I'm sad to come here today and report that this is the worst book in the series. The Secret History of the Pink Carnation was one of the wittiest books I've ever read and it's like this one, the fifth installment, wasn't even written by the same person. It really lacks the charm and cleverness of its predecessors – even the ones I didn't much like. And by the way: I'm going to discuss how the novel ends in the next paragraph so fair warning, SPOILER AHEAD.But more importantly, nothing really happens. There are no genuine high points of drama, so the book just seems endless. Instead, The Temptation of the Night Jasmine is just a collection of little moments and a lot of hand-wringing over a ridiculous misunderstanding. Thinking about it now, I’m not sure what took nearly 400 pages to tell. The book is about two things: Robert’s plan of revenge and his occasional wooing of Charlotte. And in the end, he doesn’t even fulfill half his brief: His prey is murdered by someone else, and the murderer escapes into a carriage. Of course he gets Charlotte, but that part was easily predictable by page 14. That is, the page where the two characters make their first appearance. (And fair enough, it's a romance.)
The “tension” in the book, I'm guessing, is supposed to emerge from Robert’s about-face with cousin Charlotte. He romances her on a rooftop and then disappears; when he returns, he acts like his affection was a misunderstanding on her part. And that’s fine, but Willig hits us over the head so many times with Charlotte’s earnest confusion that it just becomes jokey, instead of suspenseful: “It would be too tempting to let herself believe that Robert had come because he couldn’t stay away, that the strange note in his voice had been a sign of repressed emotion, that his concern about Medmenham was a sign that he still wanted her for himself.” (p.202) Gee, as it turns out, the most convoluted explanation for Robert’s standoffish behavior was totally true! I have to roll my eyes over the beating that feminism just took with this paragraph.
Those are all plot and characterization issues, but sadly, language got an equal thrashing here. Willig has written some really incredible novels and I just don’t understand what happened with this one. One thing I noticed early on was the overuse of adverbs, which weighed down conversations that were intended to be light banter. As an example, the two page spread starting on page 28 uses 10 adverbs to describe the word “said” (or its equivalent). He/she said: gloomily, firmly, blandly, giddily, earnestly, thoughtfully, offhandedly, prosaically, ruefully, hopefully. The “said adverbly” set-up alternates with an equally plodding device, that of substituting more complicated verbs for “said.” On these two pages alone, she uses: asked, articulated, murmured, inquired, mimicked, commented, and grumbled. In dialogue, the word “said” blends in and the reader passes over it; other verbs tend to stop or slow the speech down. Obviously, you’re going to use adverbs; I certainly have in here. Same with more sophisticated verbs. The issue is overuse. And in the end, it amounts to dialogue that isn’t allowed to stand on its own. I think that is the biggest weakness in the novel, and reading it page after page just became tedious.
Alright, I’ve bashed this novel enough so I’ll leave well-enough alone. Sad to say, this was probably my last Pink Carnation novel. :(
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