A Week to Be Wicked Review: Minerva’s Destination Still Matters

Full spoilers ahead: This review discusses Colin’s childhood trauma, the fate of the plaster fossil cast, Minerva’s disappointment at the geological symposium and the couple’s marriage. A Week to Be Wicked is adult Regency historical romance with descriptive sexual content, parental belittling, bereavement, trauma-related nightmares, armed robbery and violence. It is the second full-length Spindle Cove novel, originally published on March 27, 2012.

Tessa Dare puts an unusually cumbersome third presence into this road romance: a plaster cast of a prehistoric footprint. Minerva Highwood wants it taken seriously by a scholarly audience. Colin Sandhurst, Lord Payne, has to help get it to Scotland while carrying the reputation of a man who cannot be trusted to finish anything. Between them travels an object that is inconvenient, vulnerable and important for reasons other people may fail to understand.

That arrangement is the novel’s best argument for its couple. Their journey asks whether each can recognize value that is not readily apparent to the outside world. The romance is much less interesting as a supposed conversion of a plain scholar into a desirable woman. Minerva has purposes before Colin notices her, and the book’s emotional credibility depends on those purposes continuing to matter after he does.

My interpretation is that the comedy succeeds by making care practical: finding transport, protecting a fragile object, managing a frightening night, trying again after a plan collapses. Its harder question arrives at the destination. The lovers can choose each other, but that choice cannot supply the professional hearing Minerva wanted. The ending is warm and optimistic while leaving a legitimate dissatisfaction about the balance of its rewards.

The first proposal is a research proposal

In the authorized excerpt on Dare’s website, Minerva visits Colin at night because she fears he may marry her sister Diana. She offers an alternative arrangement involving an apparent elopement, travel to Edinburgh and the prize she expects her geological presentation to win. The comic misunderstanding depends on Colin repeatedly assuming that marriage is the main thing a young woman could be negotiating.

Minerva instead has a plan in which scholarly recognition is the point and apparent scandal is a cost she is prepared to bear. She can be socially unsure and professionally confident without contradiction. That combination is attractive because the reader is not asked to believe that confidence must appear uniformly across every part of a person’s life.

The scene’s sharpest wound concerns something more intimate than a public reputation. Minerva has been made to transcribe her mother’s unflattering assessment of her. Being the person who physically writes down the judgment makes the humiliation especially pointed. Her family has not merely overlooked her; it has recruited her into maintaining the account of why she should be overlooked.

Against that history, Colin’s attention is powerful and potentially dangerous. A compliment can feel like evidence of an alternative self, but it can also become another performance in which someone else decides what she ought to believe. The opening does not let his charm operate without a cost. When Minerva realizes another woman has been listening, the apparent tenderness becomes a fresh occasion for feeling foolish.

Colin must become more than an entertaining exception

Colin’s appeal comes from his ability to turn almost any circumstance into a story. Blythe Smith’s review at All About Romance describes a hero whose wit and apparent irresponsibility conceal more serious difficulties. His childhood carriage accident killed his parents and left him with profound problems sleeping alone.

That history gives the journey a physical constraint. Travel is not equally easy for both participants merely because one has money, rank or social confidence. The man who can improvise his way through an awkward conversation may be far less able to tolerate an ordinary mode of transport. His apparent ease becomes more complicated when the reader understands what he is managing.

The romance can make that vulnerability visible without treating trauma as proof that all his choices are harmless. Minerva’s hurt in the opening remains real even if his intention was to make her feel attractive. Recognizing that a joke has landed badly should require more than explaining the private pain of the person who made it.

A satisfying change therefore has to involve reliability. Colin does not need to become solemn or lose the talent for invention that makes him pleasurable company. He needs to discover occasions when another person’s plans cannot simply be absorbed into his performance. The question is whether his ingenuity will serve something he did not choose for himself.

The disguise makes a useful argument about truth

The trip’s borrowed identities include missionaries and royalty, while robbery and financial mishaps keep disrupting the route. Mrs. Julien’s review welcomes the mixture of comedy, feeling and conspicuous implausibility. That last quality is worth stating plainly. This is an exuberant adventure romance, not a restrained reconstruction of an uneventful Regency journey.

In her Publishers Weekly interview with Sheri Melnick, Dare describes using extreme situations to disrupt the identities the characters have constructed for themselves. She also identifies the irony that their invented public roles can help them become more honest with one another. That is the author’s account of the mechanism, rather than an interpretation being claimed as newly discovered here.

What makes the mechanism promising is the difference between deceiving a stranger and recognizing a companion. Colin may invent an absurd explanation for an audience, but Minerva knows he is inventing it. The performance becomes something they experience together. He is no longer the only person who knows there is a performance.

Still, shared complicity is not the same as equal control. If he continually chooses the story, she can become its reluctant supporting player. The best version of their pairing lets her interrupt, refuse and redirect. Her scientific certainty and his improvisational ease should each alter what happens, rather than one becoming the mature quality the other must learn.

The repeated emergencies also risk becoming interchangeable. Another obstruction is useful when it reveals a different pressure on the couple. If it mainly delays Edinburgh again, the plot can begin to spend the urgency it initially created. Comedy gives the obstacles momentum, but emotional development must keep pace with the mileage.

Francine is not merely a whimsical prop

The plaster cast, named Francine, makes Minerva’s ambition material. Dani at Overflowing Shelf gives the object almost supporting-character status, emphasizing its importance to the emotional journey. The observation is persuasive because an abstract promise to support someone’s work is easy. Carrying something awkward through a difficult trip is a more demanding expression of attention.

The cast also places the lovers on different terms with the same object. Minerva sees the means of communicating a discovery. Colin’s naming and comic engagement offer another kind of attachment. Ideally, his affection for the object becomes a way of valuing what it represents to her, rather than turning her work into a charming eccentricity.

Its destruction matters for precisely that reason. The reader discussion on HistoricalRomance and the detailed BooksRun-hosted reader review raise reservations about what Minerva sacrifices and how the destination resolves. The latter identifies her shooting the cast during the adventure. These are individual responses, not a claim of critical consensus.

My concern is the distribution of symbolic loss. A heroine’s willingness to lose something important can demonstrate the seriousness of her love. But if the lost thing carries much of her independent aspiration, the story owes that aspiration continuing attention. Otherwise an action that is brave in the moment can quietly become evidence that romance has replaced the goal that made the heroine distinctive.

Desire should enlarge her choices

The physical relationship is openly sensual. Dare’s general content advisories state that her books include descriptive sexual material, and Caz Owens’s All About Romance review discusses the explicit love scenes as consistent with these particular characters. The sexual content belongs to an adult romance, even where the tone is playful.

A particularly useful aspect of the premise is that Minerva approaches desire with curiosity. Her intellectual identity need not be discarded before she can enjoy her body. The awkwardness of not knowing something can coexist with the confidence of wanting to learn. That is a richer form of attraction than treating the scholar’s mind as an obstacle the experienced rake must overcome.

The relationship also benefits from her loyalty to Diana. Overflowing Shelf specifically appreciates that Minerva’s experience of unfavorable comparison does not become resentment toward her sister. The book can criticize the family’s hierarchy without requiring the conventionally beautiful woman to become shallow or cruel.

There is a similar opportunity in Colin’s nights. Receiving comfort is not the same as acquiring a permanent human treatment for insomnia. The emotional promise is strongest when Minerva is wanted as a person with a life of her own, and when his growing trust changes how he accepts help. The marriage must offer companionship, not turn her into the sole explanation for his capacity to cope.

The arrival cannot deliver every promised reward

Minerva reaches Edinburgh but does not obtain the symposium prize or the presentation she anticipated. The spoiler review by maribkob97 on Ecency describes her exclusion after her male-assumed scholarly identity is exposed. The hostile institution remains capable of withholding a hearing from a woman whose discovery does not become less significant because of her gender.

This outcome need not make the romance a failure. A happy ending does not require an unjust world to reform on schedule. The problem is proportionality: the journey has asked the reader to invest in a professional destination with a deadline. Its disappointment needs emotional space commensurate with that investment.

The couple’s marriage supplies a different fulfillment. Dani’s review values Minerva’s agency in the final choice, while the HistoricalRomance discussion finds the resolution less convincing. Those responses mark a useful distinction between choosing the relationship and being satisfied with everything the plot does around that choice.

My reading falls between uncomplicated celebration and rejection. Colin and Minerva have good reasons to want a life together. I would still have preferred a clearer next step for her work, with space to grieve the lost opportunity before celebrating the marriage. That step would not need to be instant acclaim. Another submission, a fresh plan or sustained practical support could affirm that the world’s refusal has not ended her claim on it.

Who should take this journey?

A Week to Be Wicked offers a lively adult historical romance for readers who enjoy argumentative companionship, invented identities, explicit intimacy and a hero whose comic persona conceals fear. Its attraction depends on enjoying the escalation. Readers who prefer modest coincidence and meticulously economical plotting may find the road unusually crowded with incidents.

The established praise is substantial: Publishers Weekly admires the balance of desire, feeling and repartee, while several of the cited independent reviewers celebrate its warmth. The reservation worth carrying alongside that enthusiasm concerns the heroine’s destination. A woman can gain a deeply wanted love without her thwarted work becoming a small matter. The most satisfying reading keeps Minerva’s geological ambition visible all the way to the happy ending.

Sources and editorial basis

This is original research-based criticism, not a claim of completed firsthand reading or audiobook listening. The directly consulted narrative text is Dare’s authorized excerpt. Other sources are her Publishers Weekly interview, the Publishers Weekly review, independent criticism by Blythe Smith and Caz Owens, Mrs. Julien, Overflowing Shelf and maribkob97, plus the linked reader discussions. Whole-book judgments interpret those materials.

The author’s book page verifies March 27, 2012 as the original release, distinct from later audio editions. Her April 4, 2012 publication announcement documents bestseller recognition, and the book page records annual editorial selections. These support public visibility without a current sales-rank claim.