Meredith Bond

1.5 stars

I read this for the Regency square for Romance Bingo and it was also my Kindle Freebie pick.

The beginning felt very scattered, I'm not sure reading the first in the series would help or not but I felt lost. The hero was a smiling grey-eyed villainous/virtuous/vexing/etc. viscount (oh yes, I did get tired of the v-words) and the heroine was a slightly TSTL oblivious American. As a beastly American myself, I usually enjoy the slight disdain and attitude American heroine's can throw towards their nobility heroes but this heroine acted so clueless and oblivious, I wound up finding it annoying.

I found myself kind of confused by the time placements. Apparently, the hero won the heroine's family estate from her grandfather in a card game, which I think was before the heroine was born. This disgraced the family, so the heroine's father moved to America and took his wife's last name instead and talked mad sh!t about the nobility forevermore. The hero went to the continent as badly behaving rich-y dudes are wont to do for 10? 4?yrs, I'm not sure, before he decided he wanted to give back the estate. Again, I'm not sure but he spent 2?yrs thinking about trying to give the estate back and another 2?yrs searching for the heroine's father to do so. In case it isn't clear, I have no idea the ages of the hero and heroine :/

Beau Brummell makes a couple villainous appearances and the hero from the first book and obvious future heroes also show up. It's supposed to be a little bit of Romeo and Juliet but the depth and characterization was sorely lacking; I felt no connection between the hero and heroine. You can see the general layout for the story but the substance was missing and most of the time I was wondering what the point was.

The writing is technically readable but if I didn't have to finish it for Romance bingo, I probably would have started skimming after 30%.… (mere)