The Naked Baron

by Sally MacKenzie

[nitzan_schwarz]

To read the official and polished review for the Naked Baron as well as many others, go to my blog Drugs Called Books

This was another fast, fun read by Sally Mackenzie.
I was looking for a fun, light read - and that's what I got. Finished it in one sitting, and it was very enjoyable.
Despite the misleading synopsis, this book deals with two stories and two sets of characters;
The first, Lady Grace and Baron David. The second, Grace's aunt Kate and David's uncle Alex. I thought it was interesting to read two different stories about different ages in the same book, intertwining together.
I enjoyed Kate and Alex's story more than I did Grace and David's, for their relationship felt more based than Grace and David. Despite that, throughout the better part of Kate and Alex's story, I had a sense of deja-vu - like I've read this story before.
I didn't like it as much as I did the first book in the series, for a few reason; first, it took way too long for problems to be solved. They spend so much time agonizing and repeating the same thought process, over and over and over again. It was maddening!
Second, the ending sucked. The girl runs away from home, ditches her betrothed, and instead of letting us see the conflict with her father - how he finds out she's now married, how he'll respond, how he'll be convinced to accept David, the story end with the two of them in bed, completed without a hint of worry. I didn't like that. I don't mind bedroom scenes, but I felt that was a crappy place to end the story!
Third, this story wasn't us fun or interesting as the first. It was still a really fast read, but I did tire of it at times, it wasn't as funny and the characters were sometimes so frustrating.
Forth, some things were just left unsolved! I mean, aside for the ending, you also had some issues of Kate and Alex and misunderstandings that were not cleared in the story. It would've added one page to the whole story to deal with them, and it bothered me greatly that they didn't regard them.
Also, there were some details the characters suddenly knew, out of nowhere! Perhaps I, in a moment of lacking concentration, missed, for example, the part Grace told David whom she'd been sort-of engaged to, but I can't recall that ever being said - and yet somehow, David knew!

Aside for that, I was really disappointing not to see or meet the characters of the first book, and not knowing what happened with them, a result of the fact the time span of this book seems to be overlapping with the first one.

This book was a quick, fun, light read which I enjoyed, despite having some issues with it.