Tuesday, October 6, 2009

Scandal in the Spring

Wallflowers Series - Book 4

Author: Lisa Kleypas


Daisy Bowman is a dreamer. She knows she's the odd one in the family, everyone else is so practical and driven while she's content to watch clouds and pick out the shapes she sees in them. She loves whimsical things and and fantastical novels. When her father brought her and her sister, Lillian, to England to find aristocratic husbands, Daisy wasn't overly concerned. So long as she wasn't separated from her sister, she didn't much mind it. Though she did wish she might find a gentleman who was a bit of a dreamer too, someone who would understand her a little, but as the season draws to a close with no real prospective husband on the horizon, her father begins to become impatient to return to his business in America and begins to chafe at all the money wasted on an investment that doesn't look to make a return. He gives Daisy an ultimatum. Find a husband by the end of the month or marry his protege, Mr. Matthew Swift. There is no one Daisy would rather marry less than a cold-blooded business man who is an exact replica of her father. Much less one that will see her back in America, an entire ocean away from her sister. With the help of her sister, the rest of the Wallflowers and their husbands, she hopes they can save her from Mr. Swift. Even if he is looking a great deal more attractive than she remembers.

Matthew Swift isn't the man everyone thinks he is. He is a man with secrets. One of those secrets is the fact that he has been in love with Daisy Bowman from the moment he first set eyes on her, but his other secrets make any life with Daisy impossible. From the time he was an adolescent, and Mr. Bowman all but adopted him, he's looked up to the man and striven to be a successful business man like him. He knows that none of the Bowman's children like him, Daisy maybe least of all. She thinks him a carbon copy of her father, who disapproves of her fanciful nature, but the truth is that Matthew loves every quirky thing about her. When Mr. Bowman summons him to England for business he knows it will be hard for him seeing Daisy after all this time and doubtless surrounded by suitors, but she'll marry some aristocrat and he'll go back to America where he won't have to see her with another man. All he has to do is keep his feelings in check and hidden from everyone, shouldn't be too hard, he's been doing it for years. He just didn't bargain on how hard it would be watch another man court her or that Daisy might begin seeing him in a different light altogether. How can he resist the girl of his dreams? And resist he must because the secrets of his past are finally catching up to him.



Matthew's secret was pretty darn major. I thought that the untangling of it was kind of brief. I was kind of surprised that Mr. Bowman and his wife reacted the way they did to learning about his secret. Much cooler than I thought them capable of being. I could understand why Matthew thought that there was no future for him with Daisy, but I think that he just wasn't thinking it through enough. If he hadn't slipped up with his dad then he would have been perfectly safe to start a life in England, farther from the man who was looking for him and, since he did not know that his father had told where to find him, it would have been perfectly understandable for him to seriously consider it. I wish he would have told Daisy himself instead of having her find out the way she did. I found it annoying that Daisy never thought to give Matthew the time of day until he showed up in England looking all fit and attractive. By her own admission, she was never nice to him and yet when she sees him again, she is instantly attracted to him and agitated at the thought that he isn't interested in her. To me it makes her seem a bit petty and shallow. She never tried to get to know him when he was a bit gawky, but she disliked him anyway.

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