Maybe It's Just Me

People seemed to like A Season to be Sinful, so I picked it up and read it.



Sure, it had some complex backstory and some good writing. But I was so bored I could barely keep my eyes open. These are two of the dullest people I have ever seen get together.

The hero is supposed to be "high in the instep", which really just means he uses big words and complex phraseology. The heroine is supposed to be "spirited" but aside from some stuff that happens before the story starts, I never saw it. She recovers politely at the hero's house. She accepts his charity without a qualm. She goes to his country house - probably to be his mistress - without protest. When she wants to leave, they have a civilized conversation in which he asks her to stay and she acquiesces. Are you still reading? Probably not. Try a whole book.

And then there are the children. That's right, three lovable, adorable ne'er-do-well rogues who get up to Hi-Larious hijinks. (They steal tarts! They climb trees!) Three "scoundrels" with twee names who say things like, "'E's a right toff, 'e is!" Dude, this was old when Dickens wrote it a hundred and fifty years ago. In 2006 I wanted to kick their lovable asses as far out of this story as I could. And they're not minor characters, either - they get some serious page time. I think they were supposed to provide comic relief to the relentlessly serious and dull main characters.

Maybe it's just me. Maybe it's the fact that I just watched Brokeback Mountain that made me a) crave a better love story and b) watch in horror as the hero splashed in the bath with three naked ten-year-old boys. Maybe I didn't give this one a fair shake. It's possible.

I just wish someone had warned me about the children.

Abby