Title: The Bachelor’s Valet
Series: Flos Magicae
Author: Arden Powell
Publisher: Amazon/Kindle Unlimited
Length: 148 Pages
Category: Historical Romance, Fantasy
Rating: 4 Stars
At a Glance: The Bachelor’s Valet is a gentle and charming story with happy endings for all involved, short on drama and long on anticipation, waiting for Alphonse to suss out his feelings and then work up the courage to express them.
Reviewed By: Lisa
Blurb: Alphonse Hollyhock is blessed with wealth, class, and more beauty than brains. Though he hasn’t got a lick of wit or magic to his name, he’s perfectly content living life as an airheaded bachelor with his valet—the clever, unflappable Jacobi—by his side to ensure everything runs smoothly. All he lacks, according to his mother, is a wife.
Despite Alphonse’s protests, he’s to marry Aaliyah Kaddour: a bright, headstrong young woman who would probably be charming company if she didn’t threaten everything about Alphonse’s way of life. Marrying means giving up his fashionable flat, his fast car, and, worst of all, it means losing Jacobi.
Perhaps most distressingly, this talk of marriage is bringing all sorts of confusing feelings to the forefront. Because rather than falling for the beautiful girl being pushed into his arms, Alphonse seems to be falling for his valet. Except a man can’t fall in love with another man. Can he?
Meanwhile, Aaliyah has plans of her own. She’s as devious as she is pretty, but if Alphonse wants to get through this marriage business in one piece, he’ll have to trust her. Her and Jacobi, and, most dangerously, his own feelings.
Review: Alphonse Hollyhock is an uncomplicated sort, to put it politely. He has spent his life conceding to his mother’s decision-making, and now, for the most part, he has his valet, Jacobi, to do that heavy lifting for him. Alphonse does precisely what Jacobi advises him to do, not only because it’s easier that way but because he also knows he’s not the brightest bulb in the box. More to the point, though, he trusts his valet’s advice without question. So when Alphonse’s mother informs her son that he’ll be marrying Miss Aaliyah Kaddour, a young woman from a prominent family whom Alphonse vaguely recalls meeting once at a party, he has little hope—or choice, rather—of escaping his mother’s plans.
Set in the early 20th century, in a time when Alphonse believed he’d never find love because love wasn’t meant for men like him, Arden Powell delivers their readers a character who is charmingly oblivious. Jacobi’s recommendation to go along with the wedding plans wasn’t necessarily the answer Alphonse was expecting from him, or looking for, honestly—he wants no part of holy matrimony, let alone a romantic entanglement—but Miss Kaddour has machinations of her own she is determined to set in motion, and she will settle for nothing less than seeing them come to fruition.
The Bachelor’s Valet is a historical romance, but there’s a little bit of magic about it too, which was a nice touch, but if you haven’t read the first two books in this -verse, don’t expect to get any sort of insight into the system of magic the world is built around. I was looking for more and didn’t get it, so reading those books first might have been to my benefit. That aside, however, the story told is a gentle and charming one with happy endings for all involved, short on drama and long on anticipation, waiting for Alphonse to suss out his feelings and then work up the courage to express them.
You can buy The Bachelor’s Valet here:
[zilla_button url=”https://books2read.com/The-Bachelors-Valet” style=”black” size=”large” type=”round” target=”_blank”] Amazon/Kindle Unlimited [/zilla_button]