You know what I haven’t done in a while? Written a blog post! Apologies to all two of my faithful readers who have been eagerly awaiting my next review of a very niche genre (that’s a joke, you may laugh). Onward!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
You know I\u2019ve been sucked into the historical romance genre, and I\u2019m quite enjoying reading them – some of them. I will say that A Tenuous Betrothal<\/em> was not high on my list of favorites, so I\u2019m only going to give it three out of five stars. Usually, my one-and-two stars are reserved for poor grammar as well as poor plot, and the writing in this novel was up to scratch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Rhianna Davies has just been relegated to a shack in the woods after her uncle takes over her father\u2019s mining business, a huge slight to her. Just when it seems like she\u2019s out of hope for herself and for the wellbeing of \u201cher\u201d workers, her uncle discovers a codicil to the will, borne on the arm of a prince. Rhianna\u2019s father had arranged for her to marry one of the seven sons of the King of Oldenburg upon his death. However, the son that arrives – Prince Marc – is not ready to be married, although he finds Rhianna to be his ideal match. The attraction is definitely reciprocated, and as the pair travel from Wales, to London, to Oldenburg, the question remains: will Prince Marc be able to resist Rhianna?<\/p>\n\n\n\n It wasn\u2019t so much the plot of A Tenuous Betrothal<\/em> that got me; I quite liked the premise of a surprise codicil that guaranteed Rihanna a handsome prince! Not that it\u2019s believable, but I thought a prince in a will was a neat concept. I also liked the way that they traveled around; they went from Wales, to England, to Oldenburg, and that sold me more on the plot as Rihanna did actually leave her home to go to her new country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What got me in terms of the negatives about A Tenuous Betrothal<\/em> was the characters, their thought processes, and some of their decision-making. The combination of these things made the writing seem a little immature and brought down the story for me a bit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In the beginning of the novel, it sounds like Rihanna is very involved in the welfare of the workers in her father\u2019s mine. She\u2019s very worried about her uncle\u2019s lack of concern about the workers\u2019 quality of life and her inability to do anything about it. However, when thinking of ways to improve the community such as sending the kids to school, she seems unaware that the miners question the point of school when all their kids are going to do is work in the mine in the future. For someone who grew up and is supposedly very heavily involved with her people, she isn\u2019t very aware of their way of life. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I found Marc to be a likable character, but one who wasn\u2019t well-rounded. Similar to Rihanna, I found Marc to have some character holes. My biggest issue with him is that throughout the book, he\u2019s falling for Rihanna, but keeps repeating that he has to stay unattached because of his job in security for Oldenburg. I get that he doesn\u2019t want to put anyone in danger or for someone to worry about him; but from what I gathered, I didn\u2019t get a great sense of urgency or danger about his job. He\u2019s a \u201cspy,\u201d which doesn\u2019t make sense given that he\u2019s the King of Oldenburg\u2019s son and would be recognized instantly. Or, people would know about his job in security and wouldn\u2019t say anything around him. I can\u2019t see him being very effective.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Prince Marc does go on one \u201cmission\u201d in the book to escort diplomats and ends up getting captured. However, we\u2019re not really sure why anyone wanted to capture him and it just seemed like they picked him out of the blue. Supposedly they were going to kill him but, again, we don\u2019t know why. It was very strange.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The final thing I have to say about holes is that at the end of the book, Rihanna finds a clue, calls the guards, and rescues a horse. Naturally, this is all very brave and Marc decides that he can marry her after all. Rihanna tells him that she doesn\u2019t want him to quit his security job as a spy and instead, wants to spy with<\/em> him. His response is an enthusiastic yes! <\/p>\n\n\n\n Now, I have no problem with lady spies – a lot of the main characters in my historical mystery reads are women – but I do have issues with the fact that Rihanna is a major security and safety risk with no training or understanding of espionage. I thought that after all Marc\u2019s protestations about not wanting anyone to worry about him and not putting anyone at risk, allowing an unfledged person to become a spy was decidedly uncharacteristic of him. It almost defeated the whole plot of the book!<\/p>\n\n\n\n Anyways, I don\u2019t mean to sound whiny; all of these plot and character holes did not do this book any favors for me. If you read it and end up shaking your head by the end, don\u2019t say I didn\u2019t warn you! However, I did like the premise of the book and the writing was good, so we\u2019re landing at three out of five stars.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" You know what I haven’t done in a while? Written a blog post! Apologies to all two of my faithful readers who have been eagerly awaiting my next review of a very niche genre (that’s a joke, you may laugh). Onward! You know I\u2019ve been sucked into the historical romance genre, and I\u2019m quite enjoyingContinue reading “A Tenuous Betrothal – Jen Geigle Johnson”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":462,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[11,33,52,169,195,293,349],"class_list":["post-460","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book-reviews","tag-a-tenuous-betrothal","tag-arc","tag-book-review","tag-historical-romance","tag-jen-geigle-johnson","tag-netgalley","tag-romance","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/samiamreading.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/a-tenuous-betrothal.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/samiamreading.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/460","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/samiamreading.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/samiamreading.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/samiamreading.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/samiamreading.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=460"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/samiamreading.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/460\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":617,"href":"https:\/\/samiamreading.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/460\/revisions\/617"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/samiamreading.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/462"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/samiamreading.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=460"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/samiamreading.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=460"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/samiamreading.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=460"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}