AUTHOR: Donna Dalton
PUBLISHER: The Wild Rose Press
LENGTH: Novel (roughly 73k)
GENRE: Historical romance
COST: $6.00
Kathryn Mitchell is trying to follow in her father’s footsteps and become an investigator. The only problem is, it’s 1886, and women just don’t have the opportunities she wants them to. Well, that’s not her only problem. There’s also the matter of Jamie Donovan, Pinkerton detective, getting in the way of her solving any of her cases in her trial employment with The Burr Agency. Charming and all too good at his job, Jamie pops up as she’s trying to recover stolen bank money, then again when she’s made to deliver it. A routine investigation turns into something more as they find themselves unwilling partners, hunting for a man for very different reasons…
I’ll admit I took a gamble on this one. The excerpt is embarrassingly short, less than 200 words, and meant to portray the banter and opening relationship between the hero and heroine but accomplishes very little else. But it didn’t make me cringe, and charming rogues are always fun, so I took a risk and bought this book anyway.
The opening is an action sequence where Kathryn is tracking the man who robbed the bank, but as far as action sequences go, I found it dry and uninspiring. I suppose the detail was there, but the characters didn’t pop and there wasn’t anything exciting enough about the prose to reel me in. That tone prevailed for much of the story’s length, and I suspect that it’s simply because this author’s voice doesn’t work for me. Technically, there aren’t enough errors to make it seem less than professional, and she certainly does her best to inject action into the romance, but in the end, I’m left with a general sense of blah about the whole thing.
Part of the problem stems from her heroine. Kathryn is probably the most inept investigator I’ve read in a while. It’s no wonder she can’t find employment. There’s one scene where she’s trailing the man they’re looking for, and she keeps on tripping or turning her ankle or falling flat on her face until she’s lost him. She ends up spraining her ankle, which apparently then gives her even more permission to be clumsy and for Jamie to wait on her, or catch her before she falls. It felt very much like a device rather than any organic part of her character. It especially worked against her in trying to make me believe she’s in any way competent enough to tackle the job.
The mystery itself is a bit of a mess. The author switches POV, usually between the hero and heroine, but occasionally to secondary characters, too. Early in the story, she jumps to the bad guy, but instead of naming him – because then there wouldn’t be the so-called fun of finding out who he is – she labels him The
In the end, this one is a miss for me.
| Readability | 7/10 – Uninspiring prose, though at least it’s mostly well edited |
| Hero | 6/10 – Predictable. Felt very paint by the numbers. |
| Heroine | 5/10 – Too dumb and accident-prone to be believable as a detective |
| Entertainment value | 5/10 –A jumble of a mystery plot that doesn’t invest the reader in what’s going on, added to a boring romance |
| World building | 6/10 – Mild attempts to create a historical atmosphere, but personalities and dialogue are disconcertingly modern in a lot of places |
| TOTAL: | 29/50 |
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