soph (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sophia_sol) wrote2017-07-08 08:03 pm
sophia_sol) wrote2017-07-08 08:03 pm
A Queen From The North, by Erin McRae and Racheline Maltese
Another book that I wanted to like more than I actually did. It's a perfectly fine book, but I don't love it.
This is a modern-era romance novel, which wouldn't usually really be my thing, but this one is set in an alternate-history world, so I thought it would still contain enough of that delicious world-unlike-my-own content that I like to read about in books. The AU is that the war of the roses between York and Lancaster never exactly went away.
But it turned out that the only way this was really relevant is that the north and the south of Britain hate each other rather more violently than they do in our world, which allowed for the romance to be about a political marriage between a northerner and the southern prince. The book wasn't really interested in actually spending much time exploring the ways in which this world is different from ours.
The political-marriage premise had promise for me too, because I like that kind of story about two people who don't really know each other being put into a position of having to get to know and trust each other in a close relationship, but the book didn't really focus a lot on that aspect either. I never felt like I really got to see the characters learning to like each other and know each other - Amelia was discovering she loved Arthur while I still thought their entire relationship (and Arthur's personality) was a bit of a cipher. I felt like the book couldn't quite decide between being about them marrying for love or marrying for politics, and so the focus for both was diluted and neither worked for me.
And all in all I just wasn't personally charmed by the characters or the story, which is the most subjective measure of all.
The book is competently done, and for someone with different tastes than me I'm sure this book would appeal. But it's not for me, alas. And I was so excited for it going in!
(Also, and this is totally cosmetic and not the fault of the authors, I'm unimpressed with the copyeditor for this book. There were a lot of mistakes.)
This is a modern-era romance novel, which wouldn't usually really be my thing, but this one is set in an alternate-history world, so I thought it would still contain enough of that delicious world-unlike-my-own content that I like to read about in books. The AU is that the war of the roses between York and Lancaster never exactly went away.
But it turned out that the only way this was really relevant is that the north and the south of Britain hate each other rather more violently than they do in our world, which allowed for the romance to be about a political marriage between a northerner and the southern prince. The book wasn't really interested in actually spending much time exploring the ways in which this world is different from ours.
The political-marriage premise had promise for me too, because I like that kind of story about two people who don't really know each other being put into a position of having to get to know and trust each other in a close relationship, but the book didn't really focus a lot on that aspect either. I never felt like I really got to see the characters learning to like each other and know each other - Amelia was discovering she loved Arthur while I still thought their entire relationship (and Arthur's personality) was a bit of a cipher. I felt like the book couldn't quite decide between being about them marrying for love or marrying for politics, and so the focus for both was diluted and neither worked for me.
And all in all I just wasn't personally charmed by the characters or the story, which is the most subjective measure of all.
The book is competently done, and for someone with different tastes than me I'm sure this book would appeal. But it's not for me, alas. And I was so excited for it going in!
(Also, and this is totally cosmetic and not the fault of the authors, I'm unimpressed with the copyeditor for this book. There were a lot of mistakes.)