Review: Short but sweet story of 2 people falling in love after breaking off their engagement.
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 12 6, 2011
Be forewarned that this short story is only 50% of the total download.  The rest is promotional excerpts from other James' works:  Her new HR to be released Dec. 27,The Duke Is Mine; previously released HRsA Kiss at MidnightandWhen Beauty Tamed the Beast; and her e-book novellaStorming the Castle: An Original Short Story with Bonus Content.So this novella is definitely short.  It is also sweet and romantic but nothing new in the HR genre.  Heroine Lucy, daughter of Lord and Lady Towerton, is self-conscious about her over-average height and has turned into a wallflower.  She doesn't have a large enough dowry to make up for her perceived drawbacks and has not received one offer of marriage from men of the ton. (An aside to mention is that Lucy is the best friend of Olivia Lytton, another wallflower, the heroine of the new James HR to be released soon.)Rather desperate, her parents have agreed to an engagement with Cyrus Ravensthorpe, whose mother was an earl's daughter who had the gall to fall in love and elope with a commoner.  Never mind that Cyrus' father is a very famous and distinguished barrister; his blood is just not even close to blue.  However, the Ravensthorpes are very well off financially and Cyrus himself is extremely and independently wealthy.  Cyrus has always felt a bit shunned by the ton and has plans to better himself in society, hence his wish to marry a woman of the peerage.But out of the blue Lucy's father's aunt dies and leaves her fortune to Lucy.  Now she can pick and choose a husband and her parents want her to break off the engagement to Cyrus.  Lucy, however, is a bit attracted to Cyrus but unsatisfied by his aloof and cool treatment of her.  She decides to give him one last chance to show any real interest in her as a person but things don't work out to her satisfaction, so they break up.The rest of the short is a cute "learning to know each other as people and falling in love" theme and it's an enjoyable read.  It is, at the same time, not particularly groundbreaking and not really deserving of the classification "historical" because the behavior and speech of characters is definitely out of period.  I guess I shouldn't complain about that aspect because very rarely does one come across an "historical romance" that is really historical.