Mr.Cavendish, I Presume - Julia Quinn

Julia Quinn writes regengy-style romances and has often been described as 'jane austen meets bridget jones' they are light-hearted novels that can be read in a day if you feel so inclined (around 300-400 pages each) personally i cant read them in public because they just make me smile. Quinn often writes novels about related characters (e.g. in the bridgerton series there is 1 novel for each of the 8 siblings), this novel comes after the book The Lost Duke of Wyndham (which i thought was rather good) i had been anticipating this one for a while, after reading about the characters but it was a bit of a dissappointment...

I have recently read almost all of Julia Quinn's non-bridgerton books (although i've read most of those too) and i felt that this was probably the least well written of them all. Because the storys overlap almost completely there is a lot of repetition if you've read the one before it, and if you havent then i dont think theres quite enough detail to enjoy it properly. I think this book would benefit tremendously from being combined with the one before it and published as one book. Unfortunately this style is generally written with guidelines of how few characters you are alowed and as if the reader is incapable of reading from more than two peoples perspectives (the hero & heroine) i think this is a bit of a dissappointment, but its that kind of genre so you can't really ask for much.

The basic storyline is that the lead guy is the duke of wyndham but then a long-lost cousin arrives (hero of book before) who would be the rightful duke if his parents had married - a large chunk of the book is spent in ireland trying to prove his legitimacy - the cousin falls in love with the duke's grandmother's companion while the lead guy falls in love with the woman who was promised to him at birth. Its a bit of a stretch for the plot of one book, but making it into two is painful to read. However, i doubt that many people who are really serious about their reading delve into this genre often so its probably pretty irrelevant. The sad thing is that julia quinn is one of the better writers of the genre i've met, there are some truly appauling books out there but hers are usually quite fun for a de-stress.