Christmas Angel Book

I was resigned to this series taking its time to get any good. So I was pleasantly surprised when this one broke the mediocre trend. Unfortunately, you'll still want the background from the first two stories. That or simply put up with the dissatisfaction of not having the background for key characters.

Anyway, Leander and Judith are finally protagonists I could engage with wholly. They're caring and intriguing and have strengths that shore one another up and support a relationship I was interested in from the start. I was a bit worried about Leader's broken idea of love and marriage (built from seeing it done wrong with his parents). That kind of thing can be flogged to death and become very tedious, but I don't think it was here. Oh, it's present and a significant part of what he has to overcome, but he doesn't belabor things and is able to learn from the great examples around him that his parents aren't the only (let alone best) example of love and family.

I do admit to getting a little tired of the harping on the imbalance of marriage in the Regency period. Yes, we get it. It sucked for women who had zero power both legal or social. It's a good point and one that bears examination and exploration. But so far, it's all terribly one-note with each story making the same point over and over with very little variation. Which is fine except that its all expressed in very modern terms and seems more and more anachronistic the more monotone it becomes. If you're going to make a point by contrast, I can't help thinking it'd be more useful (and more interesting) to illustrate variations around the theme and show the spectrum of attitudes and the things that make the difference between healthy and unhealthy attitudes towards the institution of marriage.

But I digress.

The thing that made all the difference between this and the others is that the plot didn't undermine the main characters. It wasn't a fantastic plot (most of the developments were well telegraphed with no real surprises), but it was serviceable and served to give a framework for Judith and Lee to work out their relationship. So this was a solid three plus stars through most of the story. As is a pattern in later Beverley novels, it was the ending that pushed me to round to four stars. That moment of shared epiphany where trust and love are acknowledged is a powerful moment if orchestrated right and Beverley delivers in spades. I really hope this bodes well for the rest of the series and can finally say I look forward to continuing (as opposed to saying I look forward to it getting to the quality I know Beverley is capable of producing).

A note about Steamy: There are only two explicit sex scenes, so this is the middle of my steam tolerance. I actually really liked how this was handled and the mismatch between expectation and reality'particularly that everything wasn't all wine and orgasms from the start as Judith has to rethink expectations built by her marriage to the poetical, but essentially detached, Sebastian.