The only thing I unequivocally like is the title; everything else in Ms. Dare’s debut positively begs equivocation.

Take the genre, for instance. Is it a character-driven romance about our heroine, Lily Rutledge, who goes to her nephew’s guardian for help and ends up trying to discover what kind of man she married? Is it a soul-stirring quasi-gothic tale of a werewolf in duke’s clothes who learns to accept who he is? is it an ensemble comedy with modern sitcom moments to appeal to those who like their Regency historicals mega-ultra-lite?

The answer is none of the above, or rather, bits of all the above, and in not settling on one tone the book becomes overly simplistic. Ms. Dare adds nothing – and I mean nothing – to the werewolf sub-genre, preferring to stick to the tried-and-true moon-howling, mate-claiming, lycanthropic-naming clichés with which readers are too familiar. And then there’s the prose, which is a Where’s Waldo of romance clichés: “Rhythm as old as time”, p. 212. And the hero’s title – Simon, Duke of Blackmoor? Please.

What is promising is the fact that although Lily and Simon are not so much stock characters as stickers, Ms. Dare unaccountably makes them moderately enjoyable. Lily never breaks her generic mode, but Simon becomes more light hearted in the second half. And there’s something undeniably comforting about an utterly predictable, unambitious, average story about a man who learns to Be Himself with the love of a good woman.

But not for me, thank you very much.