So Enchanting Book

This book was simultaneously charming and frustrating. I found myself skimming a lot of it, and when my suspicions were confirmed about the "mystery" arc in it (BOTH suspicions, btw), I was thoroughly annoyed. I loved the premise - the heroine with a supernatural or paranormal "gift" against the hero whose sole aim is to find and reveal frauds and con-artists claiming to have supernatural and paranormal gifts. There really was a great plot set-up here. Unfortunately, though, it just kind of... fell apart.

The main issue was a huge one: TOO MANY POVs. Plenty of other reviewers have said as much, but the sub-romance between Amelie and Hayden was obnoxiously sappy enough on its own - we really didn't need their narrations/points of view added to the mix. It wound up really detracting from the flow of things and it seemed gratuitous and pointless. The whole story would have been better served by paring down the narration/POVs to only Fanny and Grey, with the added bonus of helping us believe in their lightning-fast and utterly unlikely tumble into "love." Maybe that was supposed to be part of the old-fashioned charm of this story (separate of it being a historical, it totally felt like one of those black and white romantic comedies where proclamations of love came early on, and usually with the climactic ending being little more than a kiss). But as much as I wanted to be convinced, it just felt so rushed. And for a book that was over 300 pages, there was plenty of room to not be rushed. I would have preferred a shorter novel without Amelie's and Hayden's stupid mooning POVs. Then I might have been able to say, "hey, light, fluffy, entertaining read," instead of, "not really worth the patience required to muddle through it." Which is totally unfortunate, because like I said, I loved the premise. The plot was a great idea. The execution was just distracting.