Review: Don't waste your money!
Rating: 1 out of 5
Date: 03 13, 2014
The first chapter sample was intriguing enough until I bought the kindle edition and regretted it by chapter ten. It became painful to read after that and I'm not going to finish the book.The hero is too self absorbed and cock-sure about marrying a girl he doesn't even know but adores through her writing. His perception of her is imaginary and his sudden interest that develops in the course of less than a minute nothing short of a miracle.  He would not have even noticed her if she didn't picked on a close friend of his in her gossip column. Being inside his head is nauseating and his abundant, enamored feelings develop over the course of a few hastily written lines.It's unbelievable that a man who has such a dark past would be so naive and immediately happy about being in love with someone's shadow. It's such a frilly love at first sight moment when they meet that I think that was the most repulsive scene that made me call off.The initial witty repartee between the two is diminished to nothing almost instantaneously as the heroine falls into each obvious trap. If she's going to be that stupid then the reader need not feel anything for her. The characters kept, well, falling "out" of character.  For a hero with a dark past he was awfully happy.  For a girl who is known for her wit, her actions were incredibly short sighted.  I rolled my eyes every time she bumbled into another "oh, heaven help me I can't get caught or people will die...but let me do something absurd that will alert everyone as to my identity."  For someone who had protected herself and her family for so long, it was almost as if she was asking the villain to come get her every step of the way.  That's not bravery.  That's pure stupidity.  The only conclusion I could make was the characters are both equally and incredulously vapid that they might turn out to a good match after all.And then there's that lack of mystery or even intrigue in the plot. Just when you think you're onto a deeper, more mysterious twist, the author just spills the beans out into the open until there is no mystery whatsoever as to the heroes, the villains, their plight, the love triangle and the over-obvious plot.I could forgive the lack of character depth and the lack of original plot if the writing style wasn't so choppy and hard to read. Between the four kings I think the reader needs an index to keep up with their absurd nicknames. North? Stanley? Harcourt? Ash?  Who was he again? What's wrong with calling them by their given names instead of their landed titles?  They are people! Not property!Ugh... I want my money back. This is the worst highly rated Regency romance I've read since getting a Kindle (and I'm usually quite forgiving if the characters and plot are well written).