When You Give a Duke a Diamond by Shana Galen

WTH? So random, I love it.

Wow I really am avoiding Enraptured.  Okay I picked this one up for the silly title.  It all started so well, Strong beautiful woman who has escaped an abusive relationship and is now not afraid to be known as a courtesan.  Rigid, high and mighty duke who needs to loosen up before he can truly find enjoyment in his life, also emotionally abused by his father.

Too many words.  Do you remember Amadeus the movie, when the king or emperor or someone says that Mozart's opera has too many notes.  Well, that's not a really good parallel here but I am using that sentence somewhat facetiously.  Let's see, to put it more intelligently, the bones of good characterization are there, interesting back story, interesting setting (to me at least, English ton and all that) and basically good dialogue.  But it's all words, when it comes to actions, things just seem to happen regardless of how much they each think or talk about what their next action should be, (Duke: "I will protect you no matter what! What!" then she is kidnapped off the grounds of the estate that he has hired a bunch of people to be patrolling.)  Then even with much angsty thinking and talking to friends, the character revelation moments still seem to happen in like a half of a page.  (Heroine: "I am a rock, nothing gets to me.  Except this trunk in the attic which I am now suddenly crying over.")

In the end I DNF, got so close because when I'm trying to review, I feel a responsibility to really give a book the old college try, but this one just wore me down.  Ugh.

Like many books I've been reading lately, the writing itself was fine, just plotting and characterization weren't terrific.

Regency Historical Romance 2012: 2 out of 5 glittering diamonds of the first water.