Review: Better Than Expected
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 02 10, 2012
If you want a book that you have read a dozen times before, this is the one for you.  There is nothing original in it from the first page to the last.  The handsome, wealthy, and emotionally challenged hero and the virtuous and beautiful heroine surmount all obstacles (which include the hero's feckless father) to arrive at the obligatory happy ending.  Oh yes, there's also the hero's adorable half brother who has been taken under the hero's wing because Feckless Father is off chasing his mistress on a yacht in the Aegean.The book is actually well written, and the author keeps the plot moving at a good pace.  Archetypes though they are, the hero and heroine are quite well developed and the dialogue is good.  On the down side, though, the author has thrown in a secondary story line involving the hero's cousin, Troy, and Felicia, a spoiled, mean, rich girl who had her sights set on the hero until he married the heroine.  The Troy and Felicia arc is a total distraction, and I felt like I was reading two books.  Perhaps the author intended on writing a series (Two Bachelors from Boston??), but things didn't pan out, so she combined the two stories.  The Troy and Felicia story was so irritating that I skipped though most of it -- the Kindle equivalent of fast forward.I did finish this book, and I enjoyed it.  I would have given it three stars if the author had kept it as a novella and left out Troy and Felicia.  They were so irritating that I'm marking it down to two stars.