I gave up reading romance novels in college. But my fave Goodreads reviewer waxed poetic about this one, so I thought I'd give it a try. Being a novella, it couldn't be too painful, I assumed.
It's definitely different and a load of fun to read. It suffers from the Shakespearean idiot plot problem, as do all romance novels to varying degrees, but Milan does such a nice job busting up stereotypes that it didn't matter too much to me.
Case in point, she has her Victorian-era protagonists speak to each other about penises and vaginas and French letters and Dutch caps. This sounds ridiculous as I write it, but it completely works in the novella. In fact, the frank exchange of thoughts and ideas and past problems almost made it seem that I was reading a psychoanalytic rendering of the times, but that makes the volume sound far duller than it was.
I may continue to read on in the series when I need something fluffy but different.
[Also, pet peeve. For those who borrow books through their local library for their Kindles. When it takes you only a few hours to read a book (or only a few days), please do the nice thing and return it! Just go to your Manage Your Content & Devices. It's so easy and the rest of us don't have to wait 3 weeks to read it when you've been done for ages! Thanks!]
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