Published: 18th February 2019
Source: Netgalley
Genre: Historical Romance
My Rating:
He’s her ticket into high society…
Banking heiress Ursula Nunes has lived her life on the fringes of Philadelphia’s upper class. Her Jewish heritage means she’s never quite been welcomed by society’s elite…and her quick temper has never helped, either.
A faux engagement to the scion of the mid-Atlantic’s most storied family might work to repair her rumpled reputation and gain her entrée to the life she thinks she wants…if she can ignore the way her “betrothed” makes her feel warm all over and stay focused on her goal.
She’s his ticket out…
Former libertine John Thaddeus “Jay” Truitt is hardly the man to teach innocent women about propriety. Luckily, high society has little to do with being proper and everything to do with identifying your foe’s temptation—an art form Jay mastered long ago. A broken engagement will give him the perfect excuse to run off to Europe and a life of indulgence.
But when the game turns too personal, all bets are off…
I received this book for free from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. This in no way affected my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
I think most of my purchases and arc requests of late can be attributed to the influence of Nick. This is definitely true of todays book, it’s definitely firmly in the 'Nick made me do it' category. I can't help it, as soon as a book gets her stamp of approval I'm there wanting to buy or request it and no amount of telling myself to wait a second and be sensible works, impulse just takes over and I’ve a new book in my hands. Publishers should totally give her commission from my purchases.
Anyway, her positive words made me want to read this. To be fair, so did the fake relationship trope and the fact I’ve been craving a good historical romance. Sadly, this was a case of nick approved book not quite working for me for very me reasons. The book was actually really enjoyable with interesting characters and it succeeded in not falling into the usual romance plot traps and surprising me… but it didn’t click and fall into the ‘this is amazing’ category.
Ursula (what is with that name?) was totally charming with her complete inability to read people and her utter social awkwardness. She was so easy to like and she had a love for animals! I was always going to like her. And our romantic hero, Jay, was not the stereotypical man who gets around with money and privilege. He was many layered and he had secrets which slowly emerge throughout the story. I was wary of him, at first. I knew there was more to him than met the eye but I hadn't realised how many secrets he held and honestly thought he was going to be the typical over privileged man who was rich and slept around and wasn’t very interesting. Turns out he was a grower not a shower and I loved how he was actually adorable. He seemed like he would be the kind of rich guy who was a snob, like he would be judgey and savage people and be inconsiderate of others feelings but in fact he was the most considerate man. he always knew how to make those around him more comfortable and feel better about themselves, almost to his own detriment. He was a sweetie who had been told a few too many times he wasn't good enough.
There was a lot to like with these characters and the story was easy to get sucked into as you try and figure out the various secrets going on. But something didn't work. I kind of feel like it was the way the book was written. I constantly felt like I’d missed something and found myself flicking back because I wasn’t certain if I’d skim read and missed something only to find the book had gone forward and would flashback to explain a missed scene. Scene transitions just didn’t seem to work to me and I know everything was there and nothing was ever missed, but I think the writing for some reason distanced me from the story and threw me out as I tried to figure out what was going on and decide if I’d missed something. I also found I couldn’t always keep the secondary characters straight in my head. Names would be mentioned and I’d be left questioning ‘who’s that again'?’ which is never a fun feeling when reading. I can’t say the secondary characters weren’t well developed, but for some reason names wanted to stick in my head even less than usual. I am guilty of forgetting names when reading but this was worse than usual.
I don't know it was enjoyable and I was drawn in by the characters and the story but things were really minor and shouldn't have impacted my enjoyment too much seemed to bother me.more than usual here. It was good and I do recommend. Yet it also wasn't totally for me. Its weird. I would be interested to read more from this author to see if it was just this book or maybe it's their writing style which doesn't totally click with me. It's hard to pinpoint but something was missing to stop me rating it higher but enjoyment was there.
Have you read a book where you know the book is decent but the writing style keeps you from falling head over heels? I feel like it happens to me a lot lately but this was a good historical romance but sadly not my favourite.
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