The Dangerous Viscount

By Miranda Neville

She is determined to find a husband. . . now!

Lady Diana Fanshawe’s impeccable bloodline doesn’t stop society from laughing at the antics of her eccentric family. She knows a proper marriage is her one chance to make her way in the world—which is precisely why she will marry Lord Blakeney, though she’s certain she’ll never love him. But then she’s kissed by the brilliant and unconventional Sebastian, Viscount Iverley . . . and her well-laid plans tumble into disarray.

Sebastian wants absolutely nothing to do with love or marriage. But when he arrives at his hated cousin Blakeney’s house party, Sebastian is smitten by the tantalizing Diana. But Diana is “the marrying kind,” and Sebastian has no wish to risk his freedom—though the passion between them is hard to resist. Should the lady follow her heart in an attempt to win Iverley’s, though it seems hardened against her—or should she sacrifice her love for respectability?

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Release date: Sep 28, 2010
• ISBN: 9780062013866

Miranda Neville

Miranda Neville grew up in England before moving to New York City to work in Sotheby's rare books department. After many years as a journalist and editor, she decided writing fiction was more fun. She lives in Vermont.

Reviews for The Dangerous Viscount

[mlleehreen · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

A one-sentence summary of THE DANGEROUS VISCOUNT, in the hero's own words: "Diana and he were adults and both had engaged in antics that were more or less reprehensible."

I'd heard so many good things about Miranda Neville. She has a reputation for writing a more sophisticated and mature sort of romance, and I saw signs of that: she writes about book collecting with a confidence that suggests an amateur's true passion (I was convinced, anyhow) & she describes the subtle warfare of snubbing, one-upsmanship, and veiled dislike as couched in outwardly polite, bland conversation as well as any author I've encountered in the genre.

But. Everything else. Yikes. This is a book about awful people treating one another badly, and I can't think of anything less romantic.

First we have our hero, Sebastian. He has a pretty tragic backstory, abandoned by his mother, raised by an embittered uncle, unsocialized, little loved. Really, poor kid. I felt for him. Unfortunately, these life experiences primed him to absorb his uncle's profound misogyny and he's grown up into an angry, disgruntled woman-hater. He's one part adorably geeky virgin hero and then three parts bitter jerkhole who hangs onto his childhood grudges well into adulthood.

Unfortunately, Sebastian is the more likable of our two protagonists. The heroine, Diana, is also in her mid-twenties, and also living according to a set of life-ambitions she drew up as a preteen. In her case, she comes from a warm, loving, interesting but somewhat ramshackle and eccentric family. As a young, wealthy widow, she chooses to distance herself from their example and speaks about her wonderful family with more than a touch of shame. She wants to be fashionable. She wants to wear the pretty clothes and hang out with the pretty people and marry the popular kid who she had a crush on as a girl.

I'm just going to say that aside from all the awful stuff that Sebastian and Diana do to one another, I have a hard time attaching to protagonists who haven't matured beyond the mindset they developed beween the ages of 10 and 15. Both of them are stuck, and they remain stuck for so long that I never believed that either one of them really grew or changed by the end.

Anyhow. So then there's the actual plot of the book. It starts with some interesting reversals of traditional romance tropes. So, for example, it's our heroine who makes a bet about sexual conquest: she wagers 500 pounds that she can convince Sebastian to kiss her. She seduces him and he falls hard...for her looks. Sebastian's interest in Diana at the beginning is entirely physical, but so intense that he contemplates marrying her.

Until he finds out about the wager, realizes that Diana had toyed with his emotions to make a fool of him (this is exactly what she did - fashion-obsessed Diana happily mocks awkward, bespectacled Sebastian in the early chapters), and vows revenge. In order to obtain his revenge, our hero undergoes the ugly-duckling-into-a-swan makeover traditionally reserved for heroines. He gets new clothes and takes some lessons in small talk and soon enough he's the toast of the town.

And that's how the book derails for me. It starts with shallow Diana doing something cruel, and then bitter Sebastian gets his turn to do something cruel, and as in a true blood feud, each act of vengeance only spurs the injured party to a more vindictive retaliation.

Towards the end of the book, Diana and Sebastian shift gears and try to really build a relationship, but unfortunately, they're still the same people they were at the beginning: shallow and bitter, respectively. Sebastian, in particular, displays such poverty of spirit that I found him repulsive at exactly the moment when I needed to believe he was overcoming his faults.

I might try another Neville to see if I find her more palatable when she's working with a different set of characters. The trope reversals and the social sophistication interested me. The protagonists, with their meanness and deep immaturity, did not.

[librarydanielle_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

though the main characters are both petty, and the female lead kind of a bitch, I quite enjoyed this one.

[reesa00 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A book with promise that disappoints. Sebastian and Diana are intriguing characters but are a little flat. They both had so much potential to just be amazing but a lot of the backstory was missing and at times they were just cruel...At times they acted like high school kids. If they were able to overcome some of their obstacles earlier, it would have been a much more compelling book...Here's hoping the author rewrites this one some day b/c these characters really stayed with me despite all these shortcomings.

[doxiemomx2 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I really enjoyed this book. How unusual that the male lead (Sebastian) was a virgin. I enjoyed him immensely. Great character development, except that things resolved themselves a little too quickly at the end. Good humor and verbal repartee. Great secondary character in the little sister, Minerva. I wonder if she will get a book sometime. Follows The Wild Marquis.