Inevitably in any popular series, sooner or later the writing gets stale- character arcs become unbelievable, plots are rehashed, or the reader can simply feel the writer's own weariness for the once beloved story lines. Not so for Lauren Willig! If anything, The Temptation of the Night Jasmine is the strongest book in the Pink Carnation series so far.
Framed once again by the research and relationship trials of graduate student Eloise Kelly, Night Jasmine opens after Eloise and her new beau Colin have been together for three months. A week long romantic getaway to Colin's home in Surrey (not to mention his library's inexhaustible cache of historical archives) leads Eloise to a new discovery in her study of the aristocratic spy, the Pink Carnation- a plot involving French spies (naturally), the betrayal of a king, and thee infamous Hellfire club.
Enter lady Charlotte Landsdowne and Robert, the Duke of Dovedale, the real stars of this carnation installment. Robert, newly home from a decade long stint in India, is on the trail of his mentor's murderer, but is unprepared for both the attraction he feels for the bookish Charlotte (a very, very distant cousin) and the very real forces at work in his friend's death.
Like the other Pink Carnation books, the mystery here is well plotted out and the excitement level high enough to keep the pages flying well into the night. The true strength lies within the romance of Robert and Charlotte, however. Both characters show very strong growth over the course of the book: Charlotte must deal with the realization that life is not quite like it is in books (which can be a good thing), and Robert has to grapple with not only his own dubious past, but that of his father. As you would expect, a happy ending lies in wait for these two, but not without a few bumps along the way. Even more so than past books, the reader will truly find themselves rooting for these two.
So, the verdict- if you loved the previous Pink Carnation books, definitely pick up The Temptation of the Night Jasmine! You will not regret it. If you're new to the series, I recommend starting at the beginning (with The Secret History of the Pink Carnation) so you'll be fully in the loop when secondary characters appear as well as up to speed on the framing romance of Colin and Eloise.
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