I enjoyed the author’s The Mistress’ House, and was happy to treat myself recently and give this one a try. It had been on my wish list for a few years before I finally decided to make the purchase. But the book left me with a sense of disappointment after reading it and a bit of regret over doing so.

While the premise was initially interesting, there was no real development of any of the romances. This made them all fall flat. The format of the other book I mentioned was set up to where each story had its own sections. That allowed for the characters to be more fleshed out. Since these stories intermingled, the pacing was erratic and rushed. There was too much bouncing around from one story to the next. We never got to know any of the characters or believe that they could fall into love. The only plausible match was the one with Isobel, since she was already married. However, her less than charming husband started their story by blackmailing her. This left a sour taste in my mouth. The story involving Lucien and his father’s fiancée (yes you read that right) was, at best, lukewarm. Since she had another paramour she was planning on running away with. The one involving with Emily and the “new” duke was a bit better, if completely unbelievable. It still didn’t gloss over the fact that, somewhere along the blood line, they were related which, for me at least, is a deal breaker.

If the story was set up like The Mistress’ House it could have been much better. That type of set up would have allowed for the stories and characters to have been better developed. The constant back and forth jumping never works for me in a story. It is better to focus on one set of characters rather than having to keep up with so many different threads. While reading, I only cared about the romance between Isobel and her husband, in the vain attempt that at some point he would stop being an ass so they could work on repairing their marriage. The others just happened to fall into marriage because of “insert random reason here”. There was no connection between any of the couples which left this novel lacking in the long run. And the ending with the great-uncle and father felt corny. While the synopsis gave indication that that great-uncle was behind the matchmaking, adding the father seemed to be an attempt to redeem a person who for the entire novel was an utter ass. And it fell short. While I won’t classify this as a “won’t re-read”, it will be a skim through should I pick it up again.