It took me a long time to read Love Me Again because the manuscript I had was bound in such a way that I constantly had to twist and turn it to follow the pages. My cat thought this was great fun and her batting at the pages only added to my reading problems. But even if the book had been beautifully bound, I still would have had problems. The writing style suffered from adjectivitis extremis, the characters were more posturing dolls than flesh and blood people, and the story itself was distasteful. Here’s a turkey, just in time for Thanksgiving.

Christina and her husband Varek, Archduke of Austenberg, are soulmates and deeply devoted to each other. But there is a problem, a big one. Christine has had six miscarriages, and the duchy needs an heir. So, much against his own wishes, Varek divorces Christina, marries another woman and gets her pregnant. She dies in childbirth, but Varek has his heir, a daughter. He then proceeds to take a string of mistresses, all the while pining for his “lark.”

Christina made her way to England where she married Robert, Viscount Basingstoke, the brother of the Duke of Kerkston (like so many historical romances, the titles are wrong here). She and Robert, while not madly in love, get along well enough and they have a son, Eddie. When Robert goes as a delegate to the Congress of Vienna, Christina accompanies him and runs into Varek again.

Varek has got to be the most unlikable, overbearing, egomaniacal, over the top alpha jerk since Rosemary Rogers’ Steve Morgan. At one point he blames Christina for his problems with his current mistress Sofia. If Christina had only waited for his second wife to die, he would not have had to dismiss Sofia and put up with her tantrums. Varek says he loves Christina; all through the book he goes on and on about how she is his soulmate and his lark, but his attitude toward her is overbearing and cruel. He continues to stalk Christina after he discovers she’s married, all the while brooding – how dare she marry, doesn’t she know she is his?!! Naturally this does not sit well with Robert, and I didn’t blame him one bit.

Christina is a wimp. She trembles and sighs, wrings her hands, broods, and worries. About halfway through the book, my attitude of mild distaste toward her changed to real dislike. Christina is one of the principals in a lavish tournament given at the Congress of Vienna. The author’s tendency to adjectivitis actually worked here as she described the lavish costumes and pageantry. There was some nice sexual tension going on as well. Just as I was beginning to enjoy the book, Christina got stinking drunk while the ladies around her talked quite crudely of their lovers’ sexual prowess. My good feelings toward the book disappeared and never came back.

Christina stays in a state of nerves. Varek is always there, but if she goes back to him, she faces the loss of her child. At one point in the story, Christina goes into a wild rant about how if she gives in to her “selfish desires” she “won’t give a damn about my child back home.”

Slight pause while I scratch my head and ponder.

Nope – it still makes no sense.

I felt sorry for Robert – he wasn’t a bad man and did not deserve to be a cuckold. Varek and Christina soulmates? Who cares! This selfish and annoying couple most definitely deserved each other; the only positive I can imagine about their being together is that they will no longer be able to inflict themselves on hapless others. The only happiness I derived from reading Love Me Again came when I closed the book and tossed it in the trash. This is Wendy Burge’s first romance – the next is bound to be an improvement.