“She’s not so bad, for all she’s a member of a class of useless wastrels.”
Ian Kinlock
I expected this book to be four or five stars in the early chapters. Sadly, it hit a brick wall and went from fun fluffiness to angsty drama around the halfway point. The second half of the book took me nearly twice as long as the first because I would keep putting it down.
While I liked both characters initially, they both ended up frustrating me. They either danced around or refused to talk about their family issues, dragging the entire book down.
A lot of this change can be put down to Jocelyn’s character. Even as events progress, she remains unswervingly adamant about being loyal to a man who has never promised her anything or even showed genuine interest in her until she was married, and even then only for an affair. Her stubbornness drove me up a wall. There was eventually an explanation about her emotional issues, but it came far too late for me to change my opinion of her.
David is not faultless in this, either. He is far too invested in seducing her rather than trying to understand why she is so set on ending their marriage. Some of the scenes even registered as close to dubious consent. A little more conversation would have gone a long way to improving the plot and his character. In the end, he was a far less compassionate character than he started out.
The plot works well at the beginning. Both Jocelyn and David enter the arrangement with ulterior motives, and they both know it. Sally popping in as the harridan of a sister-in-law was entertaining as their marriage begins. Sally became one of my favorite characters as the story progressed, and she focused more on her relationship with Ian. Sadly, when Jocelyn and David realize that their marriage isn’t going to end as quickly as they expected is when the story falls apart.
If I was just rating off the latter half of the book, it would be two stars. If it was just off the first half, four stars. Ultimately, I’m just going to split it down the middle and go with three stars.
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