Review: Love and Literature

✩✩

 

The only adventure Violet Greyson has ever known has come from books, but that all changes when her father dies, and she moves from remote Dartmoor to London. There, she finds her purpose amongst the pioneers of women’s education and begins a new life as a teacher’s assistant at one of England's first academic ladies’ colleges. Love is the last thing on Violet's mind as she embarks on her new venture, but the harder she works to prove her worth to her capricious classics master, the more attached she becomes to him.

Byron Thomas, schoolmaster at the prestigious St. James’s Independent School for Boys, set out in life determined to be different from his brutish father but became disillusioned and bitter after typhus took his beloved wife and infant daughter. Beset with pain, he sets his sights on a marriage of convenience to the headmaster’s stepdaughter. But his plans become muddled when he agrees to teach a course in the classics at a new ladies’ college. Drawn to his intelligent and fiery assistant, Byron struggles to maintain a proper master-student relationship as she begins to chip away at the shield that guards his heart.

Genre: historical romance

Publication date: April 2023

Mature content: some sexual references, but nothing graphical

Review: I started this book with high expectations, first because I love historical romance, second because I find the issue of women's education particularly important, and third because of the raving reviews on Amazon. 

Now I'm wondering if the other reviewers read the same book I did. 

I absolutely disliked both main characters, but most especially Byron. He's a brute who needs to learn to manage his feelings and not be rude to other people just because he's angry or frustrated. At the beginning of the book he's considering a loveless marriage just to get a promotion, and that lasts throughout the book even though he's apparently already in love with Violet. 

Violet is intent on managing her own life, which I thoroughly applaud, but then seems dependent on everyone's approval and becomes depressed when she doesn't get it. She is, in my opinion, verbally abused and misled by Byron but forgives him in a heartbeat over and over again. 

There are also lots of holes in the plot. Here's an example: Byron is forced to marry his original bride because she claims she's pregnant, but she's just spent months in France. Not clear how many, but several (three are mentioned at some point, in reference to the ones she stayed in her music teacher's home). If she wasn't pregnant when she left England and no one notices she's pregnant when she returns (a tiny waist is actually mentioned the day after she returns) - when exactly was Byron supposed to have gotten her pregnant? And then, a few weeks after her failed marriage she elopes to France with some baron - who is not the father? Is that supposed to be just a little bit realistic?

Sorry, not my kind of story, not the kind of messages I like books to pass on. Not even my love of literature and historical romances could make me « give this book more than two stars.

Love and Literature is book one in a series but, honestly, I don't see myself reading the next books any time soon. 

Happy readings,

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