Scan barcode
A review by bookish_kristina
A Governess Should Never... Tempt a Prizefighter by Emily Windsor
4.0
Self-made men in historical romance are my fave.
This was a surprisingly good book and a very well written story, it was full of action, pugilistic information and scenes and an amazingly strong, sweet hero. You guys, I loved this hero. He was a caretaker, a soft man who fought for the benefit of his family, not because he liked violence. A self-made man, with a posh accent that slipped when his feelings got heated.
That being said, this doesn’t get full stars from me because I wasn’t fully connected with the love story and didn’t feel their chemistry as much as I wanted to. I think this lacked yearning and heat for me and chalk it up to the following:
The wordy nature of the text: this book was tough to digest because of it’s overuse of fancy language. Some of the verbosity and the London cant should have been left out of the narrative and reserved mainly for the dialogue. I get that his London vernacular and her wordiness were part of their characterization, and I enjoyed it, but it made the text too weighty and ponderous to read at times which held me back from really connecting with the story.
I liked it in the dialogue and inner thoughts, but thought it laid on with a bit of a heavy hand, in the third person narrative style.
The heroine: while I liked her and routed for her, she also felt a little bit too young and naive to really fit with this older, well-establish, gritty hero. She did grow throughout the book and I liked that, but her naïveté and innocence often made her childlike. I wondered sometimes if the author was attempting to make her neurodivergent but ultimately decided she wasn’t because there wasn’t quite enough there to justify it. I might have liked it better if she was rather than just a bookish, sheltered miss (I’m kind of over those in HR).
But the story itself, the setting, the side characters (who I’m upset don’t have their own stories in this series) and the originality were all very well done. I will definitely read more from this author and really do recommend this with the caveat that you should not go in if you don’t love being bombarded by historically accurate London cant and large dictionary words.
This was a surprisingly good book and a very well written story, it was full of action, pugilistic information and scenes and an amazingly strong, sweet hero. You guys, I loved this hero. He was a caretaker, a soft man who fought for the benefit of his family, not because he liked violence. A self-made man, with a posh accent that slipped when his feelings got heated.
That being said, this doesn’t get full stars from me because I wasn’t fully connected with the love story and didn’t feel their chemistry as much as I wanted to. I think this lacked yearning and heat for me and chalk it up to the following:
The wordy nature of the text: this book was tough to digest because of it’s overuse of fancy language. Some of the verbosity and the London cant should have been left out of the narrative and reserved mainly for the dialogue. I get that his London vernacular and her wordiness were part of their characterization, and I enjoyed it, but it made the text too weighty and ponderous to read at times which held me back from really connecting with the story.
I liked it in the dialogue and inner thoughts, but thought it laid on with a bit of a heavy hand, in the third person narrative style.
The heroine: while I liked her and routed for her, she also felt a little bit too young and naive to really fit with this older, well-establish, gritty hero. She did grow throughout the book and I liked that, but her naïveté and innocence often made her childlike. I wondered sometimes if the author was attempting to make her neurodivergent but ultimately decided she wasn’t because there wasn’t quite enough there to justify it. I might have liked it better if she was rather than just a bookish, sheltered miss (I’m kind of over those in HR).
But the story itself, the setting, the side characters (who I’m upset don’t have their own stories in this series) and the originality were all very well done. I will definitely read more from this author and really do recommend this with the caveat that you should not go in if you don’t love being bombarded by historically accurate London cant and large dictionary words.