Review: Give me a break!
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 09 25, 2011
Rarely do I just toss a book aside 3/4 of the way through out of sheer frustration with the story's contrivances, but I just did that with Ambersley. When I found myself glowering and barking "NO, no, no, you stupid idiot!" four times in a dozen pages at three different characters, I realized I'd been muttering much the same thing over and over for the past couple hours and was about to heave my kindle against the wall. This was clearly no longer an enjoyable read.Yes, Regency romances often depend on layers of contrived misunderstandings, or guises and maneuvers no one alive would swallow for a minute, pigheaded heroes and inconsistencies of character, cardboard villains that make Cruella deVille look complex, or deus ex machina resolutions - but all of that crammed into the second half of one book?The first part was appealing enough and well-enough crafted that it earned the book 3 stars, but the entire second half has proven so thoroughly annoying that I took one star back.Oh, I may get around to finishing it eventually, but I have to get past wanting to slam several of the main characters' heads together first.