The Scoundrel and the Debutante
Review: If you are looking for a beautiful story on love and friendship, then you’ll want to read Julia London’s The Scoundrel and the Debutante. The story centers around one of the Cabot sisters, Prudence. Prudence has always been the sister who was counted on and this new friend has her acting in ways she didn’t think she could act. I love Prudence’s strength and how caring she is to help Roan to find his sister. Finding Roan’s sister will take these two on a journey that each won’t forget.
Book Blurb:
The dust of the Cabot sisters’ shocking plans to rescue their family from certain ruin may have settled, but Prudence Cabot is left standing in the rubble of scandal. Now regarded as an unsuitable bride, she’s tainted among the ton. Yet this unwilling wallflower is ripe for her own adventure. And when an irresistibly sexy American stranger on a desperate mission enlists her help, she simply can’t deny the temptation.
The fate of Roan Matheson’s family depends on how quickly he can find his runaway sister and persuade her to return to her betrothed. Scouring the rustic English countryside with the sensually wicked Prudence at his side—and in his bed—he’s out of his element. But once Roan has a taste of the sizzling passion that can lead to forever, he must choose between his heart’s obligations and its forbidden desires.
Q & A with Julia
- Can you tell us a little more about the Cabot sisters?
The Cabot sisters are four young women born into privilege and wealth in Regency England. They’ve been raised with the standard education of debutantes: Basic reading, writing and geography, and some unmarketable skills in embroidery, music and gossip. When hardship falls, their sheltered life has not given them enough experience in a world in which men are kings and women are legally and socially helpless. They don’t know what to do, but the Cabots are what we’d call street-smart today, and they are determined to control their fates. However, because they’ve been so sheltered, they make some terrible decisions that have far-reaching ramifications. Honor and Grace, Prudence’s older sisters, have already caused enough scandal to last a lifetime. Their younger sisters have felt the consequences, too—now, no one wants to marry into their family.
- Did you have any influence on the cover art?
Harlequin has such a great art department that they don’t really need my input. What I offer is limited, although I feel that the publisher welcomes any input I have. It’s just that I’ve discovered over the years that my talents are not in cover design, LOL. That being said, I generally provide ideas for looks I think would work, and the art department uses that as a jumping-off point. They try to incorporate my thoughts to the extent possible. For this series, we all agreed that the close-in crop of the couples was a great look, but they are the ones who came up with the poses and colors. I love them.
- How much research goes into writing historical romance?
That depends on the period. I have written so many historical romances set in a very confined time period (the Regency era spanned about twenty years), and have collected so many research books, that I have become a bit of a mini-expert in that time period. I know what was going on, and if I have any questions, I know exactly where to look to find the answer. However, I am starting a new historical series and setting it about one hundred years earlier, when Scotland and England united. I’m reading a couple of different books to get up to speed. But, unlike historical fiction, where the actual history is often a character in the story, in historical romance the history is always part of the background and not the main feature—the love story is—so a writer needs to know enough to set the tone, the milieu and the place, but doesn’t need to memorize any acts of Parliament or know the names of the king’s children.