Mildly amusing regency romance w/ "mail order bride" trope, wasting the rich tapestry of the world
355479
A Most Suitable Duchess is a "marriage of convenience turn into real love" trope romance in a regency setting. Penelope basically refused to love any one after having her lover disappear years ago, until her half-brother answered an ad for a duchess in her name and now she's forced to marry the new Duke of Torringford, Marcus Heywood. Marcus inherited the title with little notice and needed a wife in three weeks, and finding someone that fast is impossible, except through an ad. And that was the gossip in town for weeks. Penelope turned out to be most suitable for the job of a duchess, even as Marcus turned out to be a perfect husband, even if he is the must un-duke-like of a duke, as they learn about each other. The only real obstacle is when Penelope's old lover comes back to England to add some trouble.

The entire book can be described as... mildly uncozy. There's no large mood swings, merely uncomfortable brooding between the two characters that only changed when the old lover came back to London. The world was really brought to life through excellent descriptions, but we're here to hear stories about people. Thus, this can be, at best, an average novel.
85971
Formulaic book. a trip to the Regency period and the absurd social conventions of the upper classes.
701903
The writing was fine, but it did at times jump from one scenario to another with only a paragraph to indicate you were in a different time or place.
 If you can ignore the fact that there is a serious lack of Regency etiquette, you may just enjoy the plot. I personally had issues. I do like a feisty heroine but in this case Sabre was just too brazen. She would have been shunned by society. The hero, Quince was uninspiring. He would rather put his head in the sand than face his problems. He was prepared to take Sabre without marrying her. Although I did find his lack of sexual experience and his distress on discovering the nature of his father's crimes endearing. Unfortunately, it is not until the end of the book that he really amounts to anything.
There was a serious lack in duelling etiquette. There was no push for an apology, which is this case should have been the ideal solution, and there was no way that Quince, upon learning that his opponent was a woman could have proceeded honourably, whatever reasons the author projected. I could go on with this subject.
I also had bother with the fact that the brother, Robert had little regard for his sister's reputation and did not seem perturbed at the thought of her being Quince's mistress.
I also found the ending unsatisfactory with regard to the perpetrator's fate considering the heinous nature of his crimes.
If you can ignore all of this, there was the makings of a good plot. Unfortunately it was shrouded by total lack of Regency etiquette, which the heroine would never have gotten away with.
I have awarded three stars based on the writing technique and the strength of the plot I. But as far as historical feel and accuracy is concerned this book would struggle to attain to two stars.
If you just enjoy a good story it is okay, but if historical accuracy is important to you avoid.
3180605
Fake dating, a.k.a. fauxmance  one of my favorite tropes in romance novels. So, yeah, I couldn't resist No Love Allowed. I like contemporary romances because regardless of quality, they're breezes to read and I can usually find something entertaining or fun about them. No Love Allowed had that and it didnt. It was rather average, though undeniably disappointing in some parts.

Caleb and Didi meet and quickly engage in a fake dating arrangement. Caleb is a notorious heartbreaker who needs a girlfriend so that he can get away unscathed during all the high society events. (Hes rich AF.) Didi is poor, her mothers working two jobs, she just lost her part-time job, and it sounds like a fun enough adventure for the summer. Caleb is clear: no love allowed. He has issues (surprise) because of the death of his mother, which turned his dad into a cold and heartless guy. Better to have no love, than to risk losing it. (Right.) Can you guess at all where this is going?

Contemporary romances are clich&eacute; nine times out of ten, and most of the time I don't really mind that. If the characters are vibrant enough and the chemistry they have lights up on the page, I can easily give a clich&eacute; story five stars. No Love Allowed was not that story. The characters remained rather flat because the story is told in third person. And I could have mapped out the plot from the first chapter. There were a couple of entertaining moments, when there were the slightest sparks of chemistry and I cheered the couple on. Some of the glitz and glamour of the high society parties was fun to read about, in a Gossip Girl kind of way, especially with how Didi actually held her own there. And I did genuinely like reading about her passion for art. But clich&eacute;s gave way to sap and then before I knew it, the story was over already.

Honestly, the way that the book is written from two third person points of view kind of diminishes the effect that the book could have had. Didi is obviously coping with a certain mental health issue  shes seen taking meds in one of the first chapters, so that is not a spoiler. But I think its sad to have that be such a crucial part of the story but not to delve into her mind and explain what it feels like to live with that condition. When I finished the book I was honestly most disappointed by that. This could have been a really important and eye-opening story. But it wasnt.

Lastly, I don't know if its because I read an advanced copy, but there appeared to be some continuity errors. I hope they were fixed by the time the final copy went to print, because otherwise some of the behavior of these characters would be super random. For example, at the beginning of the story, Didi gets fired from the country club  but after she trips, Amber yells at her, and shes only pretty dumbfounded before throwing her name badge at her manager. Where did she get fired? Where did she have a bipolar episode as she describes it later? There's another big example, but it's so late in the game that it's all spoilers, so I'll spare you that one. This book just made little sense sometimes.

Summing Up:

Honestly, No Love Allowed is nothing special. Fake dating has been done before, and its been done so much better. Romances with a mental health element have been done before, and done infinitely better. The characters here were unremarkable, and though they had some sweet moments, I never had that many feels for them. Even the cute-enough LGBT ship in the background couldn't save it for me.

*An advance review copy was provided by the author in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the contents of the review.
3219322
I've only previously read Gayle Buck in anthologies and can't quite remember what led me to this book.  I also have  "Mutual Consent" waiting in the TBR pile.  This is an oldie but goodie from 1993 and a classic "Marriage of Convenience" story.

First of all, I liked this book very much but it does have a couple of glaring errors that really annoyed me.  The author gets the titles of the main characters wrong over and over and over again.  The forename "St John" is, indeed, pronounced "Sinjin" but NEVER written that way - I have a close friend with this interesting forename and I know this to be the case.  However, the hero is Viscount Weemswood and NOT Lord St John and neither is our heroine Lady St John. The author refers to the hero as "Sinjin" when calling him by his first name and "St John" when incorrectly referring to his title.  Various other aristocrats get their titles muddled as well.  Also, it's not clear to me how Weemswood would inherit the Dukedom of Alton from his (very nasty)uncle either as presumably this is a maternal and not paternal uncle.  Two brothers very, very rarely each have an independent, completely separate title and Weemswood is not a courtesy title; a nephew in line to a title does not have one - only direct issue do.  Anyway, so much for my personal rant.

Weemswood is an interesting, classically tortured hero: almost unlikeable at times, he is angry, reckless, cranky, temperamental, rude, volatile and even violent, and appears almost totally uncaring of how he treats Mary, his wife in a marriage of convenience.  He does appear to be somewhat manic depressive and even displays some autistic characteristics in his inability to empathise with others and understand the effect his behaviour has on others.  We know he had a troubled and sad childhood but we could have done with more information about it.  What we do know is that he believes he does not deserve personal happiness and when it is put in front of him, he shoves it away.  Although perhaps unrealistic or over-done in another character, with Weemswood it seems likely and quite believable; terribly sad and lots of ramifications arise in the story as a result.

Mary Pepperidge is the daughter of a rich (though not flashy) merchant.  Mary is even-tempered, intelligent, sympathetic, intuitive and demure although she does have a mind of her own - bravo for slapping not just the villain of the piece but St John as well - he more than deserved it by the time she did it.  She also has The Sister From Hell who has some wonderfully comic scenes with various nasty ladies of the ton who set out to demoralise St John and undermine Mary.

I recommend this book because it's well written and gives a good flavour of the nastiness and bitchiness of Regency society.  If it were not for the absurd errors I would say it's a 100% 5 star effort.  Although it probably deserves 4 stars, I am going to give it 5 because it's been so refreshing to find (for me) a new author who exceeded the efforts of too many indifferent Regency historicals that have come on the market since Signet gave up its imprint.
814627
While the Jane Austen/vampire mix may not be new to the marketplace, "Bespelling Jane Austen" is a sometimes interesting, if not always entertaining, read.

Four romance/paranormal writers each choose an Austen novel and from that spin a tale.  And while each reader will have individual favorites, surely one's familiarity with Austen and personal favorites among her works will affect enjoyment.

Two stood out for me:  Janet Mullany's "Little to Hex Her" and Susan Krinard's "Blood and Prejudice."  Collen Gleason's "Northanger Castle" was less interesting but will surely appeal to those who enjoy her paranormal series. The Mary Balogh  offering I found bland and unimaginative.  She was a good sport to give this a try, but it's not her forte.

Mullany's story is by far the best of the lot.  Relocated to contemporary Washington, D.C., witchy Emma runs a paranormal dating agency assisted by her smelly and clueless werewolf friend Harriet.  (Oh that Austen could have met Mullany's characters - surely she would have loved them as much as this reader.)  Emma's apartment building is owned by George-I-Hate-My-First-Name Knightley.  George, who's sexy in his handyman tool belt and tight jeans, is much more fun that Austen's staid Mr. K.  The plot doesn't need repetition; it's Mullany's witty take on the Austen plot and characters that makes this a charmer.  After all, who can resist Missy Bates?  Or Frank Churchill as a vampire lawyer?

The bottom line:  Averages out Four Stars.  Buy it and read the Mullany.  This is an author to watch.
715609
I don't understand why some writers set their romances in Regency times and then run roughshod over the period, carelessly strewing anachronisms along the way for their poor readers to stumble over. Not content with setting up a premise that is thoroughly ludicrous and completely in-apt for the time, Dare has her heroine spewing contemporary psychobabble, (she tells her Duke that she's declaring his carriage a 'safe place' for him to express his grief); makes the Duke's mother knit misshapen baby clothes to express her frustrated desire for a grandchild; has the servants assembled so the Duchess could discover which one had defaced a book, but instead they invent group therapy as, inspired by the heroine's honesty, they begin to spontaneously confess to their employers various lies and deceptions; posits a Duke who loved his illegitimate newborn daughter so passionately that he planned to raise her himself without a single care for what society might say....the list of crimes Dare commits is long indeed.... But, balanced against that, the heroine is unusual (though also quite improbable), the Duchess Mother is disarmingly appealing, and the Duke is a pattern-card, and very very worthy indeed - in fact, he's a veritable troubled saint, as well as having mad skills in the bedroom, and more compassion and sensitivity to women's feelings and desires than almost any modern man could boast..... The more I think about it, the worse the book gets, though if the author would just respect the period in which she's set her story, I'd might read some of her other books- she doesn't lack imagination and she writes well, it's mostly period mores and their affect that elude her. As it stands, though, she's gone onto my 'don't bother' list, because the liberties she takes are too egregious for me to ignore comfortably.
3402498
I generally like this author's voice so I tend to graviate toward her work.

In this one, the heroine Laura is a young widow who had a scandal in her past and has been consciously trying to live a correct life since then.  But the past collides with the present when her young niece, on the cusp of her debut for the season, falls in love with a young man.  The son of the same man Laura herself was involved with so scandalously years ago.  In order to prevent history from repeating itself, Laura attempts to nip the romance in the bud.  But fate throws a lot of obstacles in her way.

My 3-star rating reflects the actual romance between Laura and Ross and it is the strongest and most enjoyable element of the book.  Since they fall in love rather quickly, the conflict is primarily external and  unfortunately, this is the part that I think is the weakest.

The ill-considered romance of Laura's niece starts off promisingly enough as a premise, but it devolves quickly because the niece is rather unsympathetic.  Actually I hated her.  It didn't take long for me to want her to be left to her fate with the loser who would eventually make her life miserable.  I wanted Laura to just wash her hands of the brat ans say, "oh, well, this is what you wanted.  I tried to warn you." and let her make her own mistakes.  But this is a romance, and Laura is a heroine, so she has Romance Novel Heroine disease, which means she is almost too nice and selfless.

There was some amusing comedy-of-errors aspects of the story that result in some cute plot twists, especially as Laura lies outrageously to a couple she meets and she and Ross must make everything come out right.  But  in places there was a bit of a kitchen sink feel to the plot.  In addition to keeping the young lovers apart, there is some domestic drama with Laura's sister, a resolution of the old scandal and a spying subplot as well.

Still the writing was good and the story flowed.  And it was an amusing way to spend an afternoon.
101934
Scandalous Again repeats the bouncy and wispy-light momentum and style of Christina Dodd in her Regency-era bestsellers Lost In Your Arms and My Favourite Bride. Her formula, this time, however cannot disguise the empty premise of a filler plot and salvage the agonizing romance between duchess of Magnus Madeline de Lacy and Earl of Campion, Gabriel Ansell.
You wonder whether how could a sensible woman like Madeline be so domineering to her cousin Eleanor to propose a switch in identity when her father gambles her hand away. She trades insults and surprisingly connive at her father's reckless gambling. She rushes to Chalice Hall for the reputed Game Of the Century to stop her father from losing the heirloom tiara and instead meets with erstwhile fiance Gabriel who came with a hidden agenda to revenge for his brother whose downfall was incited by the gamemaster Mr. Rumbelow.
There are light strokes of humor, lots of provocative banter and hot passion but there are even more winces when the hero is bent on punishing Madeline for jilting him at the altars and even risking her life to get back at the villain. When had Dodd's charming and endearing protagonists morphed to such spiteful creatures? The story is left with a hanger to hinge on her next story to this series Changing Places, that makes it unsatisfying. You finally admit that this is sadly, not the Christina Dodd you know.
10740
Ok, but not worth buying.  This was a typical regency-style romance novel.  A couple meets, they kiss once.  Her family forces them to marry due to the kiss.  They grow to love each other, have a fight and separate and then get back together at the end.  This is an ok formula.  Sometimes it works well.  Sometimes the conversations and characters make it interesting and entertaining.  But this story wasn't one of those.  There were no major problems, but it just didn't please or delight me enough.  However, I did love his words to her when they got back together in the end, page 353 (see Spoiler below).

Story brief:  Simon had a wife and two young boys who were killed in a fire.  He feels guilty that he didn't protect them well enough.  Five years later, he continues to live with grief and as a hermit.  He meets Anne, and in a rash moment kisses her.  They are forced to marry.  He tells her they won't be having any sex, and he plans to divorce her in a year.  After she learns about his former wife, Anne understands him better and realizes she loves him.  She decides to try to seduce him.

CAUTION SPOILER:
The touching words on page 353 are:  "Anne," he whispered.  "My Annie...I'll give you everything I have, Anne.  My heart.  My home."  He kissed the corner of her mouth. "My baby..."

Story length: 358 pages.  Sexual language: mild.  Number of sex scenes: 5.  Length of sex scenes: 2 short scenes (1 page or less) and 3 long scenes (3, 5 and 12 pages).  Setting: 1848 London.  Copyright: 2007.  Genre: historical romance.
109818
Before Georgette Heyer found the Regency period she wrote Georgians - and this is one of them. The Conveninent Marriage is set in the last couple of decades of the eighteenth century - when coach roads were still muddy morasses, highwaymen lurked on the outskirts of London, and men and women were corseted, laced, fringed, feathered, bewigged, powdered and patched to within in inch of their lives.
The book starts right into the thick of things -  The Earl of Rule is looking for a wife and it looks as though he will offer  for society beauty, Lizzie Winwood. Lizzie is not enamoured of this idea - she wants to marry some worthy suitor whom she actually loves. Luckily it is her practical, straight talking younger sister, Horatia (better known as Horry) who steps into the fray instead. The interview in which Horry presents the revised plan to the Earl of Rule is hysterical.
Horry is still rather young, and the Earl (who I instantly fell in love with) finds that he needs to rouse himself out of his usual langour to save her from herself. In the midst of all this there is a fiendish plot afoot to break up the marriage, Horry's well-meaning brother Pelham attempting to help Horry, a spare highwayman or two and some good old fashioned romping.
The characters are generally so likeable and fun. The only problem I had is that Horry has a stutter - and they just don't make good reading (I think). A  fun, quick read.
589643
Bitten & Smitten starts with a familiar and amusing premise that I happen to enjoy - a quirky, sort of socially gawky girl meets tall, dark, and fangy and romantic hilarity ensues. Unfortunately in this particular book, the lead character, Sarah Dearly, is a wee bit too frustrating to be quirky and the hilarity fell flat. It starts with Sarah being buried in a graveyard by her blind date (no idea WHY her erstwhile suitor had to bury her, as the other two turnings that happened in the book didn't seem to require graveyards, but as the erstwhile suitor ended up shish-kebobbed shortly thereafter, and the rest of the story was laden with some unexplained stretches of intelligence, too, I'm not going to make that big a deal out of it) and goes downhill from there. Unfortunately, the sequence of successive horrors that Sarah kept tripping into didn't serve to amuse me as much as I'd hoped, and a couple put a strain on my intellect.

I was hoping for a light, engaging read that gave me a few chuckles, and I suppose I shouldn't be too disappointed, as two out of three isn't THAT bad, but given that the one that missed was the "engaging" part, I ended up feeling a little unsatisfied. I had a hard time warming up to Sarah, though admittedly, she did appear to have the right intentions for the most part, and by the time I did warm up to her, other things were going on that just annoyed me. I don't want to spoil anything, but come on, how long have vamps been around? And they can get together to socialize but haven't figured out that working together to fight against the threat of hunters just MIGHT be a bit more effective than the "walk around until you get staked" plan? Uh...right. And it takes the recently fired executive assistant to tell them that? How are they not extinct already???

I admit to having a prejudice against plot points that are outside the bounds of common sense because it does a serious number on my willing suspension of disbelief, and there were just too many things in Bitten & Smitten that pushed that button for me to be able to rate the book any higher. I'm not giving up on the series, because there WERE aspects of the story I did enjoy, but my patience won't last if the second book is of a similar vein...no pun intended.
3985003
or maybe 2.5 stars, but the GR description of "it was ok" is about right.

"jazz" is a witch (of the 'bewitched' wiggle-your-nose-and-poof sort, no complicated spell-craft here) with a job as a chauffeur for supernatural types and a side business in removing curses.  her on-again-off-again vampire lover shows up in town to ask for her help in finding out why so many vampires are going missing lately.

you know this is a romance novel because of the cute cartoon cover, so it's no surprise when the pair end up nekkid together, and that sort of predictability is par for the course: on the whole this book feels like it was assembled by committee.  a brotherly house-mate and a pair of witches jazz visits on weekend retreat (none of which move the plot forward at all) serve as a scooby gang.  a pair of bunny slippers that attack everything on the floor and a ghost cursed into her car serve as the wacky sidekicks/cute pets.  an all-talk blowhard is a totally one-dimensional villain, with no nuance or complexity.  and of COURSE our heroine is super-sexy & super-powerful, of COURSE our hero provides her with the most mindblowing sex possible, and of COURSE there has to be some trumped-up reason to delay their inevitable final get-together.

got it for free for kindle, and it was a pleasant way to pass a plane ride, but it's utterly disposable.
4627443
It's about a woman trying to cope with the deaths of her husband and son by getting a dog. The dog becomes her confidant, passing on advice from his talks with God.

It's a cute idea and should be heartwarming, but somehow it isn't. The protagonist is not so much hurting as brittle, self-absorbed, and frequently unkind. Her friends are a bit too stereotyped. We're supposed to believe the churched ones among them are "good people" because they go to church and do not fornicate, yet they too come across as brittle, shallow, and quite often cruel to each other. Thus one has difficulty caring much when the lady moves to a new town and finds a suitable mate (i.e., one who is widowed, like her, rather than-- ish!--  divorced). I found myself wishing to heaven she would have learned something from her bereavement. She doesn't, and neither does the reader. She does find a new object of her affection with whom, we trust, she will proceed to live happily ever after. Which is precisely why I don't read much "Christian" fiction.
2712634
This is a fun romp on the fringe of well-off society in England and Scotland.

A young lady has been abducted by an older man who wishes to take her to Gretna Green and marry her, having compromised her name. The girl's older sister, still unwed after five seasons, might be thought to be envious when she chases off in pursuit, but we're assured that she's only thinking of the girl's happiness.  She goes to a tavern and finds a Scotsman she knows who, being acquainted with the roads north, might help her.

The story is a bit flimsy and calamities occur, and I can't see any well-raised young woman going off on such a chase without her maid. She couldn't even shop without a maid. So we'll just have to see it as a romantic fantasy. I also see no reason why someone injured as described in a coach accident would be unconscious for several days. There is adult behaviour and a scene reminiscent of Gulliver's Travels when a host refuses to let the travellers continue their journey.

Sadly the spell fell apart for me when a character is reminded of a chipmunk.  These are American mammals and while it's just possible a picture or stuffed version would have made its way to a London exhibition, we need a line explaining why an English lady would ever have heard of one let alone seen one. A hare is the obvious animal if we're looking for something toothy in front; she'd have eaten jugged hare and probably seen someone with a hare lip. Even a rabbit would do; Cook would have them hanging in the pantry.

So overall the story in the series about Scots sisters who sew ladies' unmentionables from fine fabrics to restore the clan's fortunes, is fun but lacking the depth of research we'd expect from this author.
2695833
"My Favorite Bride" does read like Catherine Dodd's salute to "The Sound of Music" -- with a few obvious differences of course. To begin with, she's transplanted everything (era and locale) to Victorian England Lake District. Another variation is that "My Favorite Bride" has a rather predominant subplot involving foreign and traitorous English spies. This is a subplot that has more or less linked two previous Dodd's novels to this one. In the other two books, "In My Wildest Dreams" & "Lost in Your Arms," the spy subplot was a rather muted one. However, this subplot is featured more dominantly in this novel, and I for one am glad as this saved the book from being an otherwise rather bland and unsurprising read. That's the trouble with refittings: everyone is rather familiar with the plot, and in order for a reader's interest to be piqued and held, either the characters have to be really special, or else the take on the well known plot has to be different enough to be engrossing. And unfortunately, I found that Christina Dodd's Victorian take on "The Sound of Music" was not quite different enough to make it a completely engrossing read for me.
The Colonel, while an almost carbon copy of the Captain from the Sound of Music, was a lot less of a romantic a hero (I thought) and seemed to be a lot more lust driven. And I couldn't really make up my mind if he was truly in love with Samantha (the Maria-clone and our heroine) or if it was a case of his libido at work. And while I liked the character of Samantha Pendregast quite a bit, and rather enjoyed Dodd's twist of making her a reformed pickpocket, I found her obsession with the notion that wild animals lurk in the Lake District, ready to devour her, to be quite irritating. I did not find it credible at all that she would not have realised that wolves and bears were practically nonexistent in the Victorian England Lake District. Surely as a governess, she would have come across this nugget of information somewhere in her training/reading? What saved this novel for me was the character of the other woman -- the 'suitable' bride that the Colonel had initially decided to marry, Teresa, the Countess of Marchant. From the very moment she entered the plot, I was captivated. What a refreshing and intelligent character (in fact she was the only intelligent character in the entire book) the countess turned out to be. I was so glad that she did not end up with the Colonel. She was too good for him!
My opinion on "My Favorite Bride?" It depends on whether or not you're a Christina Dodd's fan. The book is not a bad one, esp since the spy subplot and the countess really do make reading "My Favorite Bride" a much more entertaining read than it otherwise might have been. However, if you're looking for a good romance novel that takes a more in-depth look at how a governess wins over her charges and actually helps them cope with grief and loss, take a look at Karen Hawkins's "An Affair to Remember."
409871
'Dazzling, delicious and delightful' says the front cover in a quote from Karen Hawkins. Well no, I don't agree with that description of this book, although it had some moments of charm.

Could a young boy actually be a wizard with a tame owl? Could Mr Darcy really defy family expectation and marry Elizabeth Bennet? The key to plunging deep into a story and being taken to another place is plausibility. It may be odd or unexpected, but if the book writes the situation well enough, we can believe it.

The problem with 'Always a Scoundrel' by Suzanne Enoch is that I found two central premises entirely implausible. She's working hard at a new-ish angle on the reformed rake type of story, but unfortunately I was in no way convinced why the rake, Lord Bramwell Johns, was reformed by heroine Rosamund. And, even less believable was the strange plot of the Duke of Cosgrove to marry Rosamund in order to degrade her. Why was he so keen to do that? It just didn't add up at all. So I spent most of the book not believing in the situation in which the characters found themselves. And that doesn't make for satisfying reading.

I was even less convinced that Rosamund, a gently-bred woman from the aristocracy, would (a) understand the rough words that Cosgrove said to her (to be insulted by them), and (b) would decide to behave in quite the way she did to spoil his prize of a virginal bride. Some things feel like they could only happen at the pen of an author, rather than in real life.

Despite these rather glaring problems with the story for me, it did improve as the tale moved along. The final third of the book, where Bram was trying to reform and trying to rescue Rose from a potentially disastrous marriage, was much more satisfying. I still found implausibilities everywhere, and felt that Bram's final method of dealing with Cosgrove rather unheroic, but it was at least more interesting a story at that stage.

As a reader I find it hard to appreciate rakes, reformed or otherwise, and Bram was no different. His former wild lifestyle didn't appeal to me and I wasn't entirely convinced that Rose could keep him on the straight and narrow, or indeed why her influence so changed him. But I suppose that this is fiction and that it's escapism and fantasy. For this reader, however, a little more plausibility would have gone a long way.

Originally published for Curled Up With A Good Book  Helen Hancox 2009