Reading Impostress was like taking a lukewarm bath: not particularly enjoyable, but not exactly painful, either. And like a lukewarm bath, it was hard to get too excited about it, or even really remember much about it afterward. This book is one of the most generic romances I’ve ever read, despite being set in both an interesting time (13th century) and an interesting place (Wales).

Kiera of Lawenydd is a young girl whose personality basically seems to be that she is nicer than her older sister, Elyn, although she is just as pretty (the two look as similar as identical twins, and people get confused as to which is which). Elyn is a selfish girl who is madly in love with a guy she knows cheats on her, but who can make her get all hot and bothered and lose her sense as she loses her clothing. Their father, another romance cliché, is a verging-on-doddering lord (with conveniently bad eyesight) who arranges a marriage between Elyn and powerful lord Kelan of Penbrooke in order to make sure Lawenydd is kept safe after he dies. Since Kiera owes Elyn a favor from a few years back, Elyn asks her sister to assume her place in the wedding ceremony and the wedding night so Elyn can have one more night with Brock, the love of her life. Kiera refuses, but Elyn runs off anyway, forcing Kiera to go through with the masquerade.

Elyn’s plan is that Kiera will put a sleeping potion into Kelan’s wine and sprinkle pig’s blood on the sheets so that Kelan will assume the marriage has been consummated, while Kiera remains a virgin. Elyn will then sneak back into the castle and switch places with her sister after enjoying her last night of passion with Brock. Naturally, this plan does not work. First of all, Kelan is not as easily drugged as Kiera would like, and dopey Kiera ends up having sex with her new brother-in-law. (Welsh law supposedly says that saying the woman’s name makes a marriage binding, not the consummation, so Elyn is married to Kelan despite what he does with Kiera). Elyn does not return as planned the next day, and Kiera has to keep Kelan holed up in their bedroom so that no-one figures out he’s with the wrong sister. You can probably figure out how they spend their time. Yup, she’s having elegiac sex with her brother-in-law, while also frantically trying to figure out where Elyn has gotten to, and dodging anyone who isn’t in on the secret.

Kelan is, as far as I can tell, a young man with a temper and a ferocious sexual appetite. He is astounded at his new wife’s capacity for passion, but since he is also very concerned about his dying mother, he hauls Kiera away from her home and brings her to Penbrooke (but not without having frequent sex with his new bride). There, Kiera wrestles with whether or not to tell Kelan she is not who he thinks she is.

Unless you subscribe to the theory that sexual communion makes a working, complete relationship, it’s awfully hard to figure out why Kiera and Kelan fall in love. They don’t talk much, he knows she is hiding something, she knows he is her brother-in-law – how could they possibly fall in love? Kiera’s thoughts echo mine when, halfway through the book, she thinks: “In love? With this stranger? A man I barely know? My sister’s husband?” The setting is equally generic; there was no indication, except for the y’s and ll’s littering (or is that llytteryng?) everyone’s names that the action took place in Wales.

The secondary characters, though clichés, actually had one personality trait to identify, unlike Kiera and Kelan. There’s the old nurse who has magical powers; the giggly younger sister; the horny bastard who dupes Elyn; his shrewish, skinny fiancée; and the sycophantic priest. That said, however, Jackson’s writing style is pleasant enough, and she doesn’t drag out the action unnecessarily. Even after the first few sexual encounters, she doesn’t describe Kelan and Kiera’s bedroom activity with more than a phrase indicating they’ve just had another tryst.

Impostress is a bland, painless-to-read book that is hard to recall once the last page has been turned. Like that lukewarm bath, it’s not something you would ardently wish for, nor is it actively painful to experience.