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A review by ithiliens
Bound by Your Touch by Meredith Duran
5.0
I meant to write something longer for this but more or less: I loved this and I’m very happy to have read it. I’m glad I gave this a chance after being so disappointed with At Your Pleasure. Very pleased with Duran’s treatment of the time period and I think she achieved one of the best balance acts I’ve read in romance wrt portrayal of contemporary politics, morals etc. I think the later Victorian period is especially difficult to do this in. It doesn’t particularly bother me as I’m not usually reading romance for thoughts on Victoriana but the choice of anything after the 1870s or 80s always brings up the question for me of WWI, especially in Babies Ever After type endings (which this doesn’t have, and my sole complaint is the ending was a bit abrupt, but satisfying enough even so)
More importantly though it’s always a joy to read characters that have genuine flaws and yet aren’t beyond the pale. I dislike as a rule heroes that are presented as being overly cutting/critical toward the heroine (again see my problems with At Your Pleasure) but the relationship here is so deftly drawn and avoids all the pitfalls I expect. James is my favorite type of hero and reminds me of a sharper version of Sebastian from the Brothers Sinister series and possibly a more unlucky version of Leo from the Hathaway series. I appreciated that his dissipation was real, and destructive, rather than a general handwaved reference to rakish behavior. Lydia is also to me the rare heroine with real, vicious loneliness in her. The treatment of the bluestocking idea here is something I will likely continue to ponder over but suffice to say I found her to be a fascinating and memorable heroine.
To finish I’ll say again that Duran’s prose is probably my favorite in the genre. It flows well everywhere but you can always feel when she really hits her stride and the result was I was a half hour late to work on Friday because I simply couldn’t bring myself to stop reading. An instant favorite.
More importantly though it’s always a joy to read characters that have genuine flaws and yet aren’t beyond the pale. I dislike as a rule heroes that are presented as being overly cutting/critical toward the heroine (again see my problems with At Your Pleasure) but the relationship here is so deftly drawn and avoids all the pitfalls I expect. James is my favorite type of hero and reminds me of a sharper version of Sebastian from the Brothers Sinister series and possibly a more unlucky version of Leo from the Hathaway series. I appreciated that his dissipation was real, and destructive, rather than a general handwaved reference to rakish behavior. Lydia is also to me the rare heroine with real, vicious loneliness in her. The treatment of the bluestocking idea here is something I will likely continue to ponder over but suffice to say I found her to be a fascinating and memorable heroine.
To finish I’ll say again that Duran’s prose is probably my favorite in the genre. It flows well everywhere but you can always feel when she really hits her stride and the result was I was a half hour late to work on Friday because I simply couldn’t bring myself to stop reading. An instant favorite.