Review: Seriously?
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 03 29, 2014
I'm always looking for new authors and I particularly like books that are written in the medieval period. I stumbled across this one and was happy to see from the summary that it had all of the elements I usually like in a historical romance. I didn't bother with trying a sample as it was only $2.50, so I just bought it. On page 1, I knew I was in trouble. The H is called Jake. Already I'm thinking 'modern historical'. Sadly I was right and it only got worse. Our h is found by the H, after she has been badly beaten and left for dead. The H takes her back to his brother's keep to be nursed back to health. The h can't hear or speak initially because of the beating. The H takes great interest in her and spends a lot of time with her while she is healing and they develop a bond. They communicate by the h reading lips. Already we know that the h is 'feisty' and will be giving the H lots of trouble if and when she can speak because she's headstrong (rolling my eyes here). The H is wary of relationships because his late first wife was unfaithful etc but of course the h gets to him. The h doesn't tell him why she was on her own when she was attacked.+++Spoilers+++By now the dialogue is thoroughly modern and I can't tell you how many times the word 'Ack' is used. What does that even mean? Perhaps the author was thinking of the word 'Och' that the Scots use but that's entirely different. Why bother anyway when you haven't written any of the other dialogue in a Scottish way (e.g doona, dinna, ken etc)? Secondly the H has sex with the h one night and intends to make things right the next day. Conveniently her father arrives and the H discovers that the h is betrothed to someone else and that's why she ran away from home. He immediately classifies the h as the same as his late wife, freaks out and forgets that he has taken her innocence and that he loves her. Love??? This ridiculous idea that he could ignore what he'd done, then arrange a marriage between his brother (the Lord of the keep) and the h and then ride off into the sunset, had me wanting to throw my Kindle. None of it could ever have happened. People in those days believed in honour and after taking the h's innocence, he would never have been able to foist the h off on someone else. Virginity was a huge thing back in those days and the h could've been killed for not being pure on her wedding night. She'd never have been able to spend time alone with the H, to the point they could have had sex in her room alone. Marriages were arranged and it would have been the same for the brother. Why would he marry the h anyway?The inner dialogue that had the h thinking she could run away and become a servant was also so over the top and modern. Yet she considers it again (the first time was after she ran away from her first betrothal) after the H is so angry with her and her father is pushing her again to marry her original betrothed.This honestly isn't a good book, particularly if you are a fan of well researched historicals. The only reason it gets a second star is that it isn't full of grammar and spelling mistakes.