Oof, this was rough. It's Julia Quinn's first novel and I think that's apparent. She's evolved so much as a romance writer and I'm very grateful for the wonderful world of Bridgerton that she's given us. Every writer has to start somewhere and I think it's lovely that we get to see this evolution of writing.

The story itself was pretty bad though. The plot was predictable and formulaic, the characters paper thin, the dialogue terrible and cringey, and the sex scenes disruptive and forced.

I think this is a trilogy romance readers can skip unless you're a Julia Quinn mega fan and it's your quest to read her entire body of work.

I enjoyed this book, although you can tell it was her first book. Ms. Quinn seemed like she had so much she wanted to do with this story, that it jumped all over the place. I still thought it was cute.

3.5/5

Honestly not bad for a debut and I love some old school Julia Quinn! It has much more of an attempt at a plot than the others and that is COMENDABLE

Super bad, no good. Just move along.

I've just read this was Quinn's first regency novel (and first novel, period) so it's perhaps forgivable and the author should be judged by her later, stronger works, but this first novel is worth forgetting.

The research - well, there probably was no research. This story might have been set in regency England or some other time period, it's hard to say, since there is a lot of anachronistic conventions and fashions. And a small point of annoyance in the beginning was when two girls barge into the kitchens while the cook and her staff are preparing for a 400+ guest party, demanding to be allowed to 'help' in the sense that they want to be allowed to mess around with the food while requiring direct supervision since neither have any experience. Ever seen a restaurant kitchen when serving a fraction of that number of customers? It's a bit absurd the cook has any time to spare them.

The heroine - is a spunky American who wants to take over her father's wealthy business. She doesn't want to go to England at all, she wants to stay and work in what she knows and loves. This dream of hers is quickly cast aside without much consideration later, which is a real shame. There's obvious room in the story for tension between the heroine wanting to be a rich, independant American businesswoman (especially since her father told her to forget it, the world is too sexist to accept her), and becoming a dutiful wife to an English aristocrat. So the speed at which Emma abandons that dream for a man without hesitation or demanding any compromise is criminally unempowering.

The hero - just throw the whole man out. After sexually assaulting the heroine moments after being left alone with her (while she has a serious head injury), his next move is to follow this young girl back to her bedroom in the middle of a ball, in order to further sexually assault her. His behavior is predatory, criminal, very unwanted, and he really should be a total pariah in this society. But obviously the heroine falls for him, which makes you question how much brain damage she received from that early blow to the head.

The writing style itself - generally quite poor. I remember the first chapter being mostly dialogue with a few interspersed cues of characters standing or moving, essentially a script. Much of the book is like this, and the descriptive parts tend to gloss over big events with inadequate detail, or unnecessarily over-explain 'jokes' made by the characters. "The women laughed at their injoke about Sophie's earlier comment about her rambling being interesting" - yes, I know, that comment was made only three paragraphs ago. At moments like that it had the grinding feeling of a book being written by Pride and Prejudice's Mr Collins.

Okay, this book was so sweet! I was a little concerned that I like our MMC, Alex so much from the start, what with the way her pursued her, but he was such a fun, witty, scoundrel of a character that I couldn't help but love him! Our FMC, Emma, was great as well! I loved that she was so independent and that she was American and used to doing things her own way and not content to just sit around. Another great one by Julia Quinn with abundant sexual tension and slow burn!

Consiglio l audiolibro, la lettrice è veramente brava, mi ha suscitato nel libro molto più interesse di quanto effettivamente merita

Me debato entre ponerle 2,5 o 3 ⭐️.

El libro es de 1995, y se nota demasiado en lo poco evolucionado que está en cuanto al machismo… entiendo que es un libro de época, pero igual me chocó mucho leer a un protagonista tan posesivo y egocéntrico. “No la abofeteé porque estábamos en la calle”… really?

Aparte de eso, la historia es muy entretenida y tiene harto drama fuera del típico drama romántico.

I love a heroine who stands up for herself. I also love a heroine who is able to admit when she screwed up and ask for forgiveness. Somebody needs to stand up to all those alpha male dukes running around!

3.5, rounding up to four.

2.5 stars

Being Julia's first published work, I CAN tell how much her writing has grown since then with her later books. I just didn't really like the main plot or characters in this one and I think the audio narrator seemed too screeching for me for some of the other female characters. I'm still planning on finishing the series but might have to read the ebooks instead.

Grade: A