I’ve never had a romance novel take this long to read before. I started this one 3 weeks ago, and up until last night I was half done. When my library reminded me the other day that they’d be taking it back I knew I had to finish it. If only to write this review. Wow, was this one boring.
This time our hero from the Napoleonic Wars is Benedict, a man crippled after falling off and then crushed by his horse. The doctors said he should have been amputated and would never walk again, but Benedict has proven them all wrong (although he does need canes to assist). Samantha is a recent widow, her husband was also injured in the war, and has spent the last 5 years caring for him night and day. There is a “meet cute”? It wasn’t that cute. Painfully predictable circumstances force the characters to take a roadtrip, and off we go.
Ugh, this one was a slog. There’s known tropes, and beats that are to be hit in every romance novel, but this one was beyond predictable. From the big, bad father in law Samantha runs away from (although he never amounted to anything else in the plot) to the two leads constantly making assumptions all the time about every little teeny tiny issue instead of talking to each other like adults it all was just meh. That is until halfway through when our less than charming heroine finds out she’s fabulously wealthy and gripes about it. I can handle some fantasy in my romances, but no one EVER complained about discovering they were rich. Especially when at the start of the novel she was pretty much destitute and out on her ass. Suffice it to say that’s when I checked out and stopped caring completely. It’s done, on to the hopefully much better one in the series.
Overall, only if you’re a series completist would I suggest wasting your time on this one. I haven’t read one so boring in such a long time. It really shines an even brighter light on the first two.