Pommeroy by Cate CharlestonMy rating: 2 of 5 stars
I buddy read this over on StoryGraph, so a quick wrap-up here,
I'm not sure I would label this romance genre, it's more along the lines of a Heyer and what I, think, is called Traditional.
You're going to get povs from ALL the characters, it actually reminded me more of a PBS period piece tv series.
You're also going to get solid, almost impregnable, walls of text. We spend a vast amount of time in the characters' heads during their povs, only broken up occasionally by dialogue, and for me, it made it hard to read and stay engaged. The pov changes also had no warning, just flowing one into the other so that I'd read a couple sentences before I realized I was in another character's head.
If you can handle the formatting, and don't mind a Traditional(?) romance that felt like reading a PBS show, the characters and story had some highlights.
The commentary on the Boer War, one of the characters fought in it, was really good and a historical event I don't usually read in romances.
There were also some good turns done by the slow burn (I'm talking sloooooooooow and I'm not sure the heat for a burn ever came):
He was aware of Lily’s skirts brushing the shoe on his outstretched leg as she passed in front of him, and of an odd tightening of his throat and chest.
I love its hitting them moments like this. All it takes is a brush of skirts on shoe and the man's lost!
There was also some classism and the cultural and societal changing from the Victorian to Edwardian era.
Basically, this felt like it wanted to focus on everything but the romance between the two characters I thought were supposed to be leads, everyone was much too restrained for my modern sensibilities self, and the walls of text formatting about broke me. I like watching PBS period shows but my brain is not about reading them, your brain mileage may vary.
Oh dear, does not sound like a good time. Except for the skirt brush. ;-)
ReplyDeleteOh that moment, so good!
DeleteDefinitely not a style of book for me, but I did recommend it to someone who I thought would like it, but out of the two other people I buddy read this with, I'm the only one to have made it out alive, oops, I mean finished it, so far.