Review: Very Passable Romance
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 07 8, 2014
This is a perfectly acceptable old-fashioned romance. The very beginning starts off with an intriguing premise, being locked in a room by an abusive father and needing someone to help her before her father sells her off. I enjoyed her rescue. After that, it slows down. The waiting for the family to arrive for the reading of the will (and since we all know from the blurb that her elderly husband dies, I don't think this is a spoiler) could have - and probably should have - been shortened, although I understand what the author was trying to do. We are supposed to watch the growing relationship, and to a certain extent it works. Also, we got hit over the head with why 'he couldn't love her and she couldn't love him, this was going nowhere, they were only friends'. That theme was repeated far too often.IMHO, I thought it picked up a LOT once the entire family arrived. After that the tension built, and I actually found myself reading to the end in one long stretch. I enjoyed her father's villainy, the kind of character you love to hate. My favorite part was the guards, and I really did enjoy all the byplay and skullduggery, bad guys or not. The reason I gave it 3 stars instead of more is that it did become repetitious, and at the very end misunderstanding piled on misunderstanding. I enjoyed it up to a point, but after a while it strained my credulity.All in all, the writing was quite good despite the minor defects. It also was one of the better proofread books as far as typos goes. I'm not sure there were any. If there were, I don't remember ever noticing them.