Sometimes you need to read a good swashbuckler, and The Secret History of the Pink Carnation by Lauren Willig delivers in spades.
The novel contains a story within a story, second only to swashbuckling on the list of my favorite things. In the present day, Eloise Kelly is a bored and restless American graduate student researching the lives of the Scarlet Pimpernel and the Purple Gentian. She ferries herself to England to finish her dissertation and put an ocean between herself and her ex-fiancé.
While there, Eloise learns of a third spy, the elusive Pink Carnation, credited for saving England from Napolean’s invasion; and she is determined to learn more. Through a combination of luck and grit, she finds a descendant of the Purple Gentian, who grants her access to a trove of letters. Within the pages, Eloise will discover tales of adventure and tantalizing details about the Pink Carnation.
The second story in this book is the love story of the Purple Gentian and Amy Balcourt, a young woman set on taking part in the adventures and intrigue of the spy world. Amy is one of the best characters I’ve come across in a long time; funny, bright, ambitious, and often dangling precariously on the edge of disaster.
If this story grabs you as it did me, I’m pleased to note that there are many more books in the series.
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