Review: Strong Historical ... Weak Romance
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 05 23, 2013
The author did a wonderful job transporting the reader to Ancient Rome. I really liked her writing style. As a history buff this alone earned the book another star. The premise of this book was unique which drew me to it, unfortunately the romance fell flat. This story is written solely in Lucia's POV. She is the daughter of a noble family. Her father instructs her to teach a gladiator Marcus about the gods of Ancient Rome. During these sessions the two develop feelings for each other. I wish their would have been scenes from Marcus' POV. He was a very interesting/complicated character. I really wanted to know what he was thinking!My only other complaint about this story is the slow romance. After Lucia got married I had no idea how she was going to get together with Marcus. I wish the book had been faster paced. A lot could have been cut to get to the romance faster; although the constant jumping ahead in time and skipping of important scenes did get annoying. Once Lucia and Marcus did consummate their love the scene wasn't extremely steamy, but it was touching. I felt the ending seemed a little forced, but at least it was a HEA.I highly recommend this book for the unique historical value although it wasn't my type of romance.