TBR Challenge: Miranda Neville - The Wild Marquis

The Marquis of Chase is not a reputable man. He is notorious for his wretched morals and is never received in respectable houses. The ladies of the ton would never allow him in their drawing rooms ... though they were more than willing to welcome him into their bedchambers.
Ejected from his father's house at the age of sixteen, he now lives a life of wanton pleasure. So what could the Marquis of Chase possibly want with Juliana Merton, a lovely, perfectly upstanding shopkeeper with a mysterious past?
A moment's indiscretion?
A night's passion?
Or a lifetime of love?
Even the wildest rakes have their weaknesses...

Comment:  It’s time for another TBR challenge post. This month the theme is new to you author, and as I like to follow the scheduled themes, I chose a book by an author I haven’t tried before. This book has been in my pile for I don’t know how long, but I’m positive it was somewhere last year, minimum. I got it after knowing the heroine was bookish and wasn’t considered that interesting but I didn’t read any other reviews, so in a way I went to this reading almost blind.

This story starts with the marquis of Chase looking for mrs Merton, the owner of a bookshop, in order to have help in upcoming auctions to purchase a book very important to him. Knowing the owner of the bookshop is a woman was a surprise but he didn’t mind that, and expected her help. They started a relationship soon after, despite issues to settle in both of them and past experiences. Chase has a very rakish reputation and isn’t taken seriously by other book collectors, but after some time he gets very involved in the world of books and even helps mrs Merton discover her true heritage, while changing his ways to become a better man.

I don’t think I liked this book that much. I mean, it has some points that are compelling, but I found myself not very fascinated with the story of the character’s traits. It’s not that the story is boring, although it had some moments where I wasn’t very interesting in reading, but I feel the bigger issue I had was the writing itself. It was obvious the author has done a lot of research and even used her experience working in Sotheby’s to build her story, but in general I didn’t feel it was that well done. I mean, of course she writes better than, say…me!, but for me her style wasn’t very appealing. I’ve read several other authors very similar, but I don’t know, her narrative just wasn’t very dazzling and I never got that feeling that I just had to read one more page. I put the book down easily when I had to and didn’t feel itchy to get back to it. I don’t know about you, but if a book makes me want to forget everything else so I can read more is always a winner for me! This, unfortunately, wasn’t one of those.

The characters have their strengths and weaknesses of course. Chase is known for being a rake that even his father expelled him from the house when he was 16. Throughout the book we know why and I have to admit, it was a original enough plot line that I found wouldn’t be that unbelievable, after all, we know it’s hard to apologize, to try to make things better and we let time pass because we don’t know how to work things out and in this case Chase didn’t want to make things worse so he led everyone to believe he didn’t mind what happened to him before. The way he found some closure was human and true, so no concerns on that field.

Juliana, mrs Merton, also had some baggage to solve from her past and I found her troubles a bit more uninteresting, but in the rules of a good romance, Chase helps her and they get their HEA.

While they both had good points apart, together not so much. I don’t think their story was very romantic; there wasn’t that intensity I expected in two people falling in love. As they didn’t know each other, there wasn’t the simplicity of already knowing someone for a long time either. Another person that read this book along with me has said that they lacked chemistry and I agree, sure they can be in love from a certain point on, but it’s not obvious and although that idea having merit, according to their behavior and conversations, it should be, so I think it really lacked romance. What a pity.

I guess I’m being a bit hard on this book, but not even the talk about books and all those interesting things saved the lack of romantic gestures, even when they were meant to be. This is a truly just OK story for me.

Now, there are some secondary characters that seemed intriguing but I wasn’t really interesting in reading their stories…but I’ve read some reviews about the next book and it sounds something I would like to try but the writing puts me off… has anyone read it, what can you say about it?

So, this book was OK, it had an interesting but not very developed storyline despite its promising mystery and details. Overall, a good enough effort, but it lacked several things to make me more than just satisfied with it.