Book #48: Edenbrooke by Julianne Donaldson

I emailed my sisters-in-law and told them about the two Mr. Darcy books I read last week, and got a few good book recommendations in return from them. Kristen said she was reading this one, and that it was a Jane Austen-esque novel and that it was "heartpoundingly romantic!" So of course I requested it at the library and read it tonight while Tommy was at Priesthood session. (Yeah, it was that quick! I love it when books go by that fast.) It's a Regency-era romance novel, with a modern style and plot pacing. Boy meets girl, boy likes girl, girl doesn't like boy, girl falls in love with boy, something bad happens, boy saves girl, boy and girl get engaged. That's basically the whole plot. It was a cute story, and I liked the main character, Marianne, even though she kept saying how she was so plain but her love interest is always telling her how he thinks she's so beautiful. Stop being all boring and talking about how ugly you are all the time, Marianne!

The one thing about this book was that it all seemed very cliche. I knew what was going to happen before it happened. And I wasn't really convinced about why Philip should have fallen in love with Marianne so quickly and desperately in the first place. After about three days of knowing each other, he was already writing her love letters about how much he loved her and blah blah blah. Not believable at all. And the most un-believable part was the plotline about the guy who first dressed up as a highwayman and tried to kidnap Marianne for her newfound inheritance, and then randomly came to her house and called on her and proposed to her, and then eventually kidnapped her and stole her away. Seriously? That was completely unconvincing to me and seemed so random and out of place. I think the whole story would have been stronger without any of that extra random added drama that the author clearly just included to make it move along faster or something like that.

But all in all, I liked the book (really, I did!). Even though some of the dialogue made me cringe and some of the story was kind of out there, I liked the characters and I'll be happy thinking about them and the story for the rest of the evening at least.