The Particulars: Erotica, Harlequin Spice, 2008, Out of print, Available in audio (Audible exclusive), Book 1 in loosely connected duet
Why Was It In Wendy's TBR?: Y'all my print TBR is a sickness. This book is autographed, which means I picked it up at an RWA conference and I know it was the 2009 conference because the author dated her signature. Seriously, I have a problem.
The Review: For this month's Rizz theme I thought it would be fun to read an erotic romance since it's literally been forever since I've read one. Why? Well, the subgenre changed. Folks, I'm just not interested in reading about an endless series of kinks without any passion to back it up, and I, personally, felt like that was what the subgenre was devolving into. I need passion. I need emotion. Frankly I need more than sex on the page otherwise what's the point exactly?
This book was published in 2008 and back then it would have been considered a throwback, which means it's very much a throwback in 2025. Told in first person through the written journal entries of our heroine, Anne Cozette, it starts in the summer 1869 and takes us through the spring of 1875. Young Cozette is being shuttled off to live with an aunt and uncle. Her father killed in an accident and most of her siblings dead from cholera, her mother and last remaining sibling are on the brink of death. For reasons she doesn't understand, Cozette has been spared sickness, and it's her mother's dying wish to see her 14-year-old daughter cared for. She can already read and write, and the aunt will make sure to continue her schooling.
Of course life with her aunt and uncle does not go according to plan. Also in residence is a cousin, a lad so foul he once tried to drown a litter of kittens for fun. Naturally he makes advances on Cozette, who manages to fend him off and run away before he rapes her. Of course the sack of garbage spins a tale for Mom and Dad that Cozette is a wayward girl, out to tempt him with her wicked ways, and before we know it Cozette is shuttled off to an orphanage. She's there for a stretch when she meets her first love, a young man named Ernest doing chores around the property to earn money to help his sickly mother. There's a sexual interlude between them where Cozette's "virtue" is left intact which helps to wash away the horrors experienced with her cousin. Of course life in the orphanage is not good, especially for the girls - some of whom seem to be "disappearing." Cozette has largely flown under the radar until one day Ernest overhears there are plans to sell Cozette to a man who came around flashing a wad of cash. He gives Cozette money from his own savings, tells her to flee to London, that he will follow and find her once it is safe.
Ernest, of course, never comes and Cozette is a young girl alone in London. She learns quickly to survive by her wits and with the help of others on the street who take her under their wing. She is soon disguising herself as a boy, making "friends," and working in a brothel, scrubbing floors and "managing" one of her "friends" who has a stripper-burlesque-type act. Eventually a good deed at a local market leads to employment with Lord and Lady Archibald, who, once realizing Cozette is actually a girl and not a boy, take her in and offer her employment as a maid. This is where the majority of the story unfolds and Cozette soon discovers a family with the Archibald's like she's never known.
This story is a curious mix of erotica, erotic romance, and coming of age. The style in which it's written harkens back to the lusty bodice rippers of the 1970s/1980s that featured heroines who had several adventures, with several lovers, before settling down with their one true love - all of which was told in an often verbose purple prose style that I will admit, rarely works for me. McIntyre doesn't go full-blown purple here though, it's more like a lavender tinge. Expect a lot of fruit and flower euphemisms for sex and lady parts and you'll have a rough idea of what to expect.
Cozette takes her fair share of lovers throughout the book - starting with Ernest and including everyone from an untrustworthy Lord next door, but boy he makes her lady parts tingle, a solider before he's shipped off to Canada, and a budding artist (who is the hero in the second, loosely connected book). Then there's Mr. Coven, the man who manages Lord Archibald's stables. A man with physical scars, who wears an eye patch, and starts verbally sparring, sometimes flirtatiously so, with Cozette the moment she arrives at the estate looking like an urchin who probably has lice.
This story reminded me of why erotic romance pulled me in as a reader early on - Cozette is driving this story and her own destiny. Make no mistake, she has luck on her side, but she's making choices, she's calling the shots, and she will let nobody consent to touch her without her say so. She's a heroine choosing passion, does not shirk her desires, and given the series of lovers she enjoys this definitely reads more like erotica. Also, given her age, her trials and tribulations, it's very coming of age. A young girl going through a sexual awakening. She starts this story at 14 (when she is nearly raped by her cousin), her first pleasurable sexual experience is at 16, and her first time with intercourse being at 17. One would expect an "ick" factor here - but I gotta admit, not really for me. I think the historical time period helped tremendously. Certainly a story of this ilk written in present day would not have hit nearly the same way. But the historical setting, the lavender tinged writing style, this one was pure escapism for me.
That said, it does fall apart at the end. There's a big reveal, an A Ha! moment, that just did not work for me. I can suspend disbelief but not to the point where it snaps entirely - and snap here it does. Also, while I can normally take or leave epilogues, I kind of felt like this story needed one. I had grown attached to the odd little Found Family at the Archibald estate and would have liked one final moment for a Where Are They Now? recap.
McIntyre wrote a couple of books and some shorts for Harlequin Spice, most of which are out of print now, and her website is scrubbed of any reference to these works (Because they're out of print? Because she moved on and rebranded? No clue). Most recently she's moved over to writing contemporary westerns and from what I can tell her last book came out in 2019. I'm sorry I left this one languishing in my TBR for so long. It's hardly perfect but damn if this isn't interesting - and frankly an interesting erotic romance is something I haven't read in a long time. It gives me an itch to dig around for more of the sub genre languishing in my TBR.
Final Grade = B-
