So this book was my first by this author and let me tell you it will be my last.
I am very much disappointed with this book. When I first read the plot it had all the tropes I loved - marriage of convenience between strangers, a sort of enemies to lovers theme, mistreatment by the hero that led to an awakening of female independence within the heroine that I believed was going to lead to some seriously exciting (for me) but sincere grovelling from the hero and attempts to win back her love and affection... BUT NO!
This book was awful. Oh the author did a real good good job of appearing to tick all the boxes and tropes she hinted at in her book description. The writing was certainly superb and by that I mean no noticeable spelling, grammar or punctuation mistakes that could have diverted my attention away from the story. Nor was there any odd and jarring use of modern phrasing in passages or dialogues that I sometimes find in historical books and which ruins the story’s flow.
BUT this just made it all the worse for when I realised, almost halfway through the book, what the real problem was - this book was utterly and completely lacking in any romance whatsoever. The romance wasn’t even tepid, it just wasn’t there. I felt strongly that the author had overdone the whole “I’ll take her to bed and then straightaway act cold towards her and condemn myself for potentially getting her pregnant” concept and it meant that any romance that could have developed was repeatedly stopped in its track. Now I know for certain it was this book and this author that failed to develop the romance since I’ve read many books with this same theme that have successfully created a blossoming romance, in which emotions and feeling were written so beautifully that I as the reader was completely drawn in, and couldn’t wait for the interactions between the hero and heroine.
The second half where the heroine whisks off to Scotland after having been rejected once again by the hero fared no better. The romance, or rather none-romance, was completely lost in the history lessons we were given on the Highland clearances. Now I’m quite a history enthusiast so it says a lot when even I got sick of the mindless historical facts and endless days of the heroine’s renovation of Skynegal Castle. The story was completely bogged down and at this point the romance between the main protagonists was non-existent. They were living in different countries and even before the heroine’s decision to settle in her Scottish castle there was barely any interaction between the hero and heroine.
This is one of my most disliked tropes in books in which the hero and heroine are separated throughout most of the book for no apparent reason or due to poor writing and poor content from the author - even then I find it very hard to justify why the hero and heroine should be separated for the majority of the book when it’s supposed to be a ROMANCE novel.
I thought the heroine, Grace, was actually quite nicely portrayed in the beginning. From what I read of her I thought she was brave despite being obviously naive and sheltered, and faced her arranged marriage with quite a sensible attitude. Her willingness to make a go of her marriage and be the best wife she could be given the circumstances seemed genuine to the times and a far cry from the gung-ho, over the top fury that some heroines of other books have been portrayed. This was also what had intially attracted me to the book. I liked her growing affection for Christian, believing when it came time for it, it would make Christian’s grovelling all the more satisfying. Yet this affection was just too ridiculous and overdone as she was far too quickly in love with Christian, which didn’t make sense at all since he was doing his best to be a cold-hearted ass to her. So her being in love was quite unbelievable and meant she transitioned from being a naive and sympathetic wife to quite ditzy and really contradicted and mocked her seemingly newfound independence.
The hero, Christian, I was quite indifferent to and disappointed we didn’t get to see any grovelling from him after the way he treated the heroine. I think one of the biggest letdowns of this book from the author was that there was never any drama, it actually felt very anti-climatic - the book description led me into believing that once the heroine left the hero there would be some epic grovelling and a true outpouring of emotion from the hero. Yet his response to her leaving him was so baffling and disappointing. As a reader it was quite obvious he didn’t care she’d left, despite the author’s attempts to portray the opposite. There are so many example of this:
‘soon half of London would think he was a wife-murderder’, ‘they are aware of Grace’s... relocation’, ‘with Cholmeley spouting off, soon all of London would know he had been adandoned by his wife before the ink was barely dry on the marriage documents’ - this line was particularly troubling since he was clearly more concerned about his reputation than Grace, despite pages-long descriptions about how sorry he felt and how remorseful he was (and contradicted his having supposedly developed feelings for her). Even his grandfather and the heroine’s uncle (who himself was inconsistently characterised since he was initially portrayed as an uncaring, greedy gambler of a guardian forcing his niece into marriage for money, but then did a 180 and all of sudden started to care for his niece) pointblank asked the hero why he was not out there looking for his wife. His arriving in Scotland was also completely anti-climatic, there was no grovelling, no real feeling of guilt or attempting to make it up to Grace, instead he felt it was more important to become the “Laird of Skynegel” and a whole new story seemed to sprout where he cared more for the people of Skynegel than on building a relationship with his wife! But I think part of that was because Grace herself was such a doormat, forgiving Christian almost immediately and continuing to harp on about how much she was “in love” with him despite all him ever doing was sleeping with her - seemed really dumb and shallow of her and again contradicted the author’s attempts to make her appear strong and independent.
Overall, this book was a complete disappointment. Particularly because I spent so long finding this book and was so excited to read it after initially reading an excerpt. Since I’ve read so many books of many different time periods I’ve gotten quite a good grasp of how good a book is in terms of characterisation, world building, historical setting, content and so on. Often I find I only need to read a few pages and at the most a few chapters to know if I’ll be carrying on with the book since my philosophy is why bother reading a badly written book when you could be spending that time reading a very well done book. That’s why I feel I’m even more disappointed with this book and I’ve really detailed my issues with this book and ranted on a bit. Hopefully, the author improves on her “romance” novels but I won’t be reading anymore to find out :(