The Scandal In Kissing An Heir (At the Kingsborough Ball, #2)

by Sophie Barnes

[Amanda]

Historical romance is my crack. I can be incredibly forgiving when all I want is some fluff to disappear into for a few hours on the weekend. Unfortunately, there were a few things that kept me from truly enjoying The Scandal in Kissing an Heir.

A choppy plot: successful plots have one overarching question that drives the story forward. In romance, you've got the marriage or "I love you"s or the promise of a HEA... and usually one other story problem outside the romance that drives the characters together. Rebecca and Daniel had obstacles throughout the story -- meeting, getting away from her guardians, eloping, more that's spoilerish I won't reveal -- but they're almost presented as self-contained obstacles that don't necessarily drive the plot forward. Every time I thought I'd latched onto the overarching question/problem, it would be solved and I'd be left wondering what was going to happen for the rest of the book. Even the "I love you"s came before the end. So... yeah.

Unresolved plot threads: Rebecca gets shot early in the story (therefore not considering it a spoiler) and... either it never fully got addressed in who did it, or it was so minor I missed it. I kept waiting for some kind of big reveal, especially if the shot was directed at Daniel, not Rebecca, but nada.

Unbelievable situations: Rebecca gets shot in the shoulder, then she's up and fine the next day. There was no fear of fever or anything. I can suspend belief for certain things, but I've had problems with this type of situation before. (Do people really recover from gunshots so quickly in the 1800s? I highly doubt it.) Rebecca isn't the only one who gets shot and recovers quickly, either.

Naming emotions rather than showing: This is something I'm sensitive to now that I'm writing and using The Emotional Thesaurus (a writing book I'd highly recommend), and a lot of the narrative involves telling us how the characters are feeling. Because we don't get to "see" for ourselves what the characters are feeling, it's harder to relate to them. The characters were also very good at communication and being honest and figuring out what the other was experiencing, even if they didn't talk about. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for quality communication between characters. But when it's easy, it lacks tension, and that does little to keep us turning pages.