Never a Good Sign
https://www.sophiebarnes.com/sb1/
A recent conversation I’ve had – warning, I paraphrase:
Delia, “How’s that book coming?”
Me, “I’m having a lot of trouble with this one. The verbiage is disjointed.”
Delia, “Oh, that’s too bad.”
Me, “Yes, the heroine is blah, blah, blah, blah. The hero is blah, blah, blah. It’s giving me a headache.”
Delia, “Oh, I’ll be looking forward to your review. I thought The Infamous Duchess sounded interesting.”
Me, “The Infamous Duchess?”
Delia, “Yes, isn’t that what you’re talking about?”
Me, “Uh, no. I’m talking about blah, blah, blah.”
Delia, “Well, your blog says The Infamous Duchess.”
After looking at my blog:
Me, “Did I read that?”
Delia, “Don’t know.”
My light bulb moment, “OMG! I did read it, only three days ago…and it has already been relegated to the dark corners of my mind.”
Yes, that is my sad story, and it isn’t a good sign for the Infamous Duchess. So now it’s time
to pull out allll the stops and put ye’ old thinking cap on. First step, we check our notes.Oh look, here’s a note attached to the sentence -“You must be joking.” My note says, “Is this correct slang?” Well, that’s obviously not a good sign either. That means that I’ve been thrown out of the book by the use of slang. Now, before I started accusing anyone of using the incorrect words, I did do some research. It’s not always a good thing to go with your gut reaction. Because I had a hard time finding the exact phraseology I zeroed in on the word “joke.” Much to my surprise, I did find that the word “joke” appeared on the scene in 1791. What does that mean? Well, to me it means that it would be possible for the heroine to actually use that phrase in her conversation. But by the time I was thrown out of the book, it was already tooooo late.
Remember what I always say. I can overlook tons of incorrect verbiage, spellings, and historical inaccuracies if I have been captured by the story. Why wasn’t anything capturing my imagination in this book? To be perfectly honest, I found The Infamous Duchess dull. That is what happens when a Beta hero is allowed to be a super-duper Beta and the infamous heroine really isn’t infamous.
Just because our heroine was married to an older man who died, leaving her some money, doesn’t mean she’s a disgraced person. She has countered the title of “infamous” by doing good. She’s also established a hospital – a good hospital. She’s a little concerned when the story opens, because her evil son-in-law is threatening to close her down. Spoilers. We are told he is evil because not only is he making her life miserable, but there also seems to be the matter of disappearing women around him. That includes his wife. Now, I love my villains as much as the next guy, but this one didn’t make the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. I could find no threatening atmosphere to dig into. For me, that was the problem with the rest of the characters in this story. None of the people in this book had any flavor. Most of the time in The Infamous Duchess was used up with a lot of outside padding and standard Romanceland similarities.
From the typical should-I-give-up-my-independence-and-marry-this-wonderful-guy heroine, to the rake-not-rake beta hero, this story was filled with plot-lines/themes/devices which didn’t go anywhere, and prevented the much-needed character development. By the time I found myself at the end of this book, I had lost interest in the love story. It was easy for me to file this story into the dark midst of my mind. And, just so you know, I don’t like to forget stories created in a genre I care so much about. Sorry to say, I cannot recommend this book.
Time/Place: Regency England
Sensuality: Warm
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