Book Log 79/2016 - Bianca Blythe: A Rogue to Avoid - Matchmaking for Wallflowers #2

[jacey]

Ah, sadly this may be a book to avoid. The good bits first. It’s amusing, nicely paced and has a pretty standard Regency romance plot. That’s fine. I don’t read Regency romance for innovation. It’s purely escapist fiction for me. Cordelia, the daughter of a very rich duke has been embarrassed by three broken engagements – all a bit hard to swallow when she’s aiming for perfection. The ton is starting to titter. Gerard doesn’t give a stuff about the ton. He’s up to his ears in debt thanks to his late mother’s gambling loans (from Cordelia’s dad) and the duke has sent a thug after him to chop off the odd finger or two unless he pays up. Fleeing from the thug Gerard comes across Cordelia. One thing leads to another and before you know where you are he’s asked her to marry him. Embarrased to make it four broken engagements Cordelia has agreed. Things go from bad to worse as the thug gets instructions to kill Gerard and the couple are running up and down the country trying to get married and avoid being murdered.

I could probably have swallowed this book whole, but for the author’s sense of history. I’ve come across historical inaccuracies in Regency Romance before, of course. (There was the author whose heroine ate cold popovers for breakfast… ouch!) Unfortunately there were a couple of things in this that were so obvious I was immediately jerked right out of the book. Describing the hero’s hair colour as espresso, some fifty years before espresso was invented is bad enough, but having Regency characters referencing Scott of the Antarctic just gobsmacked me. If you don’t care about obvious historical bloopers then the rest of the book is fine. Me? I guess I’m a bit too pedantic about these things. Sorry.