Firelight (Darkest London, #1)

by Kristen Callihan

[llamareads]

Oof, what a mess. It's kinda a mishmash of Beauty and the Beast and Hades and Persephone, and while I would normally eat that up, the gothic tone was just way too over the top for me.

Archer has a DEEP! DARK! SECRET! (which is also kept from the reader for like 80% of the book) and has apparently been obsessed with the heroine, Miranda, since a chance meeting years ago. So marrying her seems the perfect revenge on her thieving father... somehow? Except he didn't expect someone to start murdering members of the club that turned him into a "monster," and now their marriage has made the murderer set his sights on Miranda.

OK, describing all that, it sounds pretty awesome, but reading it was just, well, boring. The pacing seemed off to me, and I never really felt the chemistry between the characters. I'm not a big fan of the whole gothic atmosphere, so everything seemed a bit overwrought and angsty. While I normally enjoy books where the author strings the reader along by dropping tidbits of info, it just didn't work for me. Everything seemed a bit too confusing and I constantly felt like I was missing whatever would gel the plot together. By about 75% in, I just gave up and skimmed the rest.

I think this might work for someone who enjoys gothic romance, but it didn't work for me.