Morgan and Archer (Windham, #8.5)

by Grace Burrowes

[EBookObsessed]

This was a quick but enjoyable novella. It also proves that maybe I was too quick to judge an author over one story.

Morgan James doesn’t consider herself eligible for marriage since she is slowly losing her hearing. But her loss just might be England’s gain.

Morgan is introduced to Archer, who is a private investigator and his current mission is to find out if someone is trying to harm the royal family. His attraction and fascination with Morgan is a dangerous distraction for a man with an important mission and is also a danger to Morgan if someone decides Archer is getting too close for comfort. Going after Morgan would certainly distract Archer from his duty.

But the best clue that Archer gets might be the one “overheard” by Morgan from across the room. Morgan might be hard of hearing but she has learned quite successfully to read lips. When the conspirators ignore the poor unfortunate deaf woman at the far end of the room, Morgan is quick make use of their mistake to get information to Archer but will he be in time to stop the conspirators.

THOUGHTS:
Back in December I told you about the new Sourcebooks Free Reads program where you sign up and they will email you a chapter of a book each day. Morgan and Archer was the fifth book in this program. Each book offered appears to be a novella so it is a quick change between books. The prior book to this one was a genre I didn’t normally read so I just deleted them each day until the next book started. I was enjoying these characters so much that I couldn’t wait and spent the $1.99 for the novella.

As a reminder you can sign up for Free Reads with Sourcebooks.

This is my second Grace Burrowes story and the last one I DNF’d because I simply didn’t like the characters, they way they spoke or the way they acted. This might be the difference in the genre as the last book was a contemporary where I didn’t feel the speaking style fit the time period and this being a regency romance which flowed just fine. I might have to give Ms. Burrowes another chance but stick with her historicals.

I admit I am fascinated by major characters with flaws. Everyone writes stories about gorgeous billionaires and beautiful women, and who wouldn’t fall for their sex appeal and charm. But I find it interesting to see how the author presents a flawed hero or heroine and how well the hero and heroine interact with each other and how they are treated by secondary characters. Does the flawed character work to behave “normally” or does the unflawed character change their behavior to work with the other character’s flaw? Are they treated as deficient or does intelligence make up for physical faults?

In this case there is no ASL, but Morgan is very good at reading lips. Whenever they would see each other at parties, Archer began walking Morgan toward quieter areas so they could have a conversation without all the background noise. He subtly changed his behavior to make things easier on Morgan without making her feel that she was flawed. It was Morgan who was more inclined to keep Archer at a distance because she couldn’t allow him to have a flawed wife and Archer who was unconcerned about Morgan’s defect. Archer has more appreciation for Morgan’s intelligence and wit than he does in her beauty or her flaws.

The only thing that bothered me about the story is that it turned out to be book 8.5 of the series and something happened along the way that helped cure Morgan from total deafness, but she was warned that her hearing would most likely start to fail again as she got older. There was no quick reminder of what procedure caused her to regain some of her hearing, so as a latecomer I am left in the dark about what could have been wrong with Morgan that could have been corrected by 18th century medicine. We also know that Morgan and her sister spent some time in “service.” It appears these Ladies were in hiding. I could only guess that they were in hiding from their brother (now deceased) but really no more than that and I only know that by reading a blurb on the first book in the series and by Morgan’s statement about how nice the Duke was as opposed to their titled brother.

As someone who likes a good series, it can get boring when we repeat things in each story so that everyone is up to date, but it is also helpful to at least give a quick recap for those who are new or maybe it’s been awhile since you read the last book. It is hard balance for authors to add updates without boring the die hard fans, but in this case, I was a little frustrated not to know at least a little more about how Morgan was able to recover some of her hearing. Since it was Morgan’s story, her explanation to Archer could have been our explanation as well instead of the “she quickly told Archer what had happened.”

As part of a series, it did not give us much time with other characters which would have us anticipating the next book. This was a novella and it is possible that the novels in the series spend more time introducing secondary characters that you want to see get their own story.

Overall, I liked Morgan and Archer and I might need to give Grace Burrowes another chance before I skip by her next novel.