Narrated by Kate Reading

At long last, fans of Willig’s Pink Carnation series are getting the Carnation’s story in The Lure of the Moonflower! A series that began with The Secret History of the Pink Carnation, Willig has spun a tale of 2 centuries – “current day” (starting about 2004), and roughly 2 centuries earlier, the tale of a league of spies in the vein of the Scarlet Pimpernel helping to rout Napoleon.

It’s a story-within-a-story, so there’s a wrapper of contemporary, wherein American scholar Eloise Kelly is in London researching her dissertation about British spies during the Napoleonic era. As she reads the documents about the spies, the first book slips first into 1803, where Amy Balcourt is trying to become a member of the League of the Purple Gentian, the, ahem, fictional successor to the Scarlet Pimpernel. Over the course of 12 novels, we meet the Midnight Manzanilla, the Blood Lily, the Purple Plumeria and various other flower spies, while Eloise continues to work on her doctoral dissertation, finding love along the way.

SPOILER ALERT if you have not read the first book in the series: Jane Wooliston is the Pink Carnation. Readers of the series learn this early on, but Jane is denied her HEA and even her family’s support before she is paired on a mission in Portugal with a British operative who speaks fluent Portuguese, the Moonflower. Jack Reid – son of Colonel Reid introduced in an earlier book – is half-British, half-Indian, and has never been at ease or at home in either culture. As the Moonflower, he is awaiting his orders, not expecting his colleague to be the infamous Pink Carnation.

As Jack and Jane try to find the missing monarch, Queen Maria of Portugal, who has been spirited away by loyalists hoping to win Portugal back from France, Eloise and Colin learn another important lady has been spirited away: Colin’s great-aunt Arabella Selwick-Alderly is being held hostage during their wedding rehearsal dinner. Will Jack and Jane find Queen Maria? Can Eloise and Colin rescue Aunt Arabella?

Willig’s writing is at once flippant and funny – she is the very master of alliteration – as well as emotional and touching at times, and also well-researched. Much of the prose is tongue-in-cheek, and I found myself laughing through every book, including this one. She ends her books with notes to readers, however, in which she quotes her historical sources and reveals when and how she took any artistic license with historical situations.

Kate Reading is a master narrator with the ability to read extremely well in both American and British accents, and she also acquits herself well in French and only slightly less in Portuguese (admittedly a language not as widely used in English novels!). Her pacing is natural, easy to listen to, and her acting skills in bringing these 2 different stories to life are amazing. She uses pitch and tone to differentiate all of the various characters – Colin’s bored society mother, his sleazy cousin/step-father, his younger sister and his great-aunt all get fully developed and consistent characters throughout the series, as do Eloise’s friends and family. In addition, there are the many, many characters in the spy league and their nemeses and allies, all clearly understood, in a variety of accents. (One of the books uses a different narrator who is also very talented but does not compare to Reading’s performance.)

I think Carnation fans will be pleased with Jane and Jack’s story, which has a suitably romantic ending, and also with the conclusion of Eloise and Colin’s story. This could be read as a stand-alone, but why would you, when there are 11 other wonderful books in the series to enjoy?

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