disappointment

I finished a Jo Beverly book, A Lady's Secret, which has sadly convinced me to put Jo Beverly back onto the "don't read" category. But there were two redeeming factors: learning about the Cock Robin poem/rhyme, which is interesting. The second is that the male protagonist calls the female protagonist "my dear pebble" on one occasion which is delightful and adorable. See, her name is Petra d'Averio, and her first name is often simply "Petronilla". Also, then she writes a letter about their separation (involving her sneaking out in the middle of the night) that ends "I hope you will dance through life more lightly without a pebble in your shoe" except more elegantly, because I don't have the book on hand. That was adorable.

The rest of the novel was melodrama and some really implausible characterization. No one outside of the main characters felt real, at all. Not the villains, not the inexplicably helpful random supporting characters, or Petra's father...I know there is already a novel surrounding Petra's father (there is an author's note at the end which talks about this) so I gather that his unusual behaviour stems from that, but it's so incongruous. Why don't people act in normal ways? Props to writing in 1750's and not 1810 though. At least.