Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I had high expectations for this book, and have been a Lisa Kleypas fan for many years. But despite a promising beginning to this one, overall I was sadly disappointed. I liked the H and h, and I was intrigued at the beginning. But although the obstacles keeping them apart were understandable (class differences, hero doesn't believe in love, etc), it dragged along very slowly with the H and h leading separate lives for way, way too long. Therefore, the story really lost momentum and excitement. Despite the fact that the hero was exceptionally interesting and compelling at the outset, he dithered for way too long without doing anything to get the girl. It's ironic that this book is called "Chasing Cassandra," because the hero does NOT chase Cassandra. He merely sees her briefly every few months. The heroine was very bland, and the hero becomes very bland. The book became very slow, and frankly quite boring. The story lacked intensity. And for me intensity is the most important element of a romance novel. Furthermore, in this book it feels like Ms. Kleypas has jumped on the "social justice warrior" bandwagon of political correctness and "woke" virtue signalling in her writing. It's annoying and anachronistic. There's no point in writing a historical romance in a historical setting if the entire book is permeated with 21st century politically correct subtext throughout. It felt like the preachy social justice elements of the story outweighed the romance itself. (SPOILERS AHEAD). There's way too much "virtuous filler" in this book - For example, long boring scenes of the hero personally washing fleas and lice off of a dirty urchin (never in a million years would the richest man in England be doing that during Victorian times). And then adopting the urchin and treating him as his own child (not credible for the time- if he kept the child he would probably not have said "my son" he would have said "my ward" or something like that). Way too much urchin in general- it felt as if the hero spent as much time with the urchin as he did with the heroine. And all the stuff about the hero asking permission from the heroine before he could kiss and touch her, and negotiating a long, boring "contract" of how they would treat each other was ridiculous and annoying, it just dragged on way too long. The "contract" negotiation might have been fun if it lasted for a couple of pages, but it was circa 20 pages or more. Completely anachronistic- it felt like a 21st century discussion on gender equality, and it felt like Ms. Kleypas was trying to comply with the #Metoo movement. And the icing on the cake (pun intended), the author threw in a clunky message of "body positivity" to add to the preachy virtue signalling: there were lots of annoying "fat shaming" incidents (the heroine was often told she needed to lose weight). The heroine kept gaining weight in the story, her clothes were too tight and bursting at the seams- but of course the hero kept saying he liked that, literally pushed her to eat cakes, and wouldn't mind if she gained 30 pounds. Rather than have some witty, sexy dialogue about how he enjoyed her voluptuousness- his words sounded like "woke" body positivity preaching. (The overweight heroine trope is used a lot these days- but as for gender equality, I've yet to come across a fat hero. Lots of blind ones, deaf ones, scarred ones, disabled ones- but no fat ones! ) The heroine here was very beautiful- but of course the hero had to emphasize that that wasn't why he wanted her (which directly contradicts the fact that he fell for her merely by seeing her across the room- in other words- he fell very hard for her only on the basis of her looks, before he'd even met her). The virtue-signalling heroine also made statements that she wouldn't mind marrying an ugly man (but of course the hero was gorgeous). It's almost as if the author was trying to apologise or overcompensate for writing about "beautiful" protagonists and didn't want to appear "looks-ist" (lol not sure if that's a word!) Basically, the book started out as a hot love story, a bit edgy with with intriguing chemistry - But ended up as a "woke," preachy, boring, virtue-signalling cornucopia of 21st century political correctness. Because of course nowadays you can't write a novel about a rich powerful man unless he is using that power to be a do-gooder: the Victorian hero has to be written with 21st century standards of gender equality and political correctness. I supposed I should be grateful he wasn't portrayed as a tattooed climate change activist... Surely historical romance novels are supposed to be escapist fantasy to get away from all this 21st century stuff? Not a method of pushing some sort of preachy woke agenda. Ugh. Anyway, I can only hope talented author Lisa Kleypas doesn't continue in this vein going forward. Addendum-- I just re-read Lisa Kleypas' "Secrets of a Summer Night," the first Wallflower book, which was written circa 15 years ago and is one of my favorite romance novels. I can't help but compare it to this. The H&h are both very edgy, a bit flawed, and very intense- and therefore fascinating and compelling. He's a bold ruthless guy; she's a snob and a fairly shameless gold-digger. Although they make no apologies for their flaws, the author gives an interesting backstory, and makes it clear why they are the way they are. Even though H&h are not particularly "nice, " as a reader you care about them and want them to be happy. It was so refereshing to re-read this fabulous book about protagonists who were a bit naughty and not "sanitized" do-gooders (Historical romance books as escapist fiction: they are not meant to reflect real life, not written to act as bland templates for good behavior in the 21st century)