McNaught's writing is first-rate, up there with Julie Garwood, Gaelen Foley, Mary Jo Putney, Susan Elizabeth Phillips, etc. So I am not going to criticize her writing in this book because it was indeed, as expected, first-rate.
So why only 3 stars? After reading "Paradise," I was excited about this one because it featured a similar storyline -- poor service boy from wrong side of tracks works his way up the corporate ladder and comes back to woo his high-society debutante childhood friend. While I felt the storyline was great, I didn't think McNaught did such a good job telling it. The first 100 pages were very promising, and the character development was top-notch McNaught quality. However, the next 200 pages dragged out, and I sometimes wondered if I was still reading a romance novel or a business journal instead. In the 400+ pages of romance, there was only 1 two-page love scene (not counting the vague hints of the heroine's drunken wedding night), and we don't even see that until the very end of the novel. Perhaps if her book was marketed as "Fiction" instead of "Romance," I would not have felt so misled and ended up so disappointed.
Plus 3 stars for the excellent writing and plot, minus 2 stars for the flat delivery, 200+ pages of unnecessary corporation detail, and lack of romance in what was advertised and sold as being a "romance novel." McNaught's Remember When is good fiction, but not good romance. |
Remember When Books In Print, Audio Books.