Review: A short story that MIGHT have benefited from being a tad longer
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 04 25, 2011
A truly excellent short story will tell a complete and compelling story. Love Pursued feels neither complete nor compelling.The characters are one dimensional stereotypes--the poor, beautiful and honorable female relation, the evil and plotting relatives, the noble/hunky/rich love interest, a nice horse etc.Of course, a story with a plain and nasty relative living with fabulous and gracious family members might not be quite so interesting as a main character in a romance novel...but it would be nice to see a little outside the standard caricatures and more character development.If this had been expanded to a novella length or even a full novel there might have been a little more to find interesting in the characters (maybe the spoiled rich girl really loves the doorman but got caught trying to run away and he was beaten and shipped off to Australia, hence her bitterness...and the rich guy was her ticket to having the funds to run off to Australia to meet the love of her life...but...I just made that up and that's NOT part of the story...).In any case as a freebie, it was a mild diversion...however, within the constraints of the format, it just didn't work well.  Fans of historicals may find this of interest perhaps, but I did not find much of note here.JTG