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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
What? No Zero Stars?, 14 Aug 2001
By A Customer
There are no words to describe how cruddy this book is. Sure I read it - the way you do when you've paid good money for something and don't want it to go completely to waste. But it was like wearing a pair of shoes that pinch and and rub at the heels but seemed a 'good idea' in the shop, that is to say, it was painful and I wished I hadn't bothered. It's set in early 19th century England, in a London square but My fair Lady it ain't. It's the story of Sibyl Smiles a twenty-eight year old spinster (yes, you would have been described like that at twenty eight in those days), who wants a baby but is not keen on having a husband and goes about examining her options, not least with her sexy neighbour Hunter. I am well aware that Ms Cameron, intended this to be a humours read (The narrative being provided by what I can only assume to be a particularly witty ghost, it indication enough), but I'm not sure if she (Ms Cameron not the ghost) is laughing with the readers or at us. The Suspense (yes, there is a bone crunchingly boring subplot of "murder and intrigue") is page-skippingly long, and the naive but supposedly endearing heroine made my fingers itch to reach back in time and slap her 'til she fainted. Showing a total disrespect for those who, in the past fought to make a difference in the plight of future generations of women, doesn't make for a good read it make for a shallow, silly insulting read. That unmarried women made it their lives work to get a look at the males' sex is inaccurate and pathetic and worst of all for a humerous book unfunny. Her laughs are cheap but they come at a high price. I am not saying that the theme of sexual liberation cannot be fitting subjects for humor, in fact I'll give Ms Cameron that much, it's really quite a good idea for a romantic historical novel and done well you could have had numerious sexy and funny situations that illustrated the gap between the sexes and the clash between tradition and liberation that marked the 19th century, but the characters in this book are cardboard, cliche ridden and/or irritating, some of the bedroom (or should I say boudoir) scenes down right disturbing and the plot monstously improbable. I've read and enjoyed straigh forward 'bodice ripping bossom heaving' historical romance novels before but this novel was too pretentious to be anything but annoying.
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