DNF: Three Historicals

My favorite genre, yet even I couldn't stand some of the books.

First of all, I love Mary Balogh. I devoured her Bedwyn series even the off-shoot "Simply" series. I've also read Irresistible, one of her older works where the hero fell in love with his friend's widow. I thought it was good. However, try as I might, I couldn't get into Dark Angel, another older work which was reprinted together with Lord Carew's Bride. I thought the story, especially the beginning, dragged, maybe due to overdescription of settings and the heroine, Jennifer Winwood, didn't catch my imagination at all.


Julia Quinn is a favorite of mine for her humor and ability to make me laugh out loud. Unfortunately, I don't know what happened with this book, which seems to be missing the trademark Julia Quinn humor that I greatly suspect it's not written by her at all! Gasp! Or maybe I was used to her ballroom-gracing heroines that I had a hard time accepting Grace Eversleigh, companion to the grandmother of the duke.

Jack, the hero, didn't endear himself to me at all. I admit to being more intrigued with Thomas (the displaced duke) and his romance with Amelia (the woman betrothed to the duke). And so, my complaint: Why does the hero always have to end up the duke (or marquis or earl)? Couldn't he have remained a mere mister, since that is what he and the heroine wanted anyway?

I also have this nasty habit of reading the ending, so I saw that after Jack became the duke, the dowager duchess was sent to live in a far corner of the estate, because of her formidable and unreasonable temper. Thomas, though he didn't have much affection for his grandmother, still went to visit her sometimes. (I sincerely think he should have been the duke.) Whereas Jack even told Grace she didn't have to visit the dowager duchess anymore, though she did once a month. I think it's safe to say that Jack didn't even visit his grandmother at all. Which led me to the question: Why? Why did he dislike her so? If not for her, he wouldn't have been the duke. Maybe that was the reason? Or maybe there's something that concerns his father? For as I had said, I didn't read the middle part of the book, so maybe that's where the juicy meat is hiding. But like the other books, didn't care to read to find out.

Kathryn Caskie is a new-to-me author. I liked Love Is In the Heir. I thought it has humor and an original hero. However, How to Engage an Earl didn't engage me at all. After reaching the part where Anne Royle got betrothed to the earl (fairly early in the book), I realized I didn't care enough about Anne or the hero to read further. Anne seemed to be one of the daughters from the secret union of the Prince Regent and a Catholic woman, and they were searching for some document to prove (or disprove) it, but I'm not so sure exactly what and I didn't care to find out.

It's really sad when a book makes me apathetic this way. Must be the weather or my lousy choice in books that I picked up three DNF's in a period of one week.