Review: To The Lady Bored
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 01 9, 2013
What begins as a promising, courtly tale of love gets kind of convoluted and muddied by too many secondary characters, in my opinion. Lady Amalie is abandoned by her traitor brother, who flees for Ireland and safety without her. Amalie remains at the family home, and when it is overtaken by the King's men, the commander in charge beats and rapes her, leaving her pregnant and deeply ashamed.  When the commander is recalled and replaced by another, Weston, he arrives to take control of the holding to find Amalie, whom he does not realize is the lady of the keep, attempting to drown herself in a frigid pond.Weston(What a legit historical name, huh?)saves Amalie from herself several times, and becomes smitten with her beauty and supposed fighting spirit, although I have to admit I didn't really see why; Amalie was a sympathetic character, to be sure, but I didn't see much personality to really draw Weston in. And once he realizes the extent of the abuse she's endured, including the rape, his internal dialogue is quite off-putting. He keeps thinking that he'd normally never be interested in Amalie because she's not pure, but maybe it's OK for him to pursue her because the assault really wasn't all her fault. It made me not like him much, to be honest. I kept telling myself to take into account the time period and pervasive sexual mores, but it still troubled me. It all read like a "She was wearing a short skirt, so maybe she deserved it" rationale of the 14th century.And on top of that, we are introduced in the middle of the story to subplots involving Weston's brother, Sutton (Yep, another name right outta the history books), and his mother Elizabeth. Plus, the story stretches over several years, so Amalie and Weston's children, Aubria and Colton (I'm not even going to say anything about THAT one), take over pages upon pages with their whining and fits, which I think the author intended to be endearing, but just made me want to pull my hair out and get a hysterectomy.  All of this hodgepodge occurs in the middle of the book, which was pretty much a snoozefest for me, but it does lead to a fairly exciting conclusion at a tournament.Because I love this time period and because I do tend to get sucked into LeVeque's stories pretty quickly, I will probably download more of her stories. I'll just keep hoping for a less snooty hero and a heroine with a little more oomph.