By the time I was a quarter of the way through Laurie Benson’s An Unexpected Countess, I regretted offering to review it. It was turning out to be a death-of-a-thousand-cuts book, not one with a major stumbling block, but instead one that provides a fresh small annoyance on every page. I’d even selected a quote that summed up the novel’s problems.
"It was probably the vicar. His dog probably needed to go out," Hart said, explaining his theory to her.
But an odd thing happened just after the halfway point. I started to like the hero, and the book became more readable. It gave me a glimpse of how an interesting story might have developed with a longer format, not to mention better editing. This turnaround wasn’t enough to make me want to pick up any of the other books in the Secret Lives of the Ton series, but at least I finished with a slightly more positive feeling.
An Unexpected Countess begins when Hart - the Earl of Hartwick - leaves a tryst with a married woman, climbs on to the roof to avoid her husband and finds someone he recognizes sitting up there. Miss Sarah Forrester is the daughter of an American diplomat, and is wearing men’s garb that’s thoroughly soaked from the rain, giving Hart an opportunity to ogle her.
She doesn’t tell him what she’s doing there, but it turns out she’s trying to locate a diamond in a convoluted scheme. Her parents believe her brother died a patriot, but a blackmailer has a letter proving he wasn’t, and wants the diamond in exchange for it. If Sarah can get her hands on a certain bracelet, she’ll learn the location of a key which will lead to the lost diamond which she’ll give the blackmailer.
Presumably he will then say, “Fair’s fair”, hand over the letter and never bother her again.
As for Hart, he spends his time gambling and bedding married women, because early on it was clear a childhood tragedy turned him into the usual Rake Who Will Never Love. But in a startling coincidence, Prinny recruits him to find a certain lost diamond. Hart and Sarah bump into each other on a regular basis during the day, since their best friends are the hero and heroine of a previous book - happily married and with an adorable baby, of course - but now they start meeting at night too, much to their mutual surprise.
While this wasn’t exactly a fresh setup, what sank the ship for me was the writing, which included frequent repetition. And the exclamation points in the narrative gave it a hyper, trying-too-hard feel.
Pink! There was no pink!
and
He was a rake. A big, arrogant, insufferable - rake!
Hart constantly thinks of getting Sarah’s legs wrapped around his waist, pushing her up against a wall, pounding into her, etc. Since I felt nothing for either of them, this was less than arousing.
The shortness of the story also meant a lot of information had to be delivered fast. The result is paragraphs of often stilted conversation, and I sometimes had the impression of talking heads trying to stuff all the required plot points into the page. Especially when Hart is speaking to his father, it’s unrealistic that two people who are well aware of each other’s faults and know which buttons to press should spell out what they’re going to do to each other.
But the second half of the book was better. The focus shifted to Hart’s and Sarah’s relationship, rather than the wretched diamond, and Sarah cut down on her exclamations of “lud!” Which isn’t to say she became any more likeable:
When she married - if she married - she would pretend she was untouched.
So after having sex with Hart, she plans to lie to her future husband. Hart, on the other hand, became more sympathetic as he confronted his father about the long-simmering animosity between them. I enjoyed this part of the story, and would have liked to see more of it. As for the father, he’s vicious enough to be unpredictable and interesting (plus, I prefer it when morally deficient characters aren’t presented as heroes or heroines).
In the end, An Unexpected Countess climbed out of the D trench but didn’t rise much further. Fans of the series might enjoy this, especially since characters from the previous books make frequent appearances. I can’t recommend it to anyone else, but I might try a longer novel by this author - giving the romance space to flex its wings helped, even if it couldn’t completely salvage the story.
Sensuality: Warm
Publication Date: 05/2017
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