Review: Modern values applied to historical setting
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 12 14, 2012
The story started off okay, and I got most of the way through it, but it kept getting worse.Time-period inaccuracies and several typos mar this story, as well as the storyline itself. I'm not a fan of the lust = love conceit. There was no reason the hero and heroine loved each other. He had no redeeming qualities, no change of heart (only of the women in his bed), no growth of character.The Viscount must have at one point been an Earl, because the author did a "find and replace" without "whole words only" leading to Viscountobes and nViscounty instead of earlobes and nearly. Spellcheck would easily have caught these. "For all intensive purposes" should read "For all intents and purposes", etc.The main female characters took no care for their reputations, which would have been paramount back then. Being near a man without a chaperone would have been cause for concern, let alone at his residence, or sleeping with him. Ruination had been drilled into their heads as a fate worse than death.The staff likely would have lived with their employer, thus rendering a delay due to the weather all but impossible. And the master of the house would never have invited his butler to "bring his wife to dinner". The mixing of the classes was also taboo back then. They took great pains to keep themselves separate.I think the author could have written a better story if she had paid attention to the "rules" of that time period. By ignoring them, she didn't make her characters less stuffy, she exposed her lack of research and care for what she was writing.