Review: The Eyes Have It...
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 12 19, 2013
3 starsI picked this up for free, drawn to it by the blurb that mentioned the Halifax Explosion of 1917. I’ve read articles about it, so a historical romance featuring it sounded interesting.I enjoyed the book. It’s better than many romances in that the two main characters do not each think the other can’t possibly be interested long past the point of believability. They reconnect, they are interested, and after only a brief period of understandable angst spiced up by a gal who knows what she wants and decides to go after it, they get together. Where does the Explosion come in? It doesn’t really.Based on the blurb, I expected a lead-up, the Explosion, and how our couple copes with the devastation. Nope. Instead it’s a straightforward historical romance set in Halifax in 1917. The couple deals with his emotional and physical war wounds and her difficult family. Little obstacles are thrown in the way, and they deal with them. All the characters were nicely done and felt real to me (except during their first sexual encounter when the virgin heroine acts like she has years of experience). The descriptions were compelling and immersive. But the whole time I kept thinking, “When is the explosion?”When we finally get to it, it’s so superficial and rushed, it makes no real impact. It hasn’t much bearing on the story in any way. There are a couple of pages of who’s-going-to-die? tension (because someone had to die, and I’d already correctly guessed one of them), and then it’s all conveniently wrapped up in another couple of pages. I found that disappointing.One other thing I have to mention: the author’s over-dependence on her characters’ eyes to express every emotion. Eyes glow, twinkle, glower, gleam, and shine. They are sultry, smoky, angry, happy, sad. Just the eyes. Always the eyes. It’s as if these people have no faces, just eyes in a blank face, and all emotion is exactingly expressed by just the eyes. She could read it in his eyes. He could see it in her eyes. His eyes told her everything. It got to the point of distraction. If I’d made a drinking game of it, I’d have been dead drunk by the end of the book.Up until about halfway through I was thinking this might be a four or five star read. Unfortunately, I found myself more frustrated the farther into the book I got. I suppose I’d give it 3.5, but not 4 stars.