Atunah's Romance Haus

I am a bit split on this one. It started out charming and witty. I loved the heroine, loved the hero. I was intrigued by his invention of the "Difference Engine", for which he was trying to get investors.

It was nice to see him fall in love with the proclaimed Wallflower, one of "London's Least likely" as her and her friends were labelled by the ton. The games at the house party were fun and to see him "see" her and like her was nice.

But what I didn't like was her hanging on to the dream with the other man that after 3 years still hadn't proposed. Until the end she kept hanging on to that and thinking she might still love that one a bit. It was getting very annoying. Went on way to long. So the misunderstanding at the end in addition to that was just a bit much.

The first half was delightful, the second was a bit grating.

I did like the authors note on the real inventor of the difference engine and how they created it 200 years after for the first time and the thing actually worked. That was something else that was missing a bit from the novel. The hero duke was portrayed in the beginning to have somewhat of a mathematical mind and look at things like that. That seemed to have been completely dropped later on and that disappointed me. I thought I had a geeky duke on my hands.

Its interesting that there is a novel set in contemporary time that uses the same plot line. The author is splitting the stories and making one historial and one modern. I might check out the contempo version just for fun.

I  have read several books by this author and really like them so it is mostly a matter of characters and their actions I have issues with.