Review: Nowhere near as good as Forever Courted Never Wed
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 06 3, 2014
This book was a massive let down.  While the hero was flawed (though I am rather tired of heroes whose flaw is difficulty reading), and okay per se, the heroine was atrocious.  This is another story where the girl is perpetually clumsy, though this time she is also rather plump, and if I might say so, rather stupid and very very weak as a character.Her brother, who is written as a pompous ass, is then presented to us as a caring brother late in the book.  I wasn't buying.  Ditto mama, who was as superficial as the heroine's brother, but whom we are later expected to believe wished her daughter to be happily married.Frankly, however, given the way the heroine was written, I could well understand why she had never been courted, and so found it tediously difficult to persevere with the story when the hero and his best friend - a duke, no less - begin to court her.  I could only determine that neither man had much between their ears.The biggest irritation was the snippets of gossip presented at the beginning of each chapter.  None of the events featured in these snippets were actually events within the storyline itself, so the author missed the opportunity to perhaps show the bigger picture surrounding these events, rather than simply leave them as further indictments of the girl's absolute stupidity.Without exaggeration, I found the heroine pathetic.  The only scene in which I actually liked her was the costume ball where she indulged in brandy with our masked hero.  After that, meh.From a craft perspective, the writing in this story was also inferior to the other story.