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Say Yes to the Marquess (Castles Ever After, #2)

Tessa Dare

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Aug 08, 2014 Sam rated it it was ok

Shelves: 4-historical-romance, reviewed, read-2015

I couldn’t quite get along with Tessa Dare’s second installment of her new Regency-era series. The story is light and fluffy and good-natured, so I can see its appeal. A lot of people do like it, so mine is definitely the minority opinion.

A few points:

--Can characters and situations be too cutesy, zany, slapsticky? Yes. Just off the top of my head, we have here a fake identity, cake fight, pudgy dog, and a sleepwalking in-law. Dare’s novels often do have a bit of a sitcom-esque feel to them, but I couldn’t quite get along with Tessa Dare’s second installment of her new Regency-era series. The story is light and fluffy and good-natured, so I can see its appeal. A lot of people do like it, so mine is definitely the minority opinion.

A few points:

--Can characters and situations be too cutesy, zany, slapsticky? Yes. Just off the top of my head, we have here a fake identity, cake fight, pudgy dog, and a sleepwalking in-law. Dare’s novels often do have a bit of a sitcom-esque feel to them, but what had always seemed charming to me previously seemed over-the-top here.

--Too predictable. Of course familiar tropes and some predictability are built into all of our genres of choice, be they romance, sci-fi, fantasy, or crime; but this went beyond that. For too much of the book, as the scenes were playing out, I could literally predict what sentiment each of the characters were going to express right before they uttered it and every outcome right before it occurred. This happened in almost every scene.

--Weak premise. Situations can be as far-fetched as they want to be compared to the real world and I’ll gladly suspend my belief, but they must make sense within the world of that specific story. This wasn’t the case here. Check this out: Heroine has been engaged to a man who’s off gallivanting the world for eight years. She inherits a castle, which gives her a means of becoming independent, so decides she’s done waiting for that man. She wants to break off the engagement and the man’s brother, our hero, can sign the papers to break it on the man’s behalf. Said hero has his boxing career interests and family angst reasons for wanting to prevent this break-up, so is determined to convince her to stay engaged and to marry her intended. Okay, so far so good. But what is his plan? Organize a wedding—once she sees the wedding gown and flowers and cakes, she’ll change her mind and want to marry the hero’s brother. Really? That’s it? Even in RomanceLand, it's hard to take this seriously. This might not have been a WTF premise if there was more to it than this, maybe if it was just the initial idea and evolves into something less WTF-like. But nope, this is it; this is the entire basis for the story, making it super boring.

With all that being said, I’m hoping book #3 coming this summer will be better.
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