BOOK CHAT/Portrait Of Dreams/Spoilers
Gail Brodeur
Hi,
I finished this book about a week ago but usually wait a few days
before "rating" them and listing them in my reading list. I'm sometimes
too much influenced by feelings/reactions when I just finish a book - in
retrospect a book sometimes isn't quite as good as I felt it was on the
"high" of just having finished it.
The 3 following points were discussed on the Regency l*st and while
they didn't bother me to the extent they did to others, they did jump
out at me and made me say "huh?".
1. it was mentioned that the H/H met when he was 19 and at Eton; I'd
always assumed Eton was a boys' school and that at age 19 a young man
would be at University;
2. during their wedding night the H/H were interrupted by a messenger
from the King - the hero is upset and says something about being
disturbed on the "eve of my nuptials" - to me eve has always meant the
night before, but maybe it also means "night of" (don't have a
dictionary); it it has been written "on my wedding night" it wouldn't
have bothered me (small thing really....I'm too nitpicky...);
3. the Bastille thing bothered me a lot - the Bastille was torn down in
1790, I believe, so the hero couldn't have been kept prisoner there.
Things like this jump out at me but rarely ruin a book for me, and I
enjoyed this one a lot. I liked all the characters - though the heroine
got on my nerves at the very end when she raked the hero over the coals
for keeping the attempts on his life a secret from her; for me, it
didn't ring true for a heroine who had single-handedly saved the family
from ruin; again, it's just the way it "hit" me. Don't know how else to
say it.
I also liked the fact that Thomas was responsible for losing the family
money in a bad investment wasn't dragged on and on through the book -
trying to keep it a secret, trying to protect him, etc. He didn't mean
it, it wasn't intententional; the hero was told. End of it. The Big
Misunderstanding of Big Secret CAN ruin a book for me.
I found the book well paced, the characters very likeable, and while
not a deep read with angsty hero (which I do love), for a change of pace
I liked the fact that the hero came home and settled in tidily. In a
heavier read there would have been PTSD to contend with but that wasn't
what I was looking for in this book. And by purely making a wild guess,
I figured out who was behind the attempts on the hero's life. What I
wasn't expecting is that she was responsible for the hero's father's
death. That was a big surprise.
Will I buy another Victoria Malvey book? You bet! Will there be a story
about Thomas? Hmmm.....will there?????
GailB.
book...@javanet.com