Caroline Linden, $6.99, ISBN 978-0-9971494-8-7
Historical Romance, 2017

Caroline Linden’s Map of a Lady’s Heart was originally part of an anthology called At the Christmas Wedding, a kind of anthology that has all the stories inside linked in some way. Fortunately for me, as I haven’t cracked open that anthology—wait, do I even have that one buried in the mountain of unread books in my place?—this one stands alone pretty well.

Wesley Morane, Lord Winterton, is paying the Duke of Wessex a visit. Yes, Wes is visiting Wessex. Sadly, not for sex, or “Wes is visiting Wessex for sex” would have been a most poetic kind of description ever.

No, he has finagled an invitation from Wessex to have a look at an atlas called the Desnos. Wes doesn’t intend to just waste a trip to Kingstag Castle in Dorset just to look at the atlas, however. His late father once possessed the Desnos, so Wes intends to spend this visit convincing Wessex to sell him the atlas.

Unfortunately, he has to bring his surly cousin along. Justin, the newly minted Viscount Newton, has found some unruly friends and getting into a whole lot of trouble, so Lord Newton’s mom pleaded to Wes to bring her son along to keep that kid out of trouble.

Justin is the least of his troubles. He arrives at Kingstag Castle just in time to be snowed in there, but that’s not all. The Duke of Wessex is not in; the fellow had accompanied his wife in a family medical emergency. There is also a small party going on, which isn’t a source of cheer because the dowager duchess is ill, so the host is a lovelorn newly jilted older sister of the duchess that is barely paying attention.

This means that the party is run by the unruly and mischievous younger sisters, and the presence of a newly minted single viscount among a bunch of ladies bent on causing trouble could mean… more trouble—trouble that could very well enrage Wessex and cause Wes to never ever have any chance of getting the Desnos back in his family ever again.

Fortunately, for once, there is a responsible adult in the house: the duchess’s personal secretary Viola Chambers, a cousin to the family by marriage. Also, Wes believes that should he able to befriend the widowed Viola, she may be able to give him some insight into the duke that can help him to convince the duke to sell him the atlas.

I’m sure we all know where this story is heading, don’t we?

Reading this one is like attending a gathering with familiar faces. Oh, there’s that saucy aunt that claims to have a spicy past and would like the heroine to spice things up with the hero. There’s the lovelorn young lady, and the young lady chasing for adventures, and another young lady similarly yearning for excitement.

Wait, where’s the bluestocking? I thought every story of this sort needs a beautiful bluestocking with a daddy complex. Did she fall down a hole somewhere and people just forgot about her because she is so boring?

Anyway, the absence of a bluestocking is the author’s sole bucking of the trend here, because the rest of the story is on the cookie cutter side.

That’s not to say that this is a bad thing. The story is a pleasant diversion, and the hero is likable. The author knows her way around the genre, so the story is a very readable one with nice touches of humor to keep things lively.

Then there is the heroine. Sadly, she is the most forgettable thing about this story, because her entire personality boils down to being a walking excuse to prolong an otherwise short and uncomplicated romance. No, she can’t fall in love, because she needs her job—even if her insisting on a job is solely something of her own doing; Wessex is happy to take her in as she is—or her brother, her sole reason for whining living, may have to do ghastly things like taking care of himself for once and that won’t do, oh no.

Considering that all her whining is pointless because Wessex isn’t firing her or evicting her and her brother out anytime soon, Viola is one of those tragic dingbats whose uncomfortable circumstances are entirely of her making so it’s hard for me to have patience with, much less empathize with, this drab and forgettable creature.

In fact, I sometimes forget she exists when she’s not in a scene, only to groan when she shows up because she can be a potent party pooper.

So, this is a pleasant read, with a pretty fun hero that for some inexplicable reason would want to shackle himself to a boring mopey mop after just a few days of acquaintance. Wes, and all of us, can do better than that, surely.