Review: Too tedious and childish
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 10 13, 2013
Some reviewers have said this book is a novella. I would not know because it was just too tedious to finish. Reading this was like wading through quicksand.After an interesting beginning where characters were set up as fresh and strong, the novel took an unfortunate turn. The silly nicknames aside, Lady Barbara became a disappointment. She is young and supposedly brave and intelligent because she wrote a novel about members of the ton. She cleverly changed the names, one from Lord Butterworth to Lord Butterball. How clever and ingenious is that?  Sarcasm aside, she runs around with her friend, a mature German count, who acts like a teenage boy and she often appears to be flighty and childish. How are readers to reconcile this character with a clever writer of a much read social satire? And why is it not obvious that someone of the ton's social ranks wrote the book?Yes, we want characters who are strong, but really, the only character of any substance was the would be villain, Sir Edward, and even he becomes as predictable and uninteresting as the others. Even the hero becomes boring. The dialogue reminds me of the constant chatter of birds. It is empty and does very little to advance the plot or to make the characters seem interesting. Indeed, it does the opposite and makes them seem empty, shallow and overbearingly immature. Their attempt at witty banter comes off as trying too hard and the characters and the writer become annoying. If any of this was improved upon later in the novel, I do not know. When you get through half of a novel and it seems to be plowing aimlessly along an already known path, there really doesn't seem much point in reading on, especially when the outcome is known.Lord Byron, Lady Caroline Lamb, Beau Brummel, A Vindication of The Rights of Women... it was just too much. Everything seems to be stuffed into this novel, including a too modern feel. The way the characters talk and the way they act seem out of sync with their environment. The author, in trying to defend her writing, says in her beginning author's note that their were strong female characters during the regency period and she names the two whom she keeps throwing at readers throughout the novel: Lamb and Godwin. But these are just two. Something about this novel did not feel right.With a lackluster plot, predictable, uninteresting  and annoying characters, there just was not enough to keep me interested in reading; I could not continue to the end. This is a shame because the author begins the novel with such a strong beginning.