Lauren Willig's The Masque of the Black Tulip

The Masque of the Black Tulip was a fun read. This was my first experience with the Pink Carnation series and I look forward to future adventures with Eloise. This second novel in the series is about Harvard grad student Eloise Kelly trying to once again unmask a famous historical spy, this time it’s the Black Tulip, the Pink Carnation’s deadly French nemesis. Eloise is pretty sure that her handsome on again, off-again crush, Colin Selwick, has the answers somewhere in his archives. But what she discovers in an old codebook is something juicier than she ever imagined.

 I appreciated that the author gave the historian, Eloise, a flair for the dramatic and whimsical thoughts. Many times the historians are shown as dry or we are immersed in their research of things, but not the fun tidbits, unless they fit in with the present story. This novel is all about finding out more in an adventure seeking way, with the historian guiding us through her findings, musings, conjecture and visualizations of the adventures as she reads them.

 I liked how the plot was laid out to give us, the reader, a classic spy adventure. We are finding the clues with the historian playing the narrator/Nancy Drew. As Eloise finds letters and other historical documents, giving her clues as to who the famous spies may be, we are seeing it as she sees it. I loved how she was able to bring to life the past… I thought Hen and Miles’ story was fun, flirty, romantic and dramatic. I was almost sad when brought back to the present day story and feel the author did a good job projecting that emotion on me the reader and not just me reading about Eloise feeling that way.

 I do wish that there was a little more given to us between Collin and Eloise, but I assume that they will meet again in the next book and the author just wanted us to know that there are sparks there.