Review: My Reluctant Review
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 05 8, 2013
I bought this book as part of the Timeless Quills set of books. While several of the books in the set were quite good, 'Her Reluctant Groom' was not one of them. The only reason I could even give this book two stars is because I really thought the story had a great deal of unrealized potential, but there were so very many problems with the book that I couldn't give it more than two.Where to begin? I suppose the most tiring aspect of the story was that we are to believe a whole village full of people in the English countryside in the 1800s would believe that a nobleman was a vampire. Seriously? And it was not a minor plot point, but a major source of problems and conflicts and (endless) misunderstandings throughout the story. The book made the villagers and even the staff of the school where the heroine taught out to be blithering idiots.The second major flaw was the overly-complex villain storyline. It was not only overly contrived but unnecessary and, ulitmately, completely pointless in this story. Except for forcing the main characters into a life-or-death situation near the end (which I thought would never arrive), this entire plotline did almost nothing for the book except give the heroine a reason to bite her fingernails and the idiotic girls from the school something else to squeal about. And we were supposed to believe that teenaged girls could produce a fake piece of a treasure map (in a few minutes) that was so convincing it would fool this serial-killing bad guy into leaving the teacher alone. Because that makes sense? It was yet another ridiculous point in a book where many ridiculous things happen.Third, the writing was simply atrocious. It was quite clear this was not professionally edited. It was possibly not even read by a beta reader. The writer uses homonymns in the wrong way most of the time. She doesn't seem to know what some of the words she uses even mean, much less have a grasp of storytelling technique. It made me sad, honestly. I wanted to like this book, I really did. I love to find new and wonderful self-published authors. Given the rave reviews Rose Gordon receives, I hoped she would be one of them. I was beyond disappointed with 'Her Reluctant Groom' and I doubt I will read any other books by this author. Which is a real shame, because with time and perhaps work with a professional editor, I think Rose Gordon could be a good writer.