Karen Hawkins and Holly Crawford, $0.99
Historical Romance, 2013
Katelyn Worthington, the widowed Countess of Tyndale, was as unconventional as her late husband, flaunting rules and such – or so I’m told by the authors. Her behavior here is strictly that of a useless heroine who needs everyone to cater to her and come to her rescue, even as she squeals that she’d rather die than to be a baggage to anyone but never actually dies, ugh. When her mother-in-law Amelia decided that, now that they had found an heir to the title (Katelyn’s only child with her husband is a daughter), Katelyn can bugger off now and leave the daughter to the care of Amelia, Kat does what every romance heroine does – flee. No, she can’t seek help from any kind relative, as that would be bad, she has to instead flounce from hotel to hotel looking for a room.
There is no room in any hotel, as Napoleon was recently Alba’ed and everyone with money has descended back to town to party. James Highbridge, hotel owner, finds her hot and her predicament pitiable, and so he decides to give her a room anyway even if that room is already booked by someone else. Plus, her connections may come useful (our hero assumes that our heroine is smart enough to be aware of any power she may have as a member of the aristocracy). He falls in love with her, marries her, and the threat of the evil granny evaporates just like that. Maybe the hero’s pee-pee is like what a tower of garlic bulbs is to vampires – plant one in, and every problem of the heroine flees in the opposite direction.
These characters are not well-developed, and neither is the romance, but I suppose that is to be expected from a story this short. But the heroine drives me nuts. She is connected to a duchess, but she refuses to seek this woman’s help in her fight against a mere dowager countess. It is the duchess who has to seek her out later on and wonder aloud why Kat never come seek her for a place to stay or for help. Why? Kat feels that she doesn’t want to bother anyone. And when Amelia threatens to loom over everyone, Kat naturally wants to flee and throws her daughter back to that mother-in-law… because she loves James and, I suppose, ditching her beloved daughter to a woman Kat feels would be terrible for her daughter is now preferable to ruining the reputation of her new boink-buddy. Kat is a terrible heroine and a horrible mother (so yes, the mother-in-law is right), and it galls me to see her being rewarded for her selfish quest of martyrdom with a happy ending, all her problems solved by other people because she doesn’t do anything to help herself.
Our heroine is indeed The Lucky One, but I can’t say the same for myself. Still, it’s only $0.99 down the drain, so in a way, I’m not that unlucky. Time to get some beer to celebrate.
