Scarsdale Publishing, $0.99, ISBN 979-8201326357
Historical Romance, 2017
Francine Conway, the heroine of Summer Hanford’s To Know a Lord’s Kiss, is in her third season, still unwed despite the obvious interest of Baron Erwin Bailey—wait, is Baron his first name or a title?—because you know how heroines can be.
They’d rather be a perpetual burden to their family instead of marrying a bloke that doesn’t profess to love them and only them, because that’s the height of selfishness purity! We all know if a woman does otherwise, she’s a certified ho, and in the genre, there is no greater sin a mortal could ever commit than to be a female ho. So, Francine’s an awesome person, alright?
I mean, she’s rude and insufferable to the bloke that is just trying to be nice to her, but that’s all in the name of not being a ho. Francine is so stunning and brave!
Roll with it, people, or else we’ll never be able to get through this thing without a causing few heads out there to explode.
Anyway, we need some forced circumstance to force Francine to get married, as the virtuous seeker of true and pure love obviously isn’t going to do anything on her own. So here comes the plot: alas, rumors start circulating that Francine snogged a duke during the previous season, and since she remains unwed, that means she is… gasp, ruined. Oh my god, people now think she’s a ho, and that’s the worst thing ever!
Our heroine spends a while whining about how she’s expected to conform to the rules of Polite Society, until Bailey the Baron tells her that he loves her, and then she’s like “Ooh! Yes!”
Ugh, couldn’t he just tell her earlier and spare me the tedium of having to read this thing?
Why would Erwin the Baron love this selfish, immature, and unpleasant sour melon? I have no idea. What does it mean to Francine that he loves her, when I don’t see much indication that she loves him back? I guess it’s enough that she has a man that tells her the three words, because love is all about her, her, her and mentally she’s actually a spoiled five-year old.
The whole plot against Saint Francine the Love Me or Else is a machination of the mean Prudence, introduced in the previous story in the author’s A Lord’s Kiss series. Prudence is clearly meant by the author to be a loathsome villain, but come on, she’s ridding ballrooms of insufferable wretches like Francine and the moron in the previous story, thus making the social scene of Polite Society more joyous and pleasant.
How can anyone despise such an unsung hero?
