Liquid Silver Books, $4.99, ISBN 978-1-62210-226-6
Historical Romance, 2015
Ooh, there is a blind hero here. Stephen Grafton is the sightless organ player of the Holy Trinity Church in an unnamed town. No, really, I have no idea what the town is called. Maybe it’s not important. Back to Stephen, he’s an amazing pianist – or so our widowed heroine Alice Broadbrace believes. He can be surly and curt at her, but she always comes to church to hear him play. On his part, he believes that she’d make a great vocalist to go along with his ping-ping-ping (she’s in the choir). So, will they make beautiful music together?
Christmas Carols is meant to be a sweet romance set in the Victorian era, and for the most part, this is a pretty decent read. Okay, I scratch my head a bit at how, for two people whose lives are intertwined with a church, these two characters hardly think of God at all. Still, on the whole this one is an easy-to-digest read.
Only, I’m not too sure whether I can believe that this is love on Alice’s part. She has all kinds of issues related to her self-esteem, and “love” on her part seems to be more like her joy at realizing that she’s amazing and talented. It’s like a brown cow finally discovering that she’s actually a glittering pink sheep. How long before she gets too famous for Stephen’s liking and the surly man believes that she’d like to move on, only to still stay with him out of pity? That guy has issues about people pitying him.
At the end of the day, I’d probably buy the romance a bit more if the author had the two main characters actually be in a romance more instead of having Stephen spend considerable moment polishing up Alice’s issues so that she can finally become a superstar. This isn’t love as much as this is tutoring. Anyway, more love, less Professor Higgins please.
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