The Unofficial Suitor - Book 54

Well, I enjoyed reading Three Lords for Lady Anne, so I immediately downloaded another book by Charlotte Louise Dolan. Alas, I fear our love affair has come to an end rather quickly. Perhaps this is unfair but this book really disappointed me. It started out with such promise; I was really intrigued, the whole theme of the book was to compare slavery (white slavery and the slave trade that provided African slaves to the British plantations in the Caribbean) to women having to marry for money. And women having to marry for money gets compared to prostitution too. So it could have really been an interesting analysis very cleverly done. But it wound up being stupid because for some reason the author felt compelled to have all her characters wind up in sappy (almost revoltingly so) love relationships where they get married about 5 minutes after they meet (only a slight exaggeration there). It was dumb and it ruined the whole effect, I thought.

Anyway, a quick plot summary: Lady Cassiopeia, or Cassie for short, has been living in dire poverty in Cornwall since her half-brother, who owns the property, prefers to gamble away his money in London. Finally there is nothing more to sell so he decides to give Cassie in marriage to the highest bidder. Cassie has grown up a free spirit who has had to get by on her own wiles, with the help of another half-brother, this time an illegitimate one, who is as kind as her other brother is cruel. So Cassie gets brought to London to be put on the marriage market to some rich nobility who is willing to pay off her brother's debts. She hates it. On the way to London though she meets a mysterious man, one who terrifies her in a way she can't understand (it's physical chemistry but she has no way of understanding that). This man begins to court her, but 1) he's not a gentleman, merely a rich man, and 2) she's set against him for the aforementioned reasons. The plot twists and turns and has funny moments and sometimes it seems like it is going to say something deeper about freedom and slavery, but it just doesn't. Instead it becomes a silly mishmash. I ended the book and then kind of tossed my kindle away in disgust.

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