Didn't Hit the Right Note: Just Like Heaven

I keep trying to find a romance author that I can read reliably for enjoyment that isn't Tessa Dare. I tried a second book by Julia Quinn, Just Like Heaven, because the last one that I read wasn't half bad.
Well, this one wasn't half good.

It wasn't that there were things that bothered me, per se, about the not really real courtship between life-long friends Marcus and Honoria. Is that the plot, which is mostly centered around a grievous injury that Honoria causes and then later helps to heal, took up so much of the plot that I had a hard time seeing where the emotional/physical chemistry was. So they've known each other from childhood, and Honoria's family is practically the only family that Marcus has ever had. I get that. That's a recipe for a good romance simmering under the surface for years.

But that's not really how this is played. If anything, this book goes through the motions of getting these two people together, without really taking the time to spell out their mutual attraction in a way that is compelling and makes you anticipate when they will actually express how they feel. That's how this book could have gone and could have been much better, but it just didn't. There weren't enough outside factors in the way that the leads were established to bring them together in any way that doesn't feel like an arbitrary service to the plot.

I'm not sure if I will come back to Quinn. It's a tough call, because she didn't offend my sensibilities, which is what normally turns me off to romance authors. All the same though, I wasn't thrilled or satisfied by the reading of it. It's a tough call. But with her extensive backlist, perhaps I just need to be much more exacting with exactly which of her back covers holds the most promise.

K Rating: 1/5