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Emilia Highhart is an American heiress sent by her wealthy father to Regency London for a season, to secure a husband while competently chaperoned by her aunt, Lady Palmerston. Emilia is clumsy, and narrowly escapes tumbling down the stairs at her first ball, rescued by a very handsome man. Before they can be introduced, the man disappears, and her aunt informs her he is Phillip, Lord Huntley, future Duke of Buckingham – a rake, a scoundrel, a debaucher of young ladies. Emilia doesn’t care so much – she fell in love with him on sight. Later in the evening, Emilia twists her ankle during a dancing mishap and is taken to the library to await the doctor. Phillip reappears and they kiss, passionately. Emilia is further smitten, and intrigued, but wary because of his reputation.

In fact, Phillip is not Phillip, but his younger identical twin, Devon, recently returned to London after a five year absence. He left for America after wounding a man in a duel, which he fought in his brother’s stead at the behest of his father. Devon, the spare, the good twin, is amazingly (wink) a crack shot, while Phillip, the evil twin, being the dissolute heir, is not. The spare can be killed. The heir cannot. I’m still trying to find the logic there, but, oh well. On down the road.

Devon has returned at his dying father’s request, hoping for some resolution to years of disregard and emotional abandonment. Devon and Phillip grew up hating one another in an extreme case of sibling rivalry, vying for the attention of the duke, who never bestowed it on either of them. When Devon returns, he poses as his brother in order to pay him back in some small way for taking the fall for him in that duel, making a gaming debt in his name, now appearing at a ball as the heir, instead of the spare. He’s taken with Emilia, but realizes she believes him to be his brother.

Phillip, meanwhile, is living the life of all dissolute heirs, running up large debts, ignoring his duties, allowing the estates to fall into ruin while his father is too ill to manage, and, of course, entertaining opera singers and the like. When he’s told he flirted with an heiress at a ball, he doesn’t remember, but decides he was too drunk, so believes the story. When he meets Emilia, he doesn’t remember her at all, but she stares and makes it clear she’s interested, and as he’s in need of a fortune, he decides to go for it. He will court her and marry her. Easily, he believes, because she appears to be smitten with him already.

Thus begins a long and tedious case of mistaken identity. As Devon has not revealed himself as having returned, and his brother put it out that he’d died after falling overboard during his passage to America five years ago, understandable confusion runs rampant within the ton. Emilia begins to doubt her own sanity, blowing hot then cold for this man who, at times is charming and attractive, but at other times is distant and critical. In point of fact, he’s far less charming than he is cold. That’s because Devon ducks out of the story for a while, traveling to the family estate to see his dying father, who it turns out suffers from dementia, while Phillip continues to court Emilia.

Time for a rest stop.

It occurred to me, along about page 90, there had been very little face time between Emilia and Devon. Lots going on, mind you, but this is a romance, after all, and I was antsy for the romance to begin in earnest. In essence, I was still on that two hundred mile stretch of highway that’s necessary to get to the good stuff, but very tiresome. Forty pages later, at last, the landscape began to change. The remainder of the ride was at times surprising, though not necessarily due to plot twists and curves in the road, but to Rodale’s turns of phrase, her characters’ dialogue and internal thoughts that had me laughing out loud, the equivalent of rounding a bend in the road and seeing the sign for Squat ‘N’ Gobble, and feeling pangs of anxiety, akin to making hairpin turns on switchbacks in the San Juans.

In essence, The Heir and the Spare is about the hero, Devon, and how he comes to terms with his hatred of his older brother, the emotional abandonment of his father, who was widowed at the birth of his twin sons, and his lifelong feelings of inadequacy, of worthlessness, as the younger son. The spare. He was successful in America, earning a small fortune in his own right, but once he returns to England, he’s back in his old role of second best, playing second chair to his brother’s first, both within the family, and in the eyes of society. Emilia, while young, impressionable and somewhat immature, is pragmatic and very American in her lack of interest in titles. She comes into her own during the course of the book, and through her love and admiration for Devon, opens his eyes to what’s truly important in life.

This is a debut novel by this author, and I deeply suspect there was too much going on in the story due to her enthusiasm for her subject and her obvious love of certain romance tropes. My only point of actual irritation was the orgasm immediately following loss of virginity thing. Stops me cold, every time. I’ve yet to know of an actual occurrence, and in fact, hear story after story of ‘first times’ that were painful, messy and nowhere close to sexually gratifying. That’s not to say I didn’t enjoy this book. I did, though not nearly so much as I’d hoped. The title intrigued me and the cover is simply lovely. The story, however, lacked a certain focus. But I am convinced Ms. Rodale’s next book will be better. She has a voice I think will sing when she tightens her focus. I should mention, Emilia’s aunt, Lady Palmerston, is a fabulous character. She’s a cliché who doesn’t act as a cliché. If that makes sense. It’s like a road trip to DisneyLand. You know just what it will be, what to expect, and yet, when you finally get there, the child inside wakes up and everything is new and enchanting, all over again.

Ms. Rodale’s next book, according to her Web site, features the dissolute brother from The Heir and the Spare as the hero. Having noted her attempts toward the end of this book to redeem him in small ways, I should have known. Still, he was a cad, a bounder, and discovering how she can fully redeem him into hero material – well, that’s a road trip I’m already packing for.

In the meantime, I’m thinking of working on a contemporary version, titled The Hair and The Spare, about a chick who loves AquaNet and a guy who owns a tire store. I’m headin’ over to the Squat ‘N’ Gobble with my laptop, right now. Y’all come back now, y’hear?

You can visit Maya Rodale here, and you can purchase The Heir and The Spare here and here.