Red Empress Publishing, $0.99, ISBN 978-1393640455
Historical Romance, 2020
Daphne Bloom’s Garden of Hope is a story of two people that are considered far from marriageable by the conventions of a historical romance set in 19th century England—in other words, quirky—that are thrown together and find love in the process.
Lily prefers to garden, hence the title of this story, hence she is oh so unconventional. You’d think she’d try to at least put on a good impression so that she won’t be a permanent financial drain on her family, but that would mean taking on personal responsibilities and accountability and we can’t have that. Why should she bother with such pesky nonsense when she’ll soon have a man to swoop in, marry her, and make sure that she doesn’t have to do anything that may inconvenience her self-indulgent trip?
Hence, she’d keep telling her parents that she won’t have any man picking her, et cetera. I’m sure her married but childless sisters will be thrilled that, down the road, they may have to deal with an unmarried poor relation.
Of course, one man wants to marry her—cue the obligatory mean cousin that is currently in the way to inherit everything—but our heroine, who naturally claims that she is not so hot or special, is repulsed because Cousin Albert is fat and ugly.
Meanwhile, Henry is the hero so he gets to have a more mature and sensible kind of “quirky”, if we can put it like that. He’s a former soldier that killed who knows how many people in India and other places, which is always a good excuse for the hero to make all those soldier stuff all about him. He also has a cute pet squirrel. Like Lily, he is determined to ignore his responsibilities and societal norms to do whatever he wants, because there must be something in the air that is turning our heroes and heroines into such rebels.
This is a clean story, so the focus in on conversations and all the tired old traditional regency tropes one can binge on.
It’s also super slow. I’m not kidding. These two spend ages talking and getting ready for the ball, which only takes place in Chapter Eight. In the meantime, it’s all about the woes of Lily’s family, her father falling sick, and yet Lily can’t get her act together to at least try to get a man and pop out some acceptable heir to Daddy’s money and stuff. For heaven’s sake, she likes gardening. It’s not like she’s into tattooing or dancing naked in the woods, so is it so terrible to look for a bloke that will indulge her love of gardening?
After they meet, the author uses Lily’s social awkwardness to generate lots of silly wrong assumptions on the heroine’s part when it comes to Henry’s motives. Again, I’d never understand a romance heroine’s so-called desperation to get married that sees her at the same time acting like she’s some perfect ten looking for the hottest and most acceptable bloke in the universe to come find her.
The author also uses Henry’s purported social awkwardness to add on to the marathon of bad assumptions and wrong conclusions, making me wonder how Henry and Lily would even make it through their first week of honeymoon without completely falling apart because one of them believes that the other is looking at them funny and that’s a clear sign that they are never meant to be.
Anyway, the author has a bouncy, upbeat narrative style that makes this story an easy one to breeze through in a single sitting. Had the main characters been less of silly brats playing at being grown-ups, I may have enjoyed myself considerably. Alas, Henry and especially Lily are two immature, whiny pretzels acting like the solar system orbits around them, so there’s that.
