This is my favorite Laura Landon book. It is sweet without being syrupy. The reader gets the feeling of why these two people fall in love, not just being told that she loves him and he (finally) loves her.
The heroine, Jessica, is deaf (the silent in the title) and hiding that fact from society. She goes to parties and is overlooked, by her own purpose. She wants to see the dresses she has designed on other women and the reaction to said dresses. That is the only reason she attends parties. She lip reads and does so from long distances - like across a room, so she knows things that people will whisper - business information mainly from gentlemen. She speaks, but does not talk often - the entire trying to be overlooked thing she does. When the book starts she is at a party and sees the hero, Simon, make an entrance (women faint, music stops, dishes crash, etc). She is peeved because no on pays any attention to the woman who comes in later wearing the dress she made.
Simon, on the other hand, knows he made a great entrance. He is bankrupt and is thought to have murdered his father in a jealous rage over his stepmother his former fiance. So the fact that he shows up at all is cause for all the above hysterics.
These two marry quickly for normal romanceland reasons - her brother plans to put her in an insane asylum - due to her deafness and he thinks muteness. Then he will take all her money and squander it on evil. His revenge (title again) on her for being born and having the money left to her. Simon needs to money since he is bankrupt (having just returned from India) and the family estates are in major trouble.
This is a well plotted and as realistic, as a romanceland story, story of two people with different secrets falling in love.
The heroine, Jessica, is deaf (the silent in the title) and hiding that fact from society. She goes to parties and is overlooked, by her own purpose. She wants to see the dresses she has designed on other women and the reaction to said dresses. That is the only reason she attends parties. She lip reads and does so from long distances - like across a room, so she knows things that people will whisper - business information mainly from gentlemen. She speaks, but does not talk often - the entire trying to be overlooked thing she does. When the book starts she is at a party and sees the hero, Simon, make an entrance (women faint, music stops, dishes crash, etc). She is peeved because no on pays any attention to the woman who comes in later wearing the dress she made.
Simon, on the other hand, knows he made a great entrance. He is bankrupt and is thought to have murdered his father in a jealous rage over his stepmother his former fiance. So the fact that he shows up at all is cause for all the above hysterics.
These two marry quickly for normal romanceland reasons - her brother plans to put her in an insane asylum - due to her deafness and he thinks muteness. Then he will take all her money and squander it on evil. His revenge (title again) on her for being born and having the money left to her. Simon needs to money since he is bankrupt (having just returned from India) and the family estates are in major trouble.
This is a well plotted and as realistic, as a romanceland story, story of two people with different secrets falling in love.
