The Secret History of the Pink Carnation by Lauren Willig

From Goodreads:

Deciding that true romantic heroes are a thing of the past, Eloise Kelly, an intelligent American who always manages to wear her Jimmy Choo suede boots on the day it rains, leaves Harvard's Widener Library bound for England to finish her dissertation on the dashing pair of spies the Scarlet Pimpernel and the Purple Gentian. What she discovers is something the finest historians have missed: a secret history that begins with a letter dated 1803. Eloise has found the secret history of the Pink Carnation the most elusive spy of all time, the spy who single-handedly saved England from Napoleon's invasion.
The Secret History of the Pink Carnation, a wildly imaginative and highly adventurous debut, opens with the story of a modern-day heroine but soon becomes a book within a book. Eloise Kelly settles in to read the secret history hoping to unmask the Pink Carnation's identity, but before she can make this discovery, she uncovers a passionate romance within the pages of the secret history that almost threw off the course of world events. How did the Pink Carnation save England? What became of the Scarlet Pimpernel and the Purple Gentian? And will Eloise Kelly find a hero of her own?

 I think it's kind of funny that all the descriptions of this book focus on Eloise when she's hardly in the book at all. The Secret History of the Pink Carnation focuses the vast majority of its 450 pages on Amy Balcourt and Richard Selwick, fictional historical characters contemporary and associated with the (also fictional) Scarlet Pimpernel in the early 1800s.

I haven't had a whole lot of luck with historical fiction in the last year. Most of what I've picked up has been mediocre to downright painful. I attributed this to my own personal preferences since Janssen loved A Curse Dark as Gold and Ten Cents a Dance while I thought they were...not good.

So I was surprised by how much I enjoyed The Secret History of the Pink Carnation. Perhaps it's because this is thoroughly a quick-read love story in historical fiction's clothing. It's not trying to teach you anything about Napoleonic France or tell the story of how Bonaparte tried to invade England through fictional characters (although, a little more historical stuff would have been fun), it just revels in its lovey-dovey-ness while occasionally throwing in a name you know from history class. It's much more chick-lit-y than historical fiction-y.

My one complaint (and it's a biggie) is that it occasionally veers into..ahem...romance territory. If you know what I mean. Love scenes in any genre make me twitchy but in books they're especially bad and this book is no exception.

Romance scenes aside, it's a great beach read. Or middle-of-the-night-nursing read. Whichever.