An Arrangement of Sorts

I sat down and started reading, couldn't put it down and ended up finishing it. Great characters with witty dialogue that made me laugh out loud in parts. Loved the story. Can't what to see what comes next!!

Review Summary: The ideal audience of this book are female adolescents who want Jane Austen-like romances but with an easier to read veneer. It's uncomplicated, "popcorn" reading with familiar situations and plot twists, and is primarily good for an evenings entertainment.

Read on for more...

Plot: Moira, who has recently inherited her family's fortune, sets out to find her betrothed and enlists the help of Nathan, the man she's told can find anyone. Together they travel to her betrothed's last known location, getting to know each other along the way.
***
The basic plot was reminiscent of the film, "It Happened One Night" starring Clark Gable & Claudette Colbert, where the male and female characters travel together, they banter, sparks fly, they fight, the man has a secret, the girl is unaware, they are forced to spend their nights together in the same rooms, they grow closer together, and well you know the rest.

The bright spots in this book are the engaging dialogue between the primary two characters and the exploration of the inner workings of their minds. The play between the "what he thinks" vs "what she thinks" is enjoyable.

Not only does the banter and the situations the characters find themselves in make for entertaining reading, it also makes for an easy read as you can get carried along in the story. I tend to have a short attention span, but the author was very good at keeping the pacing steady. There was always something happening or about to happen, essentially inviting you to turn another page, and another, and another....

The main characters were very likable, perhaps a touch too likable as their flaws were few and far between. And the secondary characters, I should point out, are not nearly as well developed.

Besides the familiarity of the plot, the only other criticism I have would be the weak sense of setting, ie time and place.

Other than the fact that Moira didn't like bonnets, and a few references to certain types of social decorum, I don't know if I truly felt like these characters were really acting and speaking as if they were from an older time period. The main characters' words, thoughts, opinions and ideas often felt very stereotypically progressive and anachronistic at some points.

And while they were heading to Preston, England, I had a hard time visualizing the character's surroundings. The descriptions that were there, were effective, but I feel like a little more time-period-specific and visual details were needed to make this story really come alive.

This book gets a passing grade for the sheer enjoyability of its dialogue.