This book was definitely a Desert Isle Keeper for me. Here are some of the reasons why many other readers will hate it:

• It’s written in the first person;
• Both the hero and the heroine are unrepentant snobs; and
• The hero is one of those people who suffers the Agony of Being Born Too Beautiful.

For my part, however, the fact that these characters are believable, but not always easy to like, made me enjoy The Wary Widow all the more.

As I began reading The Wary Widow, I was already mentally drafting an opening to this review about how you can always tell when a foppish hero is about to go Pimpernel and become a dashing man of action. But no – Alastair Russell, who was the villain of a previous book, really is as vain and haughty as he appears.

We first meet Alastair in the French countryside, where he is escorting his distant cousin Cornelia to the convent where she will collect an adolescent relative, Lili. Thirteen and headstrong, Lili does not wish to be a nun, and while Cornelia is not thrilled to be saddled with her — nor does she intend to keep her for long — she comes to admire the girl’s spirit. The group moves to Vienna, where the Congress of Vienna is about to take place. Alastair wangles housing from an elderly nouveau-riche acquaintance who is aflutter at the thought of hosting a countess and a social luminary like Alastair.

Cornelia dreads Lili’s inevitable crush on the devastatingly gorgeous Alastair, but danger comes from another quarter – an evil man from Cornelia’s past fixates on Lili. Cornelia struggles to protect Lili while contending with her own attraction to Alastair, and wondering if it might become something more.

The story is told from Cornelia’s first person perspective. I found her voice somewhat like Claire’s in Outlander – intelligent, wry, and disinclined to smooth over anyone’s faults, including her own. Alastair and Cornelia are both smart, complex characters who don’t much care if you like them or not. They are intensely aware of class and etiquette, and both value their emotional reserve. Alastair has spent years cultivating his trendsetting celebrity persona, and sometimes loses track of where the persona ends and the person begins. Unlike some villains-turned-heroes, he hasn’t renounced many of the traits that led to his villainy in the first place. Instead, the book shows how his failings can also be virtues. His obligatory “Don’t hate me because I’m beautiful” speech is effective because it’s very restrained and without self-pity. There’s even a hint of unexpected nobility in his efforts to meet others’ expectations of him.

True to their times, Alastair and Cornelia are very class-conscious, but not inflexibly so. They make ungenerous assumptions about people who later endear themselves to them. Their snobbish expectations are not always met, and the acknowledge when this is the case.

This book didn’t receive a solid grade of A; it’s final grade is an A-. The minus comes from the limitations of the first-person viewpoint, which I otherwise enjoyed. We’re entirely dependent on Cornelia for our impression of Alastair, and I would have liked to know him a bit better. The book makes careful efforts to distinguish Alastair and Cornelia’s budding relationship from any other crush; as their similar temperaments are revealed, they seem increasingly right for each other. But without Alastair’s viewpoint, there’s less reassurance their bond is love and not infatuation.

Fans of Judith Ivory may especially wish to give The Wary Widow a try; some of her characters have a similar prickly intelligence. This is not the book for anyone looking for a strong sense of emotional immediacy, but for someone who enjoys getting to know complex characters who reflect the values of another time, this book may very well suit.