No. 72: Dreaming of You

Dreaming of You by Lisa Kleypas

Since the other Lisa Kleypas books I have read lately were so good, I thought I would try some of her older historical novels. This one...I don't know how I feel about it yet. The beginning was kind of irritating, the middle was good, and the end, oh the end. It could have gone so well and then there was an incident. An incident that is to me, so ewww, that I can't get over it and now I don't like the book anymore. I got so worked up about this book I have a feeling this is going to be a very long post :)

But let me begin at the beginning. The FMC is Sara, an author who researches her books by going into the undesirable areas of London to interview prostitutes and gamblers. On on research trip she comes across a man being attacked in an alley. She attempts to scare off the attackers by firing her gun, but ends up shooting one of the bad guys. The other ones run away and she is left with an injured man with nice clothes and an atrocious cockney accent. This is the irritating part, obviously to convey to the reader that the character has an accent she has to kind of spell it out. I hate that - I can use my imagination. Just say he has a cockney accent. I watch tv, I know what that sounds like. You don't have to say "It's close enow to 'ere." I get distracted by the accent and I don't pay attention to the words. So anyway, irritating beginning, but it gets better.

It turns out that the guy she rescued is Derek Craven - owner of the famous gaming hall Cravens. Rival of Jenners which makes several appearances in the other books I just read so that was nice. Anyway, he grew up in the streets - stealing and cleaning chimneys (when he was little obviously) blackmailing and worst of all - prostitution! As in, his club was bought with money he got for having sex with women. Wow.

So, Sara wants to hang around the club to do research for her book - Derek says no but since he is wounded she does it anyway. Oh, I forgot, a spiteful crazy ex-lover hired thugs to cut Dereks face after he left her. Again, wow.

So she is always hanging around and Derek realizes that he is in LUST with her, but that he is no good for her because of his bad past (prostitution and crime, etc) and so he tries to get her to go back home and leave him alone. But Sara is stupid, I mean in love, and so she decides to attend a masked ball at the club to trick Derek into kissing her. So she does, and she does, and they kiss and he realizes its her and they kiss some more, and then he gets all noble and sends her off.

She eventually ends up back home in her tiny village and becomes engaged to her weakling mama's boy boyfriend. But his controlling and creepy mother causes too much tension and they break off the engagement. That very day Sara receives an invitation to a house party from a woman she met in London, a close friend of Derek's. And she goes, and he is there! And he keeps his distance but it doesn't work and they end up engaged. And then married.

And assorted other stuff happens, including the return of the psycho face slashing ex-lover of Dereks, a kidnapping and arson. And then, at the very end, the epilogue. I usually love a good epilogue, I like to see that everyone is living happily ever after. But what I do not want to see/read/think about, is what happened in this epilogue. Specifically an unpalatable incident involving a nursing mother and marital relations. I will leave the details to your imagination. But ewwww. And I say that as a woman who nursed her babies for nearly 2 years each. Ewwwwwww.