Review: Sweet but Flawed
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 01 3, 2014
This is a Recency take on Cinderella, without adequate attention to historical fact. The main characters are nicely drawn, though the Cinderella figure is rather insipid. But one major plotline is based on the impossible notion that a Duke has the legal authority to choose his heir. He simply does not. In this tale the rightful heir was conceived during a lawful marriage. Though never formally recognized by his father he would still inherit. If by some chance he did not, then the oldest closest male relative would become the Duke. There's no room to play, and the author's suggestion otherwise is lazy, lazy scholarship. She similarly misspells titles, and ignores the rigid etiquette of the day by suggesting one man could be away with monopolizing a woman at a ball. He could not, absent a marriage proposal. These types of mistakes kept this a three (really two and one half) star novel.