I want to start off with the positive here. Wendy Burge is a talented writer with a real knack for telling an emotional and involving story.

But, regretfully, in While You Slept her deft writerly hand is completely overwhelmed by a melodramatic plot, a hero who exhibits an unnatural patience that takes him completely out of the human realm and into all-out sainthood, and a heroine who goes from total doormat into a state of what can only be called toxic feistiness.

The circumstances of Katherine, Viscountess Halsingham’s, life are unrelievedly miserable. Controlled since birth by a sadistic, abusive father and forced to marry a shallow pretty-boy who can’t bring himself to bed her, Katherine’s only solace is food – cold comfort, indeed, that has left her carrying an extra 100 pounds in body weight.

Ordered by her father to follow her husband to London (the first time she has ever left the family estate) and get herself pregnant, her carriage suffers a severe accident, one that leaves her companion and her coachman dead and Katherine, herself, in a coma. The accident scene is discovered by one Sion Sinclair, Marquess of Dereham, who takes the sleeping Katherine to his decaying home.

Slowly but surely drinking himself to death due to guilt over the demise of his wife (Now, where have I read that one before?), Sion and his crusty-but-benign Scots housekeeper care for the sleeping Katherine for some months, during which the pounds simply melt away. When she finally awakens, she finds herself being cared for by people she’s never met and doesn’t know – but, miracle of miracles – she’s both free of her father and, for the first time in her life, actually thin.

Much to Sion’s surprise, the hours he spends caring for Katherine relieve him (if only temporarily) of his unrelenting guilt and pain. Even better, the need to look after the newly awakened Katherine lead the broken-hearted nobleman to stop drinking and focus his considerable time and attention on the problems of his former patient.

The sordid tale of Katherine’s life (no big misunderstandings here and no amnesia, thank heaven) lead the sympathetic Sion to help Katherine develop a plan to remain free and still gain control of her fortune. The now beautiful Katherine will pose as the fictitious Danae, Sion’s lover and an Italian countess who supposedly cared for Katherine in the final days before her death. Grateful for her care, the now-dead Katherine left her entire fortune to her benefactor Danae. Of course, the challenges they face in pulling this off are immense -especially since both Katherine’s greedy husband and worthless father must believe in the fact of Katherine’s death and, of course, accept at face value the beautiful Danae.

Let me say that I very much like the idea of the heroine evolving from downtrodden and unhappy into a strong and confident woman. But, unfortunately, that’s not what happens here since the downtrodden and unhappy heroine evolves into a spoiled brat who needs someone with a strong hand and a willingness to call for a few time-outs far more than she needs a hero.

On the other hand, the reclusive Sion evolves over the course of the story from a morbidly depressed alcoholic into a man madly, passionately in love with the beautiful Danae. The man is so in love, in fact, that he ends up displaying time and time again the kind of saintly patience with Danae’s antics that, believe it or not, actually seem emasculating. It’s sad, but true.

And, in a prime example of both good and bad existing side by side in this book, the totally over-the-top Coma Diet (Kids, don’t try this at home.) leads to one segment that I found especially effective. When Katherine initially awakens, Sion and his housekeeper encourage the painfully thin heroine to eat, leading her to put on the few pounds she needs to take her to a healthy weight. But anyone who has always used food as a crutch in life and who achieved her weight loss so unexpectedly, can hardly have a healthy attitude towards food. Terrified by her weight gain, Katherine quite realistically virtually stops eating. I think it’s completely believable that someone in her situation would develop an eating disorder, and I liked Sion for the way he handled it.

But what I didn’t like were all the melodramatic goings on. For 479 long pages the reader is subjected to unbelievably villainous villains, abductions and attempted abductions, a child in hideous peril, an attempted rape, and, always, always, always the tempestuous doings of the supposedly irresistible Danae who speaks in an Italian dialect that is – ‘ow you say? – annoying, irritating, maddening, aggravating, infuriating, and unrelentingly cutesy.

With all that said, however, and even though I spent much of the time rolling my eyes, Wendy Burge kept my attention for a good portion of the book. But despite the fact that her storytelling skills are formidable, While You Slept is too long – at least 100 pages too long – and eventually she lost me.

Frankly, the exaggerated and histrionic goings-on here were simply far, far too much for my taste. Considering her clearly evident writing skills, I hope that Burge will consider writing a romance – not a melodrama – her next time out.