Review: Miss Landon and Aubranael

Miss Landon and Aubranael by Charlotte E. English
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is quite a mild Regency romance combined with fairy tale, though it's not a retelling of any one tale in particular. The influence of Beauty and the Beast is there, and so is Alice in Wonderland in the mad tea party, but it's its own thing. It sits in a slightly odd place age-wise; the main character is 29, but it has the simplicity and the general feel of YA or even younger. Nothing steamier than an extended kiss occurs.

This is the second book I've read by the author, and as with the other one, the writing fault I noticed most is that she frequently uses "may" instead of "might" in past tense narration. She also confuses "principle" with "principal" a couple of times, and there are a good few simple typos of the kind that spellcheck doesn't catch but any reasonably alert reader should (such as "pull" for "full," "day" for "say," "about" for "out," "dead" for "head"). There's the odd missing or misplaced word, too, and a couple of excess coordinate commas between non-coordinate adjectives, but the punctuation is generally good.

The characters are pleasant enough, but don't have much depth to them, especially the secondaries. I did like the main pair and wanted them to succeed (not that I was ever in the slightest doubt that they would). The plot is straightforward, and, like the setting, is mostly assembled from prefabricated parts of Regency romance and fairy tale.

I appreciated that the female main character, while she is rescued by her friends at one point, then takes decisive action that makes a difference; she's not passive or helpless. She's clumsy, except for her one strong skill (sewing), which is a bit of a cliche for a heroine.

All in all, it's pleasant but bland; nothing (apart from the editing, and I've seen plenty worse) is badly done, but nothing is amazing either. I enjoyed it enough to let it keep its fourth star, though not enough that I'd bother with a sequel or seek out other works by the author.

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