Carrie Lomax, $2.99, ISBN 979-8201907228
Historical Romance, 2019
Carrie Lomax’s Becoming Lady Dalton is the second entry in the London Scandals series. The first entry is free at the time of writing, and I don’t usually review freebies, so the party is going to start with this one instead.
Widow Viola Cartwright is a pretty recent new arrival in London, having come to town only about a year ago with her son and her sister to seek a place to stay at her grandmother’s. Since then, her sister has wedded her way into nobility with much fanfare, with a fire thrown in for good measure (don’t ask), and now it’s her turn to find her happy ending.
Like most women, the sight of Viscount Dalton makes her need a change of underwear STAT, but as of now, she is more concentrated on using her sister’s newfound elevation in the social hierarchy to get her son into a respectable boarding school, enjoy her new life, and discover herself, that kind of thing. That is, until someone starts stealing the rich toffs’ jewelry and people start to suspect her of being the thief.
Piers Ranleigh, our Lord Dalton and a widower himself with a young daughter in tow, has always had the hots for Viola, but she is determined to shoo him away because there won’t be a story for the author to sell if she and he hooked up without any drama. Fortunately, now that our heroine is in trouble, he can use his viscount privileges to clear her name and finally get her to remove her bloomers just for him.
A nice twist would be him paying off some bloke to start stealing jewels in a Machiavellian plot to get Viola to put out, but I suppose that kind of twist won’t cut it. It’s more romantic for the hero to flex and rescue the heroine.
Well, pigs have certainly grown wings and flown, because I find the kids to be the most adorable and memorable characters in this one. This is because they act their age, which is actually a rarity in this genre. They aren’t adult midgets or creations of authors that don’t have any idea how kids behave, and they also aren’t treated as too-obvious plot devices to get the romance or plot going. They are just kids, adorable ones, and it’s so cute to read about them.
As for the rest, well, I certainly have no issues with the author’s narrative style. The conversations are fine, the quiet moments can be tender and poignant, and the tone and sense of place are pretty well done.
However, I find the romance pretty bland. The biggest issue here is that there isn’t any good reason as to why Viola can’t hook up with the interested Lord Dalton aside from it somehow being not proper.
Why is it not proper? Her sister married a toff, so it’s not like there is no precedence. She is an unattached widow of a still-respectable pedigree, so it’s not like Lord Dalton deciding to marry a fishwife or something.
Furthermore, most of her money woes are now settled thanks to her sister’s advantageous marriage, so it’s not like she needs to take up two jobs to make ends meet for her and her son.
Sure, Lord Dalton has a “scandalous” history of everyone he loved in the past croaking shortly after, but considering how he is still a widely-accepted member of the Ton with women all sighing and wanting him to take a look up their skirt, it’s not like he’s going to drag her reputation down if she decided to take him out for a ride.
Therefore, the entire story feels like a long, tedious story of characters playing hard to get for no good reason. All the fuss and drama is just filler for the inevitable, and I get tad bored as a result.
Hence, this one isn’t a bad story at all, far from it, on the surface, but it doesn’t give me a core compelling reason to get and stay invested in the romance. The heroine has everything she needs to solve all her problems right in front of her, and all she has to do is to grab that big fat thing with both hands and start enjoying life to the hilt, but no, all that drama just to keep the story going. Pffft indeed!
