2.5 stars
This book tried my patience. I started off loving it — I liked that the heroine was an independent, wealthy widow who had loved her husband and had a seemingly healthy relationship with sex. I was intrigued by the hero, who has savant tendencies and is on the spectrum. I bought their initial attraction. Everything was going just fine.
And then the plot happened. Like, omg, so much plot.
There is a murder, that is connected to another murder, and the hero is involved somehow, or at least was there. The hero’s one brother and his wife are estranged. The hero’s other brother is a Duke and a first-rate shitheel. The heroine has a sordid past before she was rescued by her first marriage. There’s an inspector who has it out for the whole Mackenzie clan. The hero and heroine have to have a quickie marriage so that they don’t get arrested. The Mackenzie patriarch was an abusive even more first-rate shitheel and permanently emotionally scarred his sons. The hero was institutionalized as a boy for being “mad”.
There’s tortured, and then there’s tortured. The latter, italicized tortured refers, in this instance, to the plot and writing, because it’s all too damn much. It’s all there to justify why the hero doesn’t know how to love and occasionally keeps things from the heroine, which are tropes I don’t love even in the best of circumstances, but here it’s just overkill of the highest degree. By the time that — spoiler! — the heroine gets stabbed by the Duke’s murderous mistress and she almost dies, I was like, “Is there any plot twist this book doesn’t have?”
Just, ugh. This book clearly comes from the school of “the more drama, the better.” The beginning was writing checks the middle and end couldn’t cash, and I want my time back.
I lovehate Jennifer Ashley and I completely agree about the histrionic plotting, tortured heroes, and how it can lure you in at first. This series is a guilty pleasure of mine, in particular Cameron’s book. I’m not proud. .
I was so frustrated, because there was something there! The love story was actually very sweet, but it was buried under twelve layers of nonsense.
I have re-read it and the love story is what I go back to. Ashley is good at sincere romance, it’s just always layered in so much bullshit.
I’m wrapping up The Rogue Not Taken that suffers from the same issue: so many plot twists and insanity that it’s drowning under it’s own weight. Madness at least as the strength of two strong/memorable characters to anchor it somewhat. I didn’t love this book either (right with you on the 2.5 stars) and am sort of perplexed as to why it always shows up on best-of lists.
I’m glad you wrote this review. I read this book this summer and never reviewed it. Partly because I could NOT figure out how to sum up the plot in a reasonable way, and I really wanted to like it more than I did. Like, I was giving myself some time to possibly look back on it fondly? I can’t. I might up it to 3 stars, but no way could it be more than that.
I enjoyed this one and have subsequently read the rest of the series. Guess I’m just easily entertained.
I’ve read ALL of them and some of them more than a couple of times. Not Hart’s book though. Fu*k him.