Hi everyone! This is Julia of
The Broke and the Bookish, formerly blogging on my own at
The Competitive Bibliomaniac.
I read mostly historical romance, but can often be found reviewing paranormal romance, young adult books (mostly distopian/fantasy), fantasy/sci-fi, classics,
and the occasional non-fiction book about languages.
Feel free to follow and reblog!
This was my decision for the return flight today and I was a bit disappointed. This is my second Duran book and I absolutely loved The Duke of Shadows, so I sort of had high hopes for this one.
Duran has a remarkable knack for setting and place. My favorite part of this book was the setting. Queen Anne has just died and the country is in turmoil with the new King shaking up the government. Then there are the Jacobites trying to get a Catholic king. It's a cool point in history to set a romance novel and one that we don't often see.
But there was something lacking for me with the characters. I just could not connect with them, nor empathize with them, nor really care about them, which of course in a book primarily about the romance is problematic. Nora was just frustrating and Adrian so confusing. I feel like I missed part of their story with the majority of the events being told to me as they had happened in the past or off page.
I saw a lot of telling not showing in the book. And while I liked it in the historical sense, I really disliked it in the romance sense.