Review: A Transitional Book
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 09 16, 2013
This review is going to have some definite spoilers because I can't review it without them.I was a little disappointed in this book, mostly because it didn't feel like it was written in the same vein as the others, as well as the fact that there were definite historical inconsistencies which bothered me.It started off like the others, and I definitely enjoyed seeing Lucy's claws when it came to Edward's friend Lucas... but by the end of the story I wasn't entirely happy.  While we're TOLD that Lucy is spending a lot of time with Charles Lloyd, her former professor, we don't actually get to see any of the romance happening between them.  Instead we get a lot of the interactions between her and Lucas, which made me feel like Lucas was going to win her in the end ... but no she ends up with Charles.And I don't know why.  The one time she even DISCUSSES Charles and we get to find out how she feels about him, she's telling Louisa that it was "okay" when he kissed her on the cheek.  There is ONE scene between her and Charles, and it's when he takes her out to ice cream and she gets upset and frightened at hearing that he's been offered the position of Headmaster.  After that, all romance between them is told from LUCAS' point of view when he's jealous that Charles is taking her out on walks, etc.  So there is a romance happening, but we don't get to see it, all we see is the failed romance between her and Lucas.  Since a good portion of the book is told from Lucas' point of view, this is not only unexpected, it means that the romance makes absolutely no sense to me and felt incredibly unsatisfying. At the very least, there should be a balance of scenes between her & Charles and her & Lucas so that we can understand why she fell for Charles over Lucas.There IS one really good scene told from Charles' point of view, a caning scene where he's practicing for his position as Headmaster under another Headmaster's tutelage.  But, although it's a great scene and shows that he will eventually be a good choice for Lucy, it certainly didn't do anything to further the romance between them.So the romance didn't really make sense to me.  Especially because that's also where the historical inaccuracies came in.  First of all, they would have never been allowed to go out together without a chaperone, especially not in the evenings.  And, considering the whole "little ones" scenario, it makes even less sense that they were allowed to.  The end scene at the ball was even more historically inaccurate.  Not only would Charles not have been allowed to dance with her "multiple times," - as more than twice would have been seen as scandalous - kissing her public would NOT have been looked upon with pleasure by the crowd.  Perhaps if this had been a ball of all people within their society it might have made sense, but it was described as a ball within the entire London upper crust of Society, in which case such behavior would have been considered incredibly inappropriate.I liked the idea of showing how the marriages worked in regular society, but historical inaccuracies like that really bother me.Despite all of this, I AM looking forward to the next book in the series and seeing Lucy train under Charles as his wife and seeing what kind of "Papa" he turns out to be, but only because I'm so invested in Lucy at this point.  Considering that this book showed very little (almost nothing really) of their growing relationship, I have no investment in them as a couple.  I was much more invested in Lucy and Lucas, and I was definitely just as disappointed as Lucas was when he didn't get the girl.  This is the first time that I read one of Ms. Ryan's books and wished that she would do a re-write, because I feel like there's a LOT of missing information here that would have made me more satisfied with the ending.  Honestly, I almost feel like this book could be skipped completely, as it doesn't contain any necessary or new information other than Charles' education.However, there are plenty of individual scenes that I found very satisfying, I love seeing Edward and Louisa interact, the scene of Charles' training was great as I said, the rivalry between him and Lucas was highly entertaining, the high level of tension between Lucas and Lucy was even more so (even if the end result is disappointing) and the writing is really well done.  I just know that when it comes to re-reading this series in the future, this will be a book that I skip.  I do think that the set-up for the next one makes it promise to be a more satisfying read.  (and I kinda hope that Lucas eventually gets his own book).******Edit (12/18/2013) - Just started reading the fourth book and it seems that the end of the third book was either a lot more open ended than I remembered or she changed it... but (spoiler alert!) -----------------------> Lucy ends up with Lucas.  So I'm adding another star to this review because that makes SO much more sense to me.  The end of this book (I just re-downloaded it to re-read the end) is very ambiguous so if I DID misunderstand, I can see why I did so. But very happy now and looking forward to reading the fourth book!