coffeeandink's review
1.0
Pickpocket Jenny Smith and impoverished lordling Benedict de Malorie have a one-night stand at Vauxhall, after which Jenny steals the Malorie Phoenix (a necklace) out of Benedict's pocket and finds herself pregnant. A year later, unable to sell the all-too-recognizable gem and believing she's dying, Jenny leaves her baby with Benedict, the child's swaddling clothes holding the gem. Seven years later, an untrustworthy stranger asks Jenny to impersonate Benedict's former fiancee. She agrees for the money and for the chance to see her daughter again, intending to retrieve the child.
As a first draft, this isn't so bad; as a novel, it's terrible. The pacing is choppy and the character logic strained; the erotic details seem odd and out of place, the sex scenes more detailed than anything else, but all the less plausible for the attention paid to them, so this doesn't work even as erotica. (Jenny and Benedict are both virgins, but he's confident when seducing her, and she thinks twice about the [monetary] value of virginity, then gives in anyway.) The unusual narrative decisions -- Jenny has been a rich man's mistress in the intervening seven years, loved her protector, enjoyed sex (but he was old and unhandsome, because Benedict has to be better in some respects) -- just fall flat; there's no emotional weight to them. Benedict and Jenny make decisions about trusting or not trusting each other that have no impact on their later actions; Jenny knows her daughter's in danger but is passive in protecting her; a climactic confrontation in which Jenny betrays Benedict to save their daughter's life is recounted in summary.
I was impressed by Mullany's first novel, [b:Dedication|852550|Dedication|Janet Mullany|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1309209315s/852550.jpg|838054], but everything of hers I've tried since then has been a disappointment, either well-done but insubstantial ([b:The Rules of Gentility|1331047|The Rules of Gentility|Janet Mullany|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1182800973s/1331047.jpg|1320542]) or ambitious but appalling ([b:Forbidden Shores|1276765|Forbidden Shores|Jane Lockwood|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1266761379s/1276765.jpg|1265741]).
As a first draft, this isn't so bad; as a novel, it's terrible. The pacing is choppy and the character logic strained; the erotic details seem odd and out of place, the sex scenes more detailed than anything else, but all the less plausible for the attention paid to them, so this doesn't work even as erotica. (Jenny and Benedict are both virgins, but he's confident when seducing her, and she thinks twice about the [monetary] value of virginity, then gives in anyway.) The unusual narrative decisions -- Jenny has been a rich man's mistress in the intervening seven years, loved her protector, enjoyed sex (but he was old and unhandsome, because Benedict has to be better in some respects) -- just fall flat; there's no emotional weight to them. Benedict and Jenny make decisions about trusting or not trusting each other that have no impact on their later actions; Jenny knows her daughter's in danger but is passive in protecting her; a climactic confrontation in which Jenny betrays Benedict to save their daughter's life is recounted in summary.
I was impressed by Mullany's first novel, [b:Dedication|852550|Dedication|Janet Mullany|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1309209315s/852550.jpg|838054], but everything of hers I've tried since then has been a disappointment, either well-done but insubstantial ([b:The Rules of Gentility|1331047|The Rules of Gentility|Janet Mullany|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1182800973s/1331047.jpg|1320542]) or ambitious but appalling ([b:Forbidden Shores|1276765|Forbidden Shores|Jane Lockwood|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1266761379s/1276765.jpg|1265741]).
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