Review: Improbable story - you'll really need to work to suspend disbelief on this one
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 05 11, 2014
The writer says she teaches college English, and I can buy that.  Her conventions are without error and her sentences read smoothly.But her plot veers from one improbable circumstance to another.  As readers you have to believe that a woman in her forties is so deliciously gorgeous that a 26-year-old man is attracted against his better judgment, yet dowagers who enter her book shop instruct their young daughters, in her hearing, that if they don't marry well, they'll end up a "shriveled up mouse" like she is.  Which is it?  You can't have both.You have to believe that a handsome hero who is supposedly sharp-witted, is being bled dry by a blackmailer, yet never does a thing to corroborate that the blackmailer's story is even true, because he doesn't want to embarrass the younger brother whose activities the blackmailer photographed.  So he is carrying out a variety of heinous deeds for the blackmailer to keep his younger brother out of trouble, yet the younger brother, when he finally turns up, is able to set our rather dull-witted hero straight in a couple of sentences and laugh at the whole situation.You have to believe that a gently-bred older woman who has never been married would consider, in the early 1800's when there is no birth control to speak of, and no protection against syphilis, having a "fling" with a young stud.  Come on.And the wishy-washy, on again, off again, attitude the main character takes toward the young dude is just silly.It was an okay story, and I can't argue with the price I paid for it (free), but as a novel it left a lot to be desired.  The sex scenes read like just about every "historical" bodice-ripper reads, so nothing new there.  Read it for mild entertainment if you want to turn your brain off for awhile.