Author: Meg Hennessy
Publisher: Entangled
Rating: WARTY!
DISCLOSURE: Unlike the majority of reviews in this blog, I've neither bought this book nor borrowed it from the library. This is a "galley" copy ebook, supplied by Entangled Publishing. I'm not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration for this review. My thanks to Entangled for allowing me the opportunity to preview this novel.
Set in Louisiana in 1815, this historical romance centers around land and love, lost sisters and lost property, contract marriage and piracy. It begins with a prologue which I skipped as I do with all prologues. If the author doesn't think it's important enough to get its own chapter (or at least share one) I don't think it's important enough to waste my time on.
I started out liking this novel because it seemed like it had something reasonably new and interesting to say, but unfortunately it quickly descended into nothing more than a litany of quickened heartbeats, intakes of breath, and over-heated skin. That's fine as far as it goes, but for me it simply doesn't go far enough unless there are real characters beneath that hot skin, breathing real words after those sharp intakes of breath.
Aurelie Fentonot started out as a worthy contender for an engrossing and proactive female, and she was not the usual pale-skinned waif either, so these were two strong points in her favor, but they were far too quickly overwhelmed by how weak she became whenever she was around Jordan Kincaid - the man to whom she was conjoined in a contract marriage.
There were good reasons for the marriage, and some serious rules which both parties agreed to follow when they entered into this arrangement, but from that point onwards, instead of developing a mature relationship that could have led to real love and trust, we got adolescents in heat, and this took away everything that the initial pages had built-up so beautifully.
One thing I found intensely irritating was the interjection of French phrases all over the place mixed in with English. Aurelie is purportedly from France, but of course she speaks perfectly good English nearly all the time. Indeed, she must since this is an English language novel(!), but the constant pop-up of French phrases just drove me nuts. It was as irritating to me as those web site pop-ups that get in your face right as you've begin to read something interesting that's now obscured. I felt it was a mistake because it served only as a constant reminder that the author evidently felt the need to re-establish her character's French credentials every few paragraphs when these had already been admirably established.
I struggled on with this for a long time after I felt I should give up on it, but I found myself skimming more and more paragraphs, and in the end decided I needed to just quit and move onto something which could not only attract my interest in the first place, as this one did, but then also hold it as firmly as the trope romantic male holds the trope romantic female, as this one didn't. I cannot in good conscience recommend this unless you're really just looking for a completely calorie-free romance (and recall: the calorie is a measure of what it takes to produce heat!).
