1.0 out of 5 stars Less than glittering third book
I enjoyed the other two books in the series, having been given a recommendation in the American Library Association best romance of the year list. While the first two were well exectuted (emphasis o the executed, since they are heavily plotetd) this one really cranked it out, but with about as much romantic/erotic tension as a wooden Indian.
The heroine is a bluestocking interested in social welfare and she s so virtuous, it is hard to believe she would just say, “Ok, come to my bedroom to have sex with me, I’ll be ready for you in half an hour.”
Which she does. We get more detail of her birth control practices than we do of her passionate interest for the hero. Ugh.
Our hero may be known as the Archangel and fabulously handsome and eligible, but he is thoroughly unlikable in my opinion. He is rude, patronizing, and above all, in love with another woman (another man’s wife) in the book throughout nearly the whole of it, whilst still deciding to put himself on the Marriage Mart with the help of his female secretary, whom he is trying to make into his mistress. Ugh again.
He also has a ex-mistress he spends more time with than the heroine, and is so patronizing towards her, it is a wonder she doesn’t kill him with her bare hands!
I don’t see anything passionate or sensual in this book at all. The ONLY love scene in the whole book happens on page 71. Any of the usual conventional ways of getting them romantically linked again are totally forfeited. The unchaperoned trip into the countryside, old deserted inn, all of them in peril…
Sound familiar? But it is all to try to discover who has tried to murder him. They never even so much as kiss!! Or hold hands or touch!
The book drags on way too long. The title is based on the costume she wears in the last 10 pages of the book, when he finally sees who she really is through her startling family resemblance to all the males in her family. Silly, really.
The fact that the heroine is supposed to have been in so much danger all these years that she walks around in dark glasses to hide her eyes, which only call attention to her appearance, and a terrible wig which also calls attention to her, is all the more absurd. Anyone else would have just sent her to America or India if it were that risky for her to be found.
All of this absurdity might have been overlooked if there had been some heat between the couple, but anything there was in the wooden, totally in the dark love scene which lasts a page or two without any sensuality, dies totally after page 72.
The so-called mystery is predictable, and not worth the time or effort to plow through the book.
504 words
