Book Review: Punish me with roses

Punish Me With Roses

by

Juliet Moore

See book information at Amazon.com

image via Amazon

Reasons I read this book: 

It was a free download for the Amazon kindle. 

I was in the mood for a light-hearted Gothic romance. 

This book advertised itself as patterned after "Victoria Holt" books and Victoria Holt was one of my favorite authors--back in the day.

Reasons I liked/disliked this book: 

I didn't like this book very much.  Even if a book is free and is an "e" book only  it shouldn't contain as many grammatical and spelling errors as this one did.  I had to do quite a bit of decoding to make sense of some of it. (Inserting left out words/rearranging sentences).  The character sketches shifted a lot as well.  The author tried to make her heroine a typical "Victorian era dependent on her man type of a woman" but often in the same sentence or paragraph she turned her into a "modern era--shall I say--a hussy".  If you are an author you just have to stay true to your original character sketches and your time periods in order to make the story believable. 

I hate being negative and can usually find something good to say about most books I read.  I will say it was light-hearted and it was a romance, but I'm not recommending this book.

I'll share one of the passages that just made me gag. 

"Victoria looked at him with her familiar scared doe expression, but Mary was cynical.  "Do you really think our father is just going to confess to you?"

"Alex stopped pacing, "Our dear father may not confess, but he will answer every one of my direct questions.  Then I'll know if he's lying to me."

"What makes you so sure?"

"Because I have to be."  He looked at Victoria.  "I have a lot riding on this than you know."  He ran out of the room.

At this point in the story Victoria (the heroine) and Alex (the hero) are madly in love with each other and instead of taking her in his arms and confessing his love--He ran out of the room.  Like a pansy.  I'm sorry.  It just cracked me up.

This reminded me of a time that I  had a date with a boy.  When he came to pick me up and we were walking out the house to get into his car my little poodle mix dog came running towards him barking ferociously (she was harmless).  He grabbed my shoulders and ducked behind me so I could save him. Really!  I couldn't believe it!  Needless to say I never went out with him again.  The guy in this story kind of reminded me of him.