The Heiress Effect

The Heiress Effect (2013) Courtney Milan

The is book two of the Brothers Sinister trilogy, and the second book I read, however, I started with book three. So, backwards.

Miss Jane Fairfield is a wealthy heiress who is supposedly seeking a husband, however, she’s doing everything she possible can to let any man get close to her–never mind propose marriage. Her only friends are the twins Geraldine and Genevieve Johnson, and they twitter behind their hands and encourage her to terrible choices in clothing, helping to make her more of a spectacle than she already is.

All comparisons failed Oliver. It wasn’t the bright pink of anything. It was a furious shade of pink, one that nature had never intended. It was a pink that did violence to the notion of demure pastels. It didn’t just shout for attention; it walked up and clubbed one over the head.

It hurt his head, that pink, and yet he couldn’t look away.

The room was small enough that he could hear the first words of greeting. “Miss Fairfield,” a woman said. “Your gown is… very pink. And pink is… such a lovely color, isn’t it?” That last was said with a wistful quality in the speaker’s voice, as if she were mourning the memory of true pink.

Oliver Marshall is the bastard brother of the Duke of Clermont. Despite his conception, he was raised by two parents who loved him, which gives him far more than his half brother had growing up. But what Oliver really wants is political power, and the ability to make change.

Emily is Jane’s sister, hidden at home, yet longing for life–life denied to her by their Uncle and her guardian. She gets her own part her as well, which I quite loved.

But I really loved Jane. First and foremost for this:

“Oh, God,” she repeated, squeezing her eyes shut. “Why do I always do this?”

“What do you always do?”

“I talk. I talk so much. I talk as if my life depended on nothing but words filling the space. I talk and talk and talk and I can’t stop. Not even when I tell myself I must.” She gave a little sobbing laugh. “I do it all the time—tell myself to shut up—but generally, I’m talking too much to listen to my own advice.”

I’ve described it in myself as “that talking thing.” Which is generally the thing where my mouth runs off and my brain follows a pace behind wincing and screaming, “NO! STOP NOW!”

I have also said this to myself:

“Is it something I said?” Jane asked. And if so, which sentence?

There was ANOTHER passage that I have also lived:

“Are you…uh…Mr….uh…” “Yes,” he replied, because he answered to Mr. Uh almost as often as he did to his own name.

Throughout school, the first day of classes my name was always “Michelle… umm…” to which I would reply, “Here!”

As far as the story goes, I liked The Countess Conspiracy better, but that’s is mostly because I found it marvelous. I also so the bits and pieces that led up to that book, which were just as delightful.

There is also a marvelous sub-sub plot of Oliver’s aunt, who, well, it was just very well done.

One quibble with the cover. Jane is described quite clearly on the first page.

The twelve holes in Jane’s corset were an evil, true, but a necessary one; without them, she would never have reduced her waist from its unfashionable thirty-seven-inch span down to the still unfashionable girth of thirty-one inches.

That model on the cover? Not even close.

But aside from that, lovely.
Rating: 8/10

Published by Courtney Milan

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