Review: Not Enough Development!
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 02 27, 2014
*What Lynn Thought*Lady Emmaline Sandhurst stops at her best friend Georgiana’s house on her way to accept the proposal of Lord Lamford. Georgie is shocked to hear that Em is planning to be married, not that long ago she was engaged and madly in love with Mark Allendale, Viscount Denby. After a brief conversation that reveals that Em still has feelings towards her ex, Georgie leaves Em to attend an emergency at her house with a promise they will meet later at the summerhouse. Only it is Mark who is waiting there for Em, having convinced her friends of his love for her and arranged for one night alone with her to try to win her back.I loved the premise of this story, but I feel like it would have been better as a longer novel. I only got the barest idea of the characters’ personalities and motivations before the love scene started. For instance it is Mark’s “wastrel” ways that Em’s brother William disapproves of so much that he encourages her to leave Mark; but Mark doesn’t really seem that way in the book at all, and so you’re left wondering why she takes her brother’s objections so seriously. You also never really learn why she didn’t confront him about “being a fortune-hunter”, rather than just breaking it off and never speaking to him again. Conflicts that could have been solved with one conversation frustrate me, and there wasn’t enough time for the writer to add in the personality issues or background that would have explained why this one conversation never happened. The other conflict, William’s disapproval, is also solved with one conversation, which made the whole story feel a bit anti-climactic.The writing itself was also a bit stiff, as there were a few times where characters declared their intention to do something rather than just doing it. Also because the story was so short, and the longest scene in it was the love scene, it came off more as erotica than romance. Overall, I was not as in love with this story as I could have been, though I feel like it would have improved with more space to develop the characters and explain their motivations more clearly.