Miranda Cheever is a gentlewoman who at the age of 10 fell in love with her best friend's older brother, the soon to be Lord Turner. Fast-forward ten years and she's being introduced to society and re-introduced to Turner who had been languishing in a very unhappy marriage. It's a romance novel, so you can probably guess what happens after that - kissing, sex, babies, marriage, "I love you." Some kind of order like that.

readers of romance novels

Um...well...the sex scenes were good

Just about everything else. Even for a romance novel, I really wanted to be more. The characters were ridiculous and flat and talked like teenage mallrats occassionally. The time period comes across as so romantic in Jane Austen, but here the balls and courtships seem guady and frivolous. The "secret diaries" aren't used to further the story, but rather as an additional narration tool. As the narration is already omniscient 3rd person, not sure what the point was. I felt rather mislead by the title.

I have been reading romance novels lately because I started writing one and I wanted to get to know the genre better. This really disappointed me...as in I didn't want to read any more romances. As fun as writing romance is, I am not really get the same thrill reading it. Go figure!

I haven't read any of her other books, and I probably won't. It sounds like she writes mostly Regency romance.

Ways it could have been better: (1) Miranda gets an abortion instead of miscarries. (2) Turner's awful first wife Leticia dies mysteriously CSI-like instead of just falling off her horse. (3) Finding some hidden nobility in the characters would have been nice, as is they don't seem worth the effort. (4) The secret diaries are discovered, reveal the murderer of Leticia, and threaten to destroy their relationship. (5) If all else fails, more sex scenes.

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Created Jul 22, 2007 at 7:22pm • Submit your own review...