Well, this is not going to be a super positive review (my first one in years though, so that’s a silver lining). So if that isn’t what you are looking for, go ahead and move on. This was not a personal choice, but chosen by a book club that I’m in. It’s not the book I voted for, but to be honest, it’s the summer…and I can get down with some romance (I’ve read some great ones recently). This one is not a great one.

It started out with such great potential: a choose your own adventure romance story. Like, that’s hilarious and awesome. Plus, the “options” included a brooding lord, a scallywag ladies man sort of lord, a Scottish Highlander, and what seemed like it could be a f/f option. So to start, I was getting Jane Eyre feels, Outlander feels, and general high fives for sexual representation in the regency era.
Honestly, this just fell so short of my expectations. And perhaps that’s my fault.

My biggest complaints were the lack of plot and character development. Like every third page there was some crazy event or something prompting you to have to choose one direction or another (which, I totally get is necessary for a choose your own situation), but that meant that things happened SO quickly. There was no chance for the drama and/or relationships to unfold with reasonable speed – everything was surface and rushed. And that pretty much meant that nothing here was compelling. And all the cheesy sex language romance stories use, that I normally put up with while reading, was not something I could read without rolling my eyes in the midst of such underdeveloped everything. I literally felt no investment in anything I was reading and I have never skimmed so much in my life. Like I couldn’t even get excited at the sex scenes because I felt like how we arrived at them was so fast and ridiculous and unbelievable.

To the authors’ credit – there were a ton a different story lines and options and endings. I read a lot of them, most of them, if not all of them (it was sometimes hard to keep track of where I needed to go back and follow another “choice”). Honestly, there was something for every romance interest/flavor and no shortage of sex and drama. It just…felt too distant for me to get over it. I get that this was likely not meant to be taken seriously. But the writing and development and feels were cringe-worthy to the point that I could not even appreciate it as a satire/joke.

I think I’ll just put choose your own adventure stories down as one of those childhood experiences that should stay in childhood. And I truly, though I hate to do this because I really do respect the time and effort it takes to write/publish a book, I cannot recommend this book at all. Not even a little. It may be one of the worst books I’ve ever read. I’m so sorry, but those are my feelings.