Reviewer Comments: I was looking forward to this book by Celeste Bradley. The premise of the book sounding intriguing and unique. Unfortunately, it didn’t live up to the promise of a great love story. Orion Worthington hates the chaos of his family. He would much rather live in an ordered environment with structure. That isn’t to say that he hates his family, he does love them, but the chaos associated with them can go. Orion is thrilled when he is offered an assistant position with his mentor, Sir Geoffrey Blayne. Orion knows that his association with Sir Geoffrey will help him get into the Royal Fraternity of Life Science where he can build a reputation as a great scientist. Francesca Penrose has moved to England from Italy to live in her uncle’s house. She hopes to find a place where she belongs and where she can work on her own scientific pursuits. Unfortunately, all she seems to do is create chaos in her uncle’s house. She does find his new assistant quite intriguing but learning that Orion is meant to marry her cousin makes her attraction to him all the more difficult. This synopsis makes it sound like a great book and it certainly has its wonderful moments, but overall, I found that the story just dragged. The whole “will they/won’t they” question seemed to take forever to get moving and then it just alternated between sexy scenes and angst scenes. Neither Francesca nor Orion really made any kind of move to take the story forward. You would think that with all of Francesca’s bucking of the female standard in Regency England things would have been a little more decided. Instead, the characters agree to one night which of course isn’t enough and only adds to the continuation of the anxiety. I have read other books that can move the story forward without all of this back and forth. Ms. Bradley seemed to stall in her storytelling and then she throws in blackmail, intellectual theft and the embarrassment of a mentor. Everything just felt too forced and didn’t seem to flow in a natural storytelling way. I know that this is probably not a popular opinion and as I said there were some great moments in the story. I was just expecting more and was disappointed when that expectation wasn’t met by the actual story. I haven’t read any other of Ms. Bradley’s books so I don’t know if this is just her style of writing or if this book is unusual for her. I would give her books another chance to find out.
