" Crispin remind her that she can be funny, and witty, and even bawdy, she also needs to be shocked by more unpleasant self discovery - especially when Crispin, as well as his sister, Charlotte, make her face her shortcomings. All of that (as well as her talent for politics) make her a character of strength and more worthy of interest (for the reader, as well as Crispin, his family, her family and the "political class".)
Crispin is an equally formidable character and it is not just because of his amnesia, although Duran takes this much-used trope and turns it on its ear. (She creates and then conjures it up as a terrifying and perplexing and changing and transforming force that makes every other HR amnesia book I've read pale into insignificance.) He is also formidable because the reader, as well as Jane, is confronted with the two Crispins, the wildly different characters, the life stories that created them, the struggle for the new Crispin to come to terms with his past and the gradual melding of the two identities. Fascinating and well done Ms Duran.
Crispin is also made more interesting because he admires Jane's inner strengths, recognising them before anyone else. He is in awe of her doggedness, her capacity for dissembling, her understanding of politics, her passionate idealism and her intellect. And, of course, he fancies her rotten. All that makes for an impressive hero in any woman's life.
Irrespective, the love affair of Jane and Crispin does not quite match that of my favourite Duran titles - Emma and Julian in Lord of Shadows; Lydia and James in Bound by your Touch; Nora and Adrian in At Your Pleasure; and Gwen and Alex in Wicked Becomes You.
It does, however, rank highly in my second tier of Duran stories and that is still a very good level, when it is forced to be compared with such giants in HR land.
So compared to its author's predecessors, I would rate ALCM at a very decent four. More fairly, when comparing it with the work of even the best of all HR authors, I rank it as a well deserved five.
PS Thank you Ms Duran for seeming to signal, in the closing stages of ALCM, that Lockwood's story comes next. It has already been a hell of a wait and your fans can only hope that it will soon be over. (And that we will get more of a glimpse of Emma and Julian.)
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Reviewed in France on February 18, 2019
