Rating: 4 stars
Smart Bitches Summer Bingo: Only one bed (and horse)
CBR16 Bingo: And also... (Repeat of the Bananas square, because this book fits the bill)
Beth Pickering is the youngest professor of ornithology at Oxford, and she needs to really impress the faculty if she is to get tenure. She works with wealthy widow Hippolyta Quirm to try to locate and capture rare (and usually dangerous) birds. Just as they are about to capture the coveted deathwhistler, a rival ornithologist, the dashing young Professor Devon Lockley from Cambridge, swoops in and steals the bird away from them. Not only that, he has the temerity to flirt with Beth!
Beth is determined to keep her distance from such an obvious villain as Devon, but that becomes a lot harder to do once a competition to win not only "Birder of the Year", but a large cash prize and tenure for the winning ornithologist is announced. Ornithology is a discipline full of ruthless individuals who are willing to do almost anything to catch their prey, and Beth and Devon discover that they are probably more likely to succeed if they join forces trying to track down the elusive bird in question. Of course, there can only be ONE winner, so sooner or later, one of them is going to have to betray the other.
What Beth and Devon (and all the other unscrupulous competitors) are unaware of is that the contest is in part to drum up publicity for and increase recruitment to the ornithology departments of British universities, not to mention encourage international tourists to visit Britain. Both Beth and Devon are young, intelligent, and attractive, and publicity agents soon have newspaper reporters trailing them and emphasising just how dashing and compatible they are, spinning a fictional romance in the press long before Beth and Devon can actually act on the growing attraction between them. Constantly finding themselves in locations where there is only one room (with or without the one bed) available, or one horse that they must use to escape pursuers doesn't exactly make them less aware of one another.
Will Beth and Devon succeed in locating the rare bird needed to win "Birder of the Year"? Will they survive the various devious traps and vicious birds thrown at them by competitors (or publicists wanting to secure exciting news coverage of the competition)? Will they actually ever find privacy and peace enough to possibly act on their growing feelings for one another, or will inconvenient interruptions keep occurring? Which of them will actually win the contest (and the coveted tenured position)?
India Holton already wrote three witty and adventurous novels set in an alternate Victorian England with witches, pirates, domestic staff who were also spies, and a bunch of flying houses. In her new series, Love's Academic, there are lots magical birds all over the world, most of them in varying degrees of viciousness, and the academic discipline of ornithology is full of manipulative scoundrels, all working to one-up each other for fame and glory. I'm not going to lie, I care very little for birds, and all the actual ornithology stuff, while wildly fantastical, did very little for me.
This book is an adventure novel, through and through, taking inspiration from films like Indiana Jones, The Mummy, and Romancing the Stone. Our protagonists might seem very different at first, but it turns out that always being smarter than everyone else around them, and having to prove their brilliance in academia at a very young age, hasn't exactly made them popular growing up. While Beth has dealt with years of rejection by becoming a very proper, polite, and unfailingly kind young lady, Devon has hidden his insecurities behind a charming exterior, seemingly careless about what anyone might say or think about him. He's utterly smitten with Beth from the start, constantly in awe of both her beauty and academic achievements. Beth keeps trying to deny just how handsome and dashing she finds Devon, wanting to keep him at arm's length and calling him a villain, but she comes to discover that he's not just a charming rogue, but an equally skilled and intelligent scholar, and obviously her perfect match.
I'm eager to see where Ms. Holton takes the series next. The next book in the series involves Devon's cousin Gabriel (he seems grumpy and deeply unimpressed with Devon's antics, but nevertheless helps him several times throughout this novel) and magical geography. The Geographer's Map to Romance isn't out until 2025, but after the teaser chapter included at the end of this book, I'm already very excited to see what happens to Gabriel and his estranged wife.
Judging the book by its cover: I love both the colours and the design of this cover, featuring no people whatsoever, just a very formidable bird and a simple and elegant design. I had pre-ordered this book long before the cover design was revealed, but now I might have to buy a physical copy, just so I can have this pretty book on my shelf.
Crossposted on Cannonball Read.
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