I’m always up for a good medieval romance, even though they’re proving harder and harder to find. The Last Bride is a time-travel romance rather than a straight medieval, but the setting (13th-century France) sounded most promising. It turned out to be a reasonable read, but also one that’s lacking in several areas.

Claire Peltier is a modern-day woman haunted by dreams of a man she believes she loved in a past life. Unable to have children, she was recently engaged to a man who was willing to deal with her infertility issues. But when she began to have dreams of her long-ago lover, she dumped her fiance, unwilling to settle for anything less than the passion evoked by her dream lover. She also happens to have a ghost who visits her on occasion. One night, the ghost visits her and opens a nearby magazine to a picture of the Ancient Labyrinth at the Chartres Cathedral in France. Taking this as a sign, she makes plans to go there.

Aiden Delacroix knows all about ghosts. A nobleman living in 1202, his life has been destroyed by the ghost of his former lover Cherise. Though he loved her, familial responsibility forced him to marry a noblewoman named Jeanne in order to regain his ancestral castle. All he could offer Cherise was the chance to be his mistress, an idea she immediately rejected. She died soon thereafter in a mysterious fire that some believe was suicide. Ever since, her ghost has made regular appearances around the castle. Jeanne died after falling down a staircase, purportedly frightened by the ghost. His second bride fled Delacroix after spotting the ghost on their wedding night, leaving the marriage unconsummated. Now no woman will have him. Without an heir or any reasonable expectation of having one, he stands to lose his beloved home after all. Hoping to appeal to divine intervention, he makes a pilgrimage to Chartres Cathedral. While walking the labyrinth there, he meets Claire.

Claire immediately recognizes him as the man she’s dreamed of all her life. At first she believes he is a modern person like herself, and is disappointed when he doesn’t seem to remember her too. Eventually, after a brief series of misunderstandings, she learns that she somehow traveled into the past. Certain that the events in Aiden’s life hold the key to her dreams, she travels with him back to his castle in search of answers.

While the story is not overly heavy on period detail, the medieval French setting is nicely evoked. The author has a nice writing style, and the story is smoothly told, making for an easy read that held my attention throughout. Aiden is a sympathetic tortured hero, treated with fear and disdain by those around him, torn between his emotions and his sense of responsibility. He’s not the deepest character, but I liked him.

On the other hand, Claire is barely developed at all. The reader learns little about her. Take a look at the paragraphs above describing their respective characters. There’s a reason one is substantially longer than the other, and a good indication of how developed their histories are. Even worse, she’s simply annoying, often coming across as far from the sharpest tool in the shed. When she arrives at the castle, she immediately starts jumping to conclusions about Aiden and the people there when she knows next to nothing about them. She makes some assumptions about the ghost based on the thinnest of reasoning. Then, when she later is confronted with the possibility that she might be wrong about the ghost, she puts off reconsidering her assumptions. Why? Because she doesn’t want to jump to conclusions. My eyes rolled so much from that one I got a headache. The story is mostly predictable, so it was often irritating watching her latch on to ideas that were obviously misguided, if not flat-out wrong. In the end, the whole truth about everything comes out and Claire thinks to herself, “Good God! How many times would she be wrong?” That line made me laugh out loud for all the wrong reasons.

This is a short book, which wouldn’t be a problem if it didn’t feel like it. The pacing seems off. There are times in the first half where it drags, especially the section where Claire doesn’t realize she’s in the past. It’s an inevitable revelation that’s delayed for too long, as Claire blunders along wondering why it’s so dark (because there’s no streetlamps) and why she can’t find her hotel (because it’s not there). Because of the slow pacing in the first half, the second half often feels rushed. While there are some nice moments, it zips along without developing the storyline or the secondary characters as much as they deserve. Also, the main conflict is glossed over. Aiden needs to produce a legitimate heir in order to hold on to his home. Claire is infertile. The reader knows both these facts early on, and it seems like a sizable conflict for them to overcome. The author puts off dealing with it until the very end, so the resolution seems pat and all too easy.

The Last Bride has an interesting setting and a sympathetic hero, but too many other weaknesses to be more than an average read.