by Cathie Dunn
My rating: ★★★★☆
It would have been a full 5 stars but I had to give a lower rating for an important reason, but let's start with the plot on the back cover.
____PLOT___ 1140 Gloucester and Normandy
Geoffrey de Mortagne is an under-sheriff of Gloucester and a spy for the Empress Matilda. While he is returning from the Battle of Lincoln, together with two of his sergeants and great friends, he witnesses the ambush that some criminals carry out on a knight.
They fight to help him, but the knight's wounds are very serious, so they decide to leave him in the care of the friars and go to warn their daughter at the castle.
Arriving at the castle, they have a good welcome from Alleyne de Bellac and his trusted servant, they also make friends with the guards.
Unfortunately, the girl is obsessed from a young age by the beauty and charm of another noble man who thinks he will ask her as his wife very soon.
Alleyne thus calls Will d'Arques, an old acquaintance of Geoffrey, but this will prove to be anything but a gentleman and by the time Alleyne realizes this, after her father's death, things will now be adrift.
Geoffrey, humiliated and rejected in his amorous approaches, will still help the young heiress, because he is bound by a vow made to his father, but it will not be an easy undertaking...adventures and dangers are what awaits him.
_________________
This book was supposed to be the first of the Anarchy Trilogy, but actually book #2 and #3 do not exist.
MY OPINION :
I initially gave 5 stars, because the story is gripping and full of twists.
I also loved the main male character and also the supporting characters (I loved the heroine less, who was a selfish turncoat, but I was happy not to find the usual heroine who was perfect in everything!)
The book has a good fast pace and at a certain point I couldn't care less about the fact that there was very little romance.
Romance was based only on mutual attraction, except for a very quick kiss scene at the beginning and another little love approach after 60% of the book, but the story still kept me glued to the pages.
Towards the end I longed for the solution to all our heroes' problems, but at the same time I was sad to finish the book because I wanted to read about this story again and again...
-------------> And then I had a cold shower:
An abrupt and too fast ending, the development of which was not taken care of either in detail or in the way in which things unfolded (total absence of romance!).
The ending was so rushed, not at all romantic and unsatisfying that I couldn't believe the same writer wrote it.
... It's like at least 50 pages were missing.
5 stars would not be deserved.
I rate it 4 stars because I really enjoyed reading until almost the end, but for the poorly done ending I should rate it only 3 stars!
The ending should be the icing on the cake and here instead it is a sterile ending devoid of any romance!!
Let's not talk about the epilogue, which should be totally erased.
WHY ??
The epilogue does not tell us about the happiness of our heroes and their friends, after all the vicissitudes faced at the risk of their lives... but WARNING SPOILER !___ it tells us about the villain and how he is having fun unpunished and about the nefarious plans he wants to implement against our heroes SPOILER END___ ___.
Therefore a sterile ending and an epilogue which is a cliffhanger and which makes us wait for a sequel.
In fact, on Goodread (and on the cover of the book) it is written that this is book #1 of a trilogy.
12 years have passed and no other book has followed this one, so reading that epilogue, that actually include a cliffhanger, was to me like finishing a good meal with a bitter pill!
It would be nice if the author reprinted the book with some more expanded parts, especially the ending, and deleted that annoying epilogue or wrote a worthy sequel with new adventures and an ending as readers expect.
Another small annoying thing:
There were no historical notes at the end.
While I read books related to historical events that actually happened, I never fail to do my research on the web, however it would have been nice if the author also added something at the end of the book like many other authors do.
In conclusion: I'm happy to have read the book, but for making better the happy ending I had to use MY IMAGINATION. I mean : we have a happy ending by the author, but it's not so enjoyable as it should have been on the romantic side, more the the epilogue ruins everything.
I RECOMMEND THE BOOK TO :
_ I recommend it only to THOSE WHO LOVE ADVENTURE, fast-paced novels and the idea of a love story in the air without anything concrete ever really happening and without major clarifications between the two characters on the problems between them and without sensational declarations of love and passion.
I DO NOT RECOMMEND THE BOOK TO:
_No to romance lovers: the title says hint of romance and indeed it's really just a small hint.
_No to mystery lovers: there is a murder, but no investigation, just speculation about who did it.
Thanks for reading my opinion, I'm sorry for the author if I have been too harsh, but I have to be honest and reviews must be useful to people when they have to choose if to read something or not.
Please, forgive my poor English, it's not my native language.
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