TBR Challenge: ‘MISS WONDERFUL’, by Loretta Chase

Berkley, 2004

The topic of this month is Comfort Read  

Published: 2004

Genre: Historical Romance

My Rating: 3 stars

Part of a series: Carsington Brothers #1

In June the topic is ‘Comfort Read’. As I said last year, for me, a comfort read is a book that I know how it’s going to develop, I have a general idea of the style and I assume that nothing is going to be too hurtful or very intense.

Loretta Chase, with her light and fluffy historical novels set in the Regency, is a good example of a comfort read. I know what to expect: quick dialogues, charming characters, a little problem or two that will be solved and sweet sexy scenes.

Some books of this Carsington Brothers series have charmed me before, and I went for this ‘Miss Wonderful’, one of the few that I have not read yet.

The series is about a rich and aristocratic family, more specifically, several brothers. This is the story of the third one, Alistair. In his youth, he was very inclined to fall in love. He had several romances that went south for one reason or another, and then went to war. He was injured in Waterloo and survived, not being he himself later on.

Now, being twenty-nine years old, he has become a dandy, who looks very carefully how –and everybody else’s– dresses. But he hasn’t gone back to his amorous conquests. And although he does not recognize this before anybody, he does not feel quite himself yet.

Anyway, as his father, an Earl, says, he is a very expensive son. So his father tells him that he has to find out a way of getting a living for himself. Otherwise, he will have to marry an heiress.

So Alistair Carsington has a problem to solve. He puts all his money in the project of a friend, a canal. When there’s a problem with that building construction, he has to go to Derbyshire to solve it. There he finds Miss Mirabel Oldridge, a very intelligent and capable woman that is completely against the canal.

Mirabel Oldridge’s father is an eccentric that loves botany and does not care about his properties. 31-years old Mirabel has been managing everything. She loves her little corner of Great Britain and rejects the idea of a canal crossing it.

When Alistair and Mirabel meet, something sparks between them. He falls head over heels even if she is awfully dressed, it doesn’t matter that they are enemies in this project of a canal. They feel an intense attraction. They don’t want to give in to temptation.

Alastair is a beta hero in the sense that he is not overwhelming, he does not want to be recognized as a war hero, he doesn’t want to give in to the temptation of this wonderful Mirabel. By the way, it’s she the one that has to take the initiative if she does not want to stay on the shelf forever. He even tries to find a solution that could be good for everybody, for him and Mirabel.

As a romance novel, we all know that everything is going to be all right in the end. And as it is Loretta Chase, everything is light, nothing dark or intense, even in the moments when there’s a little bit of danger for the characters. Witty dialogues, soft humour that makes you smile… I understand that so many people love this story. I just enjoyed it but in the end, there was nothing special in it and I’m afraid that I will forget it in a couple of days.

It was an easy and pleasant book, what I call a perfect comfort read.