I thrift the trashiest looking HR books and review them. Here my first one.
I
To romance a charming rogue by Nicole Jordan
Review: 2.5/5 stars
FMC: Eleanor Pierce
MMC: Damon Stafford
Tropes:
Lovers to enemies to lovers
“Love triangle”
2nd chance
Miscommunication
Premise:
Eleanor and Damon were engaged years ago however after a falling out, the engagement was broken. Damon flees London and after some time returns to see Eleanor courting the prince of Italy.
Plot summary and review:
The book opens with Eleanor preparing for a ball, when she hears that her ex-fiancé and now nemesis is in town. The first chapter sets up their enemies to lovers arc, with Eleanor’s aunt, (yes both characters have dead parents) disapproving of Damon. She attends the ball, angry he is there, and going scandalously into the garden with the prince of Italy. The prince of Italy is a character that has no personality trait besides for, Italian (put a pin in that). The prince ends up leaving her there, and she runs into no other than Damon. Who she will argue with for 2 minutes and then make out with. This book is what I like to call, a “not-so enemies to lovers” which in unfortunately because I thought the premise was fun.
Premise out the window, we do get some fun scenes of pretending to hate each other, but when people leave they have an affair. The spice was hot balanced with some funny scenes of Damon showing up to all of Eleanor’s dates with the prince. Doing a funny third wheel action. I was forgetting about the wet paper bag of a FMC and the classic tortured rake personality type. Because if a spice book wants to be just spice, be spice and do it well. However around page 200 we get a massive plot twist.
The author decides to introduce the main tension of the story. *gasp* the prince has an attempt of assassination. This reveal takes all the build up away from the book at the half mark. It switches from a build up of, will they get caught by the prince? To an attempted murder mystery, and honestly it was boring. That’s the biggest problem with the last half of the book. The worst part, the last third of the book forgets about the mystery entirely. The couple instead of doing spicy things now has to rely on plot, and characters. However I don’t care about the prince, he’s a nothing burger, they all are.
In the end they get caught and are forced to marry. Communicate for the first time and live happily ever after. Once you start to think, hey wait, wasn’t this a mystery. They throw in the last 20 pages, oh yeah btw the uncle did it. Just randomly.
Historical romance authors STOP using bad plot devices to move your romance forward. Either make it fun and campy and spicy or put down the plot devices.