C+
Genre: Historical: European, Romance
This RITA® Reader Challenge 2016 review was written by Aislinn K. This story was nominated for the RITA® in the Short Historical category.
The summary:
Your presence is requested at romantic Twill Castle for the wedding of Miss Clio Whitmore and … and …?
After eight years of waiting for Piers Brandon, the wandering Marquess of Granville, to set a wedding date, Clio Whitmore has had enough. She’s inherited a castle, scraped
together some pride, and made plans to break her engagement.
Not if Rafe Brandon can help it. A ruthless prizefighter and notorious rake, Rafe is determined that Clio will marry his brother–even if he has to plan the dratted wedding himself.
So how does a hardened fighter cure a reluctant bride’s cold feet?
- He starts with flowers. A wedding can’t have too many flowers. Or harps. Or cakes.
- He lets her know she’ll make a beautiful, desirable bride–and tries not to picture her as his.
- He doesn’t kiss her.
- If he kisses her, he definitely doesn’t kiss her again.
- When all else fails, he puts her in a stunning gown. And vows not to be nearby when the gown comes off.
- And no matter what–he doesn’t fall in disastrous, hopeless love with the one woman he can never call his own.
Here is Aislinn K.'s review:
I love Tessa Dare. I’ve read a lot of her books and loved them all. Years ago when I first picked up one of her books, she quickly went from the standard ‘author I would read if I like the tropes’ to ‘author I trust to make the tropes I don’t like work.’
Which is why I was so surprised when I found this book kind of…meh.
It’s not a bad book. I’ve certainly read worse. But I found that not a lot happened, the pacing was a bit off, and I just feel more inclined to be nitpicky about it rather than forgive its flaws.
The story starts with our heroine engaged (for 8 long years) to the hero’s brother. The plot (such as it is) involves the hero trying to convince her to keep the engagement and plan the wedding, and her trying to convince him to use his power of attorney to dissolve it because she’s got better shit to do. And that’s…pretty much it.
There are some funny moments. Dare has a delightful way with words. I giggled pretty hard at:
“Holy God. There was rock-hard, there was hard-as-steel, and then there was the solidity of Rafe’s current erection— which so thoroughly surpassed all his previous experience, he suspected it might be of interest to science.”
And there were also some sweet moments. (Plus all the cakes described sounded AMAZING!) But I got no cohesive emotions from the book as a whole.
I did love Clio. Any woman that is like ‘I got plans, I don’t need you men ruining everything for me’ is a woman after my own heart. She was incredibly likable, as a woman with drive and ambition is a wonderful thing to behold.
I also liked Phoebe, Clio’s sister. She was considered ‘odd’ in the book, though nowadays would likely be diagnosed on the autism spectrum. I’d totally read a book with her as a heroine. We’ve been spoiled by this trend of series now in Romancelandia – any time there is a likable character in a book I immediately expect them to be sequel bait, and am disappointed when they’re not. Piers (the hero’s brother) would make a good hero in his own right, too….
Rafe, the hero, wasn’t bad, but I didn’t love him. I found him to be frustrating sometimes – his lack of self-awareness, his unthinking disrespect of Clio’s dreams, the fact that he let the wedding preparations go on so long without giving a hint as to why he was so obsessed by the need to see it through – but I overall liked him. His ADHD was something I hadn’t seen before in a romance novel, and I always have a soft spot for underground prize-fighting heroes. The fact that he was forcing the woman he loved to marry a man she neither loved nor even really knew was kind of uncomfortable, though.
I did find it a little eye roll-inducing that Dare ‘hung a lampshade’ on Rafe’s Secret Pain. (She even uses that term!) Fairly early on in the story, Clio mentions to Rafe that she believes he has a Secret Pain and he denies it. But then, of course, it turns out he does as revealed later on in the story. I know Dare isn’t exactly known for her strict adherence to historical accuracy, but it just felt a little bit too meta for me, calling out the tropes she was using so obviously.
Despite all this, I was fairly engrossed as I was reading it. My mind wondered a few times, but not so often as to be a real problem. It was only when I put the book down that I realised I wasn’t particularly looking forward to picking it up again. (Though, to be fair, neither was I dreading it.)
I’d recommend this book only to people that like Tessa Dare’s style and are in want of something fairly light. If you haven’t read Dare’s work before, this isn’t the one to start with. Her Spindle Cove series is far superior.
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Of the Castles Ever After series, this one was my least favorite, but that’s like saying it was my least favorite cheese. Cheese is usually pretty awesome. I liked a lot of aspects, Clio and Phoebe were awesome, but I found the hero the least interesting part, and was not entirely sure he could keep up with Clio. And like you, I found pacing jerky, and jerky pacing tends to bug me.
It’s interesting that you mention that Piers should get his own book. Because he is. He’s the hero in the next Spindle Cove book. Which was enough to get me to preorder, because I remember that my main takeaway from this book was that I wanted to read more about that guy.
Yes, Crystal, I realised that after I wrote the review! I’m very excited. 😀
I keep wanting to like Spindle Cove and it just doesn’t work for me…no idea why.
I think that we have a problem when we try to rate books by Tessa Dare, Courtney Milan and certain other extraordinary authors. I agree that this wasn’t a strong book by Tessa Dare standards for the reasons Aislinn K laid out, so on a Tessa Dare/Courtney Milan scale I agree that this deserves a C+. However, compared to the usual scale of stuff that is out there, I would give this a B+. Maybe the Bitchery should rate Tessa Dare/Courtney Milan on a 1-10 scale and everything else gets a grade.
Heather T, you are probably right that I hold some authors to a much higher standard! Maybe I should take that into account next time…:p
Agreed, favorite authors need a different scale.
This was not my favorite Tessa Dare, and I think a C+ is totally fair, but then, I give most everything a C on the theory that C is average, and the average romance novel is something I will enjoy. A lot of folks feel 3 stars means a book isn’t very good, and then I feel like I’m misleading them.
I really loved the early Spindle Cove books as well as her other series, but I started fading around the Blacksmith one. I couldn’t even stumble through to the end of Say Yes to the Marquess. The premise annoyed me; the characters seemed contrived; and I just couldn’t bring myself to care.
I’m finding that some of the HR authors that I really loved seem less and less true to the historical periods they write about. It isn’t a question of too little research or too many anachronisms. It’s more a sense that I’m reading about 21st century men and women in fancy dress. I particularly dislike coy recreations of current cultural phenomena. Maybe it’s just my own expectations or biases, but it just doesn’t satisfy.
The authors I continue to enjoy tend to write really moving prose and create characters that would be engaging in any era. I’m glad to hear that SYttM is the least appealing in the Castles Ever After series, so I might brave the later entries.