I read the debut novel by Ms Miller, NEVER DARE A WICKED EARL, and wasn't particularly impressed. But this one, also offered to me as a Vine ARC, sounded relatively entertaining, so I thought to give the author a second chance.
Heroine Emma Trafford is struggling to make ends meet as the sole support of her two younger siblings, brother Michael, away at school, and sister Lily, living at home with her. Emma works as a portraitist and only just manages to pay all the bills.
Hero Simon Marlton, Viscount Adler, has a cozy love nest set up for mistresses next door to Emma's place. One day Lily sees him in an enthusiastic sexual encounter with his mistress of the moment and believes she is observing a murder. When the mistress is no longer to be seen around after that episode, Lily is sure he has murdered her and disposed of the body.
Lily, it must be said, is fond of reading penny dreadfuls and has an active imagination. She does some breaking and entering into the viscount's place in search of clues, gets sister Emma unfortunately involved, and manages some petty theft by slipping Simon's signet ring into her pocket. When they are surprised in the act by Simon, before he can really see who they are, Emma, in desperation, kisses him and then Lily knocks him unconscious.
A slow, very slow, story ensues. Simon, desperately seeking signet ring and sexy thief, becomes suspicious of neighbor Emma and arranges for her to paint his portrait so he can check her out and prove or disprove his suspicions. His investigatory skills are nonexistent, unfortunately, but his sexual interest in Emma isn't.
Emma, BTW, shows herself to be a colorless character lacking assertiveness. Frankly, she's boring. But she's lovely and Simon is drawn to her. And Emma, weak-willed creature that she is, is attracted to Simon while at the same time is fearful of being arrested for theft. Oh, for pity's sake. This story could have ended in a few pages with Emma confessing what Lily had done, handing Simon back his signet ring, and the two confessing their love for each other. Done and done.
To make this slight plot a bit less slight, the author mixes in poor Simon's oh-so-sad relationship with his late father due to the evil machinations of his perverted stepmother and his subsequent distrust of womankind. And we also have a tacked-on problem for Emma involving brother Michael.
I can see that Miller has tried to make this a sympathetic story by having both characters good (yes, womanizing Simon is really a lovely person and Emma should be nominated for sister sainthood). And there's some human interest added in, interactions with children and servants that are supposed to warm the heart and/or add humor. But the story bored me and moved too slowly until the last 30 or so pages when it seemed somebody lit a match under the plot to get something going on besides tenting trousers and wishy-washy female arousal and ridiculously ineffectual crime investigation.
In addition, the dialogue was dull, lacking spark, wit, or cleverness. All in all, I found the read to be uninspiring.