Series: The Wild Wynchesters, #3
Traits & Tropes: slow burn; forbidden
Publication Date: 07.26.22
Genre/Setting: Historical; Regency; London, England; 1818
Heat Level: 1
Rating: 3/5
Narration Rating: 4/5
Graham Wynchester has made it his business to know absolutely everything that happens in London. He uses his network of informants to provide intelligence his family uses in their various missions to help those in need. When he notices coded messages printed in the gossip rags, Graham is certain they mean a royal princess is in need of rescue. Only, the woman he’s searching for turns out to be not a princess and not in distress, and not wanting any help from him at all.
Kunigunde de Heusch has trained her entire life alongside her country’s royal guardsmen with the hope of continuing her family’s noble legacy and becoming the first royal guardswoman. She has only one month in London to elude her brothers and prove herself capable and independent. She needs help from no one, not even charming, handsome Graham, but she’s shocked when he seems to genuinely believe in her. This support makes it even harder for Kuni to resist her attraction to Graham even knowing that her future is miles away from London.
This book had quite a bit going for it, but it also fell rather short in several key areas for me, perhaps the most significant of these being the romance itself. Graham and Kuni really didn’t spend that much time together on page, and what little they did have together usually had at least one of the Wynchester siblings also present or they were engaging in some sort of heist or combat training antics together. I just never really felt any spark between them, and they both fell a bit flat, so of course their romance did as well. They initially had these insurmountable differences in what they wanted for the future so their romance had a sense of forbidden futility that I actually did like, but only because this is a romance so you know you’re guaranteed a HEA despite how bleak things may look. That said, I do think things worked out for them so quickly that the ending felt very rushed, especially after such a long build up and an incredibly slow burn. In fact, so much of the book was down to this build up and executed at such a slow pace that if I hadn’t had the narration to turn to, I’m not sure how long it would’ve taken me to finish it. On the note of how slow this one burns, I also felt that the intimacy, when we finally got it, felt a bit lackluster to me and was very much one-sided in favor of Kuni’s pleasure. I know this is usually a good thing and it’s an odd thing to note, but it kind of left me feeling like Kuni was just using Graham and wasn’t really taking his feelings into consideration, and based on his inner monologues later, Graham felt much the same way. Since I was already struggling with the romance aspect here, that didn’t help at all and left me pretty disappointed after such a long build up to get there.
Beyond these issues, perhaps my biggest gripe was Kuni herself. She came off as very entitled and arrogant from the get-go and even as she was humbled by her experiences in England, that never really seemed to change. She was independent to a fault, often winding up getting in her own way. This was a fault she was aware of as well, but she never seemed to do much to change it, even near the end when she was coming to realize that asking for or accepting help doesn’t make you weak. She’d never been able to really rely on her family so this did make since, but I would’ve loved to see more development and change from Kuni as she met and spent time with the Wynchesters and saw a different way to live. Unfortunately, she just came off as rigid for me and unable to see any sort of middle ground for herself and Graham. She seemed to constantly be reiterating her goals to become a guardswoman, both in her dialogues and in her inner monologues, and it just became annoyingly repetitive after a while and didn’t help me like her when I was already struggling. She also seemed to have little depth as a character beyond this single-minded determination to achieve this goal and to do absolutely everything on her own so that made her even more frustrating and I couldn’t really figure out how she jived with Graham’s need to be acknowledged. Kuni definitely had a need to be included too, but she didn’t show that to anyone enough to make this a helpful trait for her characterization. I think perhaps what bothered me the most was that she spent much of the book with this goal in mind, living her life for others and what she thought they wanted for her, rather than what she wanted for herself. This is something I struggle with so much in my own life and it made me frustrated for Kuni as much as it frustrates me for myself. I just wanted to see her follow her own heart, and though of course she does, it’s a romance after all, this was pretty late in coming and dealt with too quickly for me to get much enjoyment or appreciation out of it.
Though I loved the found family aspect of the Wynchester siblings’ dynamic, as always, it definitely did feel like the family was portrayed as being even more eccentric than in previous books; each sibling was more or less reduced to just their particular quirky trait and not much else. It seemed like Graham and Kuni’s characters received similar treatment and I was just left wanting more depth, especially from such a long story. I’m still puzzled as to how a book full of such ridiculousness and high energy can still feel like such a painfully slow burn, but I do think it’s all down to how little time Graham and Kuni had together on page. Even during a twelve-day road trip we still didn’t get any forced proximity and virtually no alone time between these two. This aspect, coupled with Kuni’s general attitude and need to do everything on her own kind of killed the romance and cheer for me in this one.
I really did like the fun irreverence of this unique spin on a Regency romance, and I’ll look forward to more installments in the series even though this one wasn’t my favorite.
This narrator did an excellent job, especially with characters with different accents, and I hope to see her narrating future books in the series as well.
I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book and its audiobook. All thoughts and opinions are my own.
https://www.bookbub.com/reviews/2610264227
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4914151454
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