7 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Not as described, December 1, 2007
This review is from: Moonlight And Mistletoe (Harlequin Historical) (Mass Market Paperback)
First off, I collect christmas romance books and I've noticed lately that a lot of publishers are putting out books described as holiday romances with the tree, snow, etc. but the stories have little to nothing to do with the holiday. If anyone in the publishing business is reading this-please don't promote a book as being a holiday story when it's not!!!!
Okay, on to the review. As you can probably guess by my intro, this book had a beautiful holiday cover and a great title. What it didn't have, was more than a hint of christmas in it. In fact up until page 184 the only way you knew it was close to christmas was a fleeting mention that it was December. On page 184 the hero asks what the heroine is going to do for christmas and they plan a party to catch the villain in the story. That's about it for holiday 'joy'.
The author is obviously a devotee of Jane Austin and has tried to mimic her in a book of manners. what I mean by that is, the dialogue tends to be stiff and very, very proper to the point that the characters seemed a bit dull. That actually is the problem with the whole book. it just had no spark. It just sort of plodded along. She tried to liven up the characters ala Darcy/Elizabeth with lots of dialogue where the heroine gets angry at the hero but it just seemed forced. My other problem stemmed from Hesters 'scandelous' past. Her father died and sent her to live with his friend. This was a man who served in the military with her father and the two had made arrangements that in the case of the father's death, his friend would marry and take care of Hester. Now, my problems with this are one: why not just make the man her guardian and entrust him to find a husband more her age? Two: why would Hester refuse to marry a man who openly admits the doctors give him 1 year to live, he rarely sees what family he has, has no heirs besides his sisters kids and he would feel better knowing she'd be taken care of a widow? Her refusing caused society to jump to the conclusion that she was John's mistress (something neither of them denied thanks to 'pride'huh?) so she was shunned, especially when he died and left her a small amount to live on. The whole senario just didn't make a lot of sense and to compound it, Hester acts like she actually did something wrong by believing she could never marry the hero with her 'past'. After a while it just got maudlin.
The books main focus is the strange mixture of feelings she gets over this house she bought. One where she 'instantly' felt like it was a warm, family home and then other times it has a feeling of violence and evil in it. Someone is leaving threatening dead roses, wanting her out of the house and that's what most of the book focus' on.
The back cover describes this book as "a sparkling regency christmas in a sleep english village'. Well, it was 'sleepy' but it certainly wasn't a sparkling regency christmas!
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