Seven Brides: Rose Book

DNF ~30% of the way through.

A major factor in my dropping this book is the instalove and the "romance" in it. Soon after they've met and he's recruited her to work for him, she's all "perilously close to falling in love with him." What the hell? You've known the guy for barely a full day. And then later when he says he wants to be in the army rather than marry and have children, she's all heartbroken and "disheartened" and "lost" and "like a ship whose rudder had been wrenched off in a collision with a hidden shoal" and that "her future yawned before her, empty and somehow dangerous."

...

You've known the guy for two days. TWO DAYS .

Later she's all that she's "aware that her determination not to marry an army man was growing weaker." Oh, and this is after he's already said he doesn't want to marry or have children.

The whole relationship so far feels so forced and Rose is so overly presumptuous about marrying George and things to do with George. George, too, was all instaloving over her and it just had me rolling my eyes.

The entire "love" aspect of this novel felt so inorganic to me. There was absolutely no chemistry between the leads and it didn't feel at all real or believable. With that, all the moments and interactions with George and Rose felt overly forced and because there was so much dedicated to them it felt overly saturated. A lot of it was also the author telling us rather than showing. This contributed to the forced factor of the entire "relationship" and I feel it took away from the book and my enjoyment of it. I enjoyed the moments with the family and those interactions but I hated anything and everything to do with the two protagonists.

I think the author thought she was putting in sexual tension or pining but I didn't see any of that. Maybe if we'd been able to see the two main protagonists before they met one another -- seen their lives before the other came into it...BUT, we don't. Right from the very beginning we have Rose checking George out as he walks into the restaurant. I was being told rather than shown all these things about their instalove.

Their entire romance feels as though they're being forced together--like I said, inorganic--rather than allowing two characters to come together naturally.