There’s lots to like about this slow burn romance, a second chance for both after first marriage issues, and it’s beautifully written. However, I found it deadly slow going in the early stages, before it fell into a swamp of over-the-top melodrama. And then what was a very acceptable traditional read had to throw in some sex.
Here’s the premise: Sebastian Alder is rescued from certain death from post-Waterloo injuries by a mysterious woman who tells him he’s now a viscount and whisks him away to a life amongst the aristocracy. She happens to be the widow of the previous Lord Somerton, and although she takes great care of him and clearly wants him to survive, she’s also quite reserved and distant.
When Sebastian arrives at his new home, Brantstone Hall, he finds the estate in financial difficulties, a pair of supposed cousins in residence, and a hint of mysterious deaths in the neighbourhood. He manages to sell off some racehorses to settle some of the debts (I had to look this up, but at the number of horses mentioned, the sale would certainly have raise several thousand pounds). The widow, Isabel, helps him establish himself, and although he’s not keen on the ‘cousins’, Freddy and Fanny, he can’t immediately find a way to get rid of them. One thing he can do, however, is to bring his brother and sister, Matt and Connie, to Brantstone Hall. And he’s pleased to find an old comrade-in-arms, Harry Dempster, as a neighbour, even though Harry’s sister, Lady Kendall, is a bit of a man-eater.
The romance between Sebastian and Isabel, which is never in real doubt, is the ultimate in slow burns. Sebastian is traumatised by the horrific death of his Portuguese wife, and Isabel suffered a difficult and loveless marriage, and lost her only child at a few months of age. So they both have some history to get over before they can fall in love. It’s clear that there’s an attraction right from the start but it takes fully three quarters of the book before they finally acknowledge their feelings.
And at that point, the book explodes into a (frankly) ridiculous amount of melodrama, which I started skating over, since it was obvious that the principals were going to survive no matter how many life-threatening impossible-to-escape situations they got into.
To be honest, I think this book was just trying to do too much. If it had concentrated on just one or at most two of the bad things happening, and been a little more ruthless with the editing, the book would have been all the better for it. Having said that, there was a twist at the end from some of the minor bad things which I didn’t see coming at all, and that almost compensated for all the unnecessary melodrama.
This is a difficult one for me to rate. The slow pace, the ridiculous melodrama towards the end and the sprawling plot tempted me towards three stars, but the excellent standard of the writing plus that twist at the end incline me to be generous, so four stars it is.
Leave a Reply