Review: Third time's the charm
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 09 24, 2013
After seeing nearly a dozen positively glowing reviews I expected to be blown away by fresh storyline and witty dialogue... only to be sorely disappointed. I found the writing style lacking, the dialogue awkward, and the Regency-esque verbiage overdone, making the book a chore to get through.It took me three tries to finish the book. I was getting distracted by the treatment of the social strictures of the era - hyperbolizing and ignoring them in the same scenes. For example, the heroine becomes so overset with the hero for making an unwelcome advance while drunk that she holds a grudge for eight years and refers to the incident as a 'loss of her innocence, which he stole'. But, in the same episode, she, a lady, not only punched him, a gentleman, in the nose, but drew enough blood to spatter over her dress, and then refused to mention the 'contretemps' to anyone but her maid. That is until she was all too willing to relive it in all sordid detail with anyone willing to listen, eight years later.In short,  in my unpopular opinion, the book is uneven, and the narrative didn't hold my interest long enough to develop any empathy for the characters, which is a shame because the storyline had potential.