Post by secretromancejunkie on Oct 1, 2019 15:32:46 GMT -7
Bliss - Lynsay Sands
Rating: 4.5 / 5.0
Heat: 7/10
Genre: HR, medieval, comedy
I really enjoyed this book. There were only some minor issues that kept it from being a full five star read. I’ll address them at the end. For the first 100 pages or so I laughed, snorted and giggled my way through. It became more serious after that, but still had moments of humor throughout.
The king has had enough of the bickering between two of his subjects. Lady Helen of Tierney and Lord Holden do nothing but complain about each other. His chaplain hits on the brilliant idea of ordering them to marry each other. That way they’d have to work out their differences, themselves.
When Lady Helen hears the news, she devises a plan to make herself as unattractive as possible to her potential new husband in the hopes that he’ll cry off. She can’t make herself physically unattractive, because the king’s man has seen her, but what she does do is hilarious. It starts with chewing raw garlic and drinking foul drinks to make her breath reek. It progresses to teaching her dog nasty tricks and goes downhill from there. The H realizes her plan pretty quickly. But he’s not opposed to the marriage, and can’t refuse the king anyway, so he begins to actively work against the h. The results are doubly funny.
The villain hides in plain sight but is pretty obvious. No big mystery there. Lots of side characters with interesting roles, including the dog, Goliath. There were no Big Misunderstandings, and very little angst. They had problems to work through and they did it by actually talking.
The book lost a ½ a star for a collection of minor things, but they annoyed. First, no way would a very young woman have been left to run an entire holding by herself for four or five years. The king would have married her off right away. Second, a king would never have taken the time to read carping complaints from a female subject. The whole premise depends on the first and second point, so it never would have happened. Third, sexy is a modern term. Having people from the 1100s use it is jarringly anachronistic. Fourth, I don’t think chaplain is the term the author wanted for the King’s man. He was a secretary, not a religious advisor. Finally, could we please have a little variety in first letters of names?
h = Helen
H = Hethe, Lord Holden, The Hammer
King = Henry II
Rating: 4.5 / 5.0
Heat: 7/10
Genre: HR, medieval, comedy
I really enjoyed this book. There were only some minor issues that kept it from being a full five star read. I’ll address them at the end. For the first 100 pages or so I laughed, snorted and giggled my way through. It became more serious after that, but still had moments of humor throughout.
The king has had enough of the bickering between two of his subjects. Lady Helen of Tierney and Lord Holden do nothing but complain about each other. His chaplain hits on the brilliant idea of ordering them to marry each other. That way they’d have to work out their differences, themselves.
When Lady Helen hears the news, she devises a plan to make herself as unattractive as possible to her potential new husband in the hopes that he’ll cry off. She can’t make herself physically unattractive, because the king’s man has seen her, but what she does do is hilarious. It starts with chewing raw garlic and drinking foul drinks to make her breath reek. It progresses to teaching her dog nasty tricks and goes downhill from there. The H realizes her plan pretty quickly. But he’s not opposed to the marriage, and can’t refuse the king anyway, so he begins to actively work against the h. The results are doubly funny.
The villain hides in plain sight but is pretty obvious. No big mystery there. Lots of side characters with interesting roles, including the dog, Goliath. There were no Big Misunderstandings, and very little angst. They had problems to work through and they did it by actually talking.
The book lost a ½ a star for a collection of minor things, but they annoyed. First, no way would a very young woman have been left to run an entire holding by herself for four or five years. The king would have married her off right away. Second, a king would never have taken the time to read carping complaints from a female subject. The whole premise depends on the first and second point, so it never would have happened. Third, sexy is a modern term. Having people from the 1100s use it is jarringly anachronistic. Fourth, I don’t think chaplain is the term the author wanted for the King’s man. He was a secretary, not a religious advisor. Finally, could we please have a little variety in first letters of names?
h = Helen
H = Hethe, Lord Holden, The Hammer
King = Henry II
Luckily when I started really getting into romance books (physical and eBooks) my DD was in her late teens. By then she was already reading YA's and was well aware of the romance genres.
There are quite a few commercials out there that irritate me, too.