Passion at the Palais Royal, by Delphine Roy

Look, it’s not a bad cover, but the real hook is the blurb: the hero learns to savate! WOOT WOOT!

Please note: alcoholism; violence and gore on the page; threat of rape; explicit sex on the page.

Passion in the Palais Royalby Delphine Roy

Set in the winter of 1802-1803, this book is the third in the Bleu Blanc Rogue series. The story follows Violette de la Roque, a young woman from a good background who now uses pickpockets to survive, and Nicolas Lefevre, once a Muscat grape and now a ruthless fighter and teacher. Their paths cross as they make their way through the underworld of early 1800s Paris.

The publisher’s blurb tells the story as follows:

Passion thrives in the midst of revenge.

The dangerous streets of the Palais Royal have hardened Nicolas Lefevre. Orphaned during the Revolution, scarred by years in a violent gang, he is now determined to forge his own path by training others in savate, the hand-to-hand combat that has allowed him to survive. But to open a legitimate gymnasium, he must avoid the escalating conflicts of Paris’s criminal underworld. A beautiful thief who turns to him for help threatens to plunge him back into the life he swore he would leave behind.

The family fortune squandered by her spendthrift brother, Violette de la Roque resorts to pickpocketing for the city’s most notorious criminal. At least until her employer decides she wants him to make more profit off her back, a fate she desperately wants to avoid. She believes Nicolas can give her a chance, but secret savate lessons soon turn into a deeper connection.

As old grudges and bloody revenge draw ever closer, surrendering to their shared passion could get them killed—or give them the strength to challenge the enemy.

Violette’s brother is an alcoholic who spends his days in a drunken stupor; before he got to this point, however, he gambled and his debts are in the hands of one of the most notorious men in Paris; nicknamed the Boneman, he leads a gang of violent men who control much of the city, from bars to brothels to theft. And now that Emile is essentially useless, it is Violette who must pay that debt.

Quick fingers and a knack for disappearing into plain sight have helped Violette become an adept pickpocket, though while she’s forced to work with Boneman’s thugs, she sees next to nothing of the loot. Worse, she has reason to fear that the man will eventually force her to shoulder the debt—for the rest of her life, because she’s not naive enough to fail to understand that, for all intents and purposes, she’s now tied to him.

Nicolas, the son of a baker, saw both his father and his older brother die during the Terror; still a child, he managed to slip through the net and survive on the streets, begging and stealing. Eventually, the group of youths he was with fell under the command of the cruel, sadistic Marcel Etienne, the Boneman.

Nicolas eventually broke away from the gang and left Paris for a few years; when he returned, he proved much harder to intimidate and even harder to kill. Now he essentially lives in a kind of limbo, with no allegiance to any of the major gangs competing to dominate crime in the city.

Until Violette approaches him and wants to learn how to protect herself.

The events in the book take place over a period of about three weeks, from late December to January. It involves both insta-lust and insta-love, and intricate backstories that are barely sketched out to explain the motives of both characters.

Rape and the threat of rape are common, as are crime and violence in the city’s poorest neighborhoods. Yet it is never explained how Violette managed to survive unscathed for months after her uncle died. She now had to somehow provide for herself and Emile.

The setting, Paris during the Consulate, is dark, gloomy and dangerous. Although several characters refer to the Terror several times, there is no trace of the political situation at that time, which makes the story somewhat detached from the setting.

The short page count means that there’s no room for the protagonists to really discuss their trauma, as they’re busy dealing with the play’s villains and falling for each other at lightning speed – let alone a number of supporting characters and a secondary romance, to boot. On the plus side, Violette saves herself twice and Nicolas once, and the latter’s competence as a savate teacher and fighter is on display on the page, so at least there’s that.

The villain is quite scary, and the author doesn’t fall into the trap of blaming it on mental health; monsters can be monsters and still be sane. The climactic scene is simply excellent, and I only wish that instead of an epilogue with all the characters in the trilogy – and their children – there had been more character and relationship development, both for Violette and Nicolas and for Suzanne and Raoul.

In short, it’s an interesting premise and decent execution, but it lacked some punch.

Passion in the Palais Royal gets a 7.00 out of 10

* * * *

It pains me that the publisher has left out the hyphen. This is the Palais-Royal. I can’t imagine that the author, who is French, would be happy about that.

Tags: 1802, 1803, 2020s, 7.00 out of 10, alcoholism, ARC, Bleu Blanc Rogue, book review, Delphine Roy, f/m, historical romance, Paris, rape, series, trilogy, white romance