3 out of 5 stars
“What is beauty or ugliness but a false front that prompts man to make assumptions rather than delving deeper.”
The beginning of the book brings us to quite an opening with our leading lady Miranda Ellis and leading lord Benjamin Archer, the setting to me is a little unrealistic given that Miranda is only sixteen and yet she’s found groping at a certain firmness under the shadowed figures body..
Flash forward to a cliche setting of a forced marriage to settle up a debt and Miranda finds herself the new Lady Archer.
There were hints of phantom of the opera as well as beauty and the beast. In a less well done fashion. Soon we discover that Lord Archer has been cursed! [Enter Beauty & The Beast as well as Phantom of the Opera!] He’s cursed and it is taking over his body at a rapid rate, this curse supposedly cannot be undone.
The character development was stunted, I felt Miranda strayed from her strong role and became that stereotypical romance novel woman where she begged to be lorded over. Either hot or cold, pick one lovely! Also Miranda is lovely, beautiful, which we are not meant to forget!!
I don’t have many qualms with Benjamin Archer, aside from his angst over himself. I felt the secrets were withheld too long for any anticlimactic end or rather predictable one.
In the end all was amended, I suppose. In the end it was really anticlimatic and verged more on a lesser rating of 2.5 versus the 3. The only reason I gave it a 3 is due to the lore that was twined in it and it hardly saved it.
Book Savvy Reviews 