The Book Gourmet

***eBook available for free on Smashwords***

WTF?!

Don’t get me wrong, I was well written, I love Ms Milan’s style and voice. The problem was everything else, really.

It was too long. Definitely too long with obstacle upon obstacle thrown into the MCs path—less is more, and this book had one conflict too many for my taste. And since it was too long, and too damn convoluted, the pacing suffered. It dragged and it got boring, helped by the two main leads.
The woe-is-me, nobody loves me, I’m nothing, I don’t deserve happiness, I’m all alone and depressed got old pretty soon (in the first third of the story, to be precise), and I just couldn’t sympathize with either of them. I know you’re suffering, my heart is bleeding for you (not), now own it, grow a pair, and move on, don’t drag it on and on, using your “issues” to create more and more conflict. Sheesh!
I simply wished someone would come along and slap them silly...Or for a sudden plot twist that introduced the true MCs of the story.
Alas, it didn’t happen and I had to endure. I could’ve DNFd it, I know, but I held out hope, until there was no more hope. And then the book was over.

I loved the supporting cast. The scene on the train with Violet and Sebastian was hilarious, I was a little on the fence about Lydia, but I warmed up to her, and Oliver who was so much like his father (not sire, but father, the man who raised him). And that recounting of the fainting spell in the courtroom with the dowager duchess and her umbrella. She might’ve been cold toward her son, but I loved her in that bit (and the epilogue).

This was all wrong for a freebie, in my opinion. A freebie should be one that entices the reader to read the next books in the series (something along the lines of the “starter” of this series), not something that kicks you in the teeth while you’re already writhing in pain on the ground.

Sorry, but this one was a huge disappointment.