The second book in the “Love Takes Root” series is The Other Harlow Girl. It’s about Lavinia (Vinnie, natch), the Harlow Hoyden‘s sister. You remember her from the first book, the one that was engaged to the [spoiler], and then [spoiler spoilered] him because he was about to [spoiler] her sister, who is now the Duchess of Trent (she married the guy that she tried to get to seduce Vinnie in the first book). Whew!
Anyway, the Hoyden and the Duke are married, and Vinnie is living with them in London. She’s super into horticulture (if you remember, Emma was trying to steal Trent’s orchids for Vinnie to distract her from the fiance), and is enjoying her time in the Duke’s greenhouse. She’s also in the process of trying to invent a hose that bends, or something like that. A very unladylike pursuit. Not that she minds, because technically she’s in mourning for her fiance, even though she was the one who [spoiler spoilered] him. But no one knows about that.
Enter a friend of the Duke’s, the Marquess of Huntley. They don’t get off to a very good start, but of course they are drawn to one another. This is a romance, after all. Much as in the first book, there is a series of misunderstandings, mess-ups, double-crosses, and things like that, mainly revolving around Vinnie’s potential membership in the British Horticultural Society.
The thing I enjoy most about these books is the relationship between Emma and Vinnie. They’re identical twin sisters, but more than that: they’re good friends. They each look out for the other, and love each other unconditionally, but neither has any illusions about her sister’s shortcomings, and they genuinely like each other. Some may quibble with the modernity of the Harlow sisters and their actions, but that’s part of the fun of these stories, at least for me.
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