3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
not so romantic, March 26, 2010
This review is from: Under The Kissing Bough (Zebra Regency Romance) (Paperback)
I was really drawn in by the premise here, and I thought the first paragraph was really fantastic - the heroine, Eleanor, glimpses the man her parents have decided she will marry from across a drawing room and he's so devastatingly handsome that she - a mere wallflower - decides she cannot marry him, because she could never make him happy. But she doesn't want to disappoint her parents, so she can't refuse him either. She does make a daring demand: she'll write down something she wants on a blank card, and whatever she writes he must provide. If he can't, there will be no marriage. Her new fiancee, Geoffrey, agrees to her caveat and the engagement is settled.
Pretty neat, right? But the rest of the book is dull as dirt. They go to some parties, they go shopping, and because they're well-mannered people with no strong urge to do otherwise, they follow all the rules. So they rarely get to talk alone, and when they're in groups Eleanor is always silent. So even when they're together they don't interact very much, and we get a lot of filler instead of actual interplay between the hero and heroine: details about furniture or clothing or interruption from the huge ensemble cast of brothers, sisters, and parents.
What's worse, when they do interact, Geoffrey is pretty rude to Eleanor. At the beginning, it's because he's self-absorbed and angry. He doesn't really want to get married, but his father's going to die and seeing at least one of his sons wed is, apparently, his dying wish. Geoffrey is still in love with another woman who spurned his advances, so he just picks Eleanor at random from a family his father approves of and warns her straight off that their arranged marriage will be businesslike, without love or even affection. He thinks about how mean he'll be to her, and how miserable he'll make her, and decides that being a countess is probably adequate recompense for all the suffering he'll cause.
As he starts to like her, Geoffrey's behavior becomes downright bizarre. I mean, a wounded, selfish aristocrat is a believable character. But as Geoff starts to feel concern for Eleanor he shows it by...neglecting basic courtesies, avoiding her in social settings and causing her public humiliation (when she's already profoundly nervous about the disapproval of her peers), and a whole host of other nasty, hurtful things. But Geoff doesn't seem to realize that he's being nasty or hurtful, which is hard to believe because he's a smart guy who masters most other social situations.
All of this adds up to a love connection that I didn't believe in. The hero and heroine hardly see one another, and when they do their interactions are strained and usually end badly. I saw flashes of potential here and there, but for every single moment of simple decency there were several awkward, painful ones. This isn't love/hate, or witty bantering, or a battle of wills. It's just a couple of miserable people stuck in a miserable situation, who hardly have the will to make the best of things. The turnaround, when it comes, is too little, too late - about ten pages from the end of the book. By that time, I'd already given up.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Couldn't Put it Down! A Keeper!, March 28, 2005
This review is from: Under The Kissing Bough (Zebra Regency Romance) (Paperback)
Predictable in many ways as Regency novels are, I still found the main characters compelling. Both try to fight their growing attraction for each other. Although not really spending much time together, the little things they find out make them fall in love. Throw in a little unrequited love, growing passion & some jealousy and I felt the tale was splendid! What is Eleanor going to request of Geoffrey? How can this work out? I had to finish it to find out the answers. I hope Shannon Donnelly will continue with novels about the remaining siblings!
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3.0 out of 5 stars
Ho hum.........., January 3, 2004
This review is from: Under The Kissing Bough (Zebra Regency Romance) (Paperback)
I did manage to finish this but only just - as a lover of regency Christmas stories, I always am willing to give them a chance. Sadly, this one did not live up to expectations. It was not so much that the story was inadequate as that the writer seemed to be trying too hard to make us engage with her characters. Sorry to say that Geoffrey (one of my least favourite male forenames!) was boring, did not spark any attraction to me as the reader and Eleanor and her band of E-sisters (wasn't that cute - all the females in her family had a forename starting with E - yuck!) were too 21st century in their actions and thus annoying in the extreme. I always think it curious how American writers of English-set Christmas regencies over-do it on the Christmas traditions, particularly the mistletoe or kissing bough - and there's always lots of snow! A white Chrismas here in England is pretty rare so it's kind of amusing to read these stories set in such idealised settings.
Getting back to the story, I felt that a man like Geoffrey who allowed himself to believe he is some sort of ogre because a passionless woman shrank from a kiss was a bit juvenile. And why did we not get an explanation as to why the regrettable Cynthia married such a jerk as the totally incomprehensible rector?
Oh well, another contribution for the charity shop.
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