Phylis Warady

I think I put this away on the basis of 10 pages.

Why? Well...

Andrew Halpern (viscount) is summoned before his father on account of a scandal he created when he had an affair with a married woman. Her husband took offense to this and it was a big to do.

Also the hero is in the foreign services and the thing could seriously injure his career. The hero is 28 years old by the way and acts more like a teenage brat in my opinion.

So his father says he has to marry a young innocent country miss named Jenny Shaw,and spend a year in the country with her until shes pregnant. After some mild protestations he just goes like "meh I will marry her"

The heroines incentive is apperantly that she is poor? I dont know. I know that she has blond flyaway hair though.

Then it skips to their wedding day and after the first encounter between the couple the heroine has her opinion of the hero. He is a toad!

Then we skip ahead 4 months later when they are settled in. And just like this I decided to label it a DNF. Hero is at the breakfast table musing about how the heroine is so charming,able to soothe inner demons etc etc

Huh? Where were we when this happened? I though the first rule of writing was "show dont tell"

I just felt this was lazy writing. The characters feels very flat and since I had a hard time engaging with them from the onset their suddenly perfect relationship stretched my incredulity.

I was also pulled out of the story by the heroine living in a bungalow. I googled this and the phrase was first used in the 17th century. BUT wouldnt it have been better to describe her living in a cottage?

In historical romances I feel that the ability to make the reader believe a story takes place in the era its supposed to is very important. And if they cant do that then they can rely on great character and/or good writing.

This failed on all of those accounts.… (meer)