Personal Rating: 3 Stars Goodreads Rating: 4.05 Stars Content Rating: PG Miss Harriet Peabody dreams of the day she can open up a shop selling refashioned gowns to independent working women like herself. Unfortunately, when an errand for her millinery shop job goes sadly awry due to a difficult customer, she finds herself without an income. Mr. Oliver Addleshaw is on the verge of his biggest business deal yet when he learns his potential partner prefers to deal with men who are settled down and wed. When Oliver witnesses his ex not-quite-fiancée causing the hapless Harriet to lose her job, he tries to make it up to her by enlisting her help in making a good impression on his business partner. Harriet quickly finds her love of fashion can't make her fashionable. She'll never truly fit into Oliver's world, with its fancy dinners and elegant balls, but just as she's ready to call off the fake relationship a threat from her past forces both Oliver and Harriet to discover that love can come in the most surprising packages. (goodreads.com) The main reason I read this book was because it sounded like a book my mom might enjoy and we often enjoy the same books, at least when they are historical fiction or the Divergent series by Veronica Roth. I also quite liked the idea of Harriet, the protagonist, opening a shop to sell dresses to independent working women. Plus fashion, particularly of the historical variety, has always been interesting to me. I’m thrilled that this book did not disappoint after the last three books I’ve reviewed. It may not have been the best book in the world or even the best thing I’ve read this year, but I enjoyed it a lot and had a grand time reading it on the hammock in our backyard now that the weather is finally turning nice again - and I didn’t even get a sunburn! The main character of our story is Miss Harriet Peabody, who works in a hat shop, making hats. She loves designing clothes from repurposed dresses and she has a troubled past. There are many historical romances that I’ve read where the female MC is pretty much just a porcelain doll who occasionally spews out a few witty things. Harriet, however, was refreshingly human and she had character traits that she kept throughout the entirety of the novel. She was funny, interesting, and had flaws like a real person. She was described to be exceptionally beautiful, which pretty much every character remarked on just like in most of these historical romances, but I guess it is too much to ask for a person to behave realistically and look normal. Mr. Oliver Addleshaw is the male protagonist and I liked him decidedly less than I liked Harriet. He’s basically this really rich dude (he frequently likes to remind everyone that he is one of the wealthiest men in America) who throws money around like candy during a parade. And he’s supposed to be a ruthless businessman, but we don’t really see a lot of that. And that’s about all we know about him. I didn’t like him because he was rather manipulative when it came to how he treated Harriet. His character development was also kind of meh. He went from not caring that poor people existed to a saintly figure in the blink of an eye. The side characters might have been my favorite part of the book. They all felt like they deserved their own book (and two of them actually get it) and they actually had lives outside of what was going on with Harriet and Oliver! I could hardly believe there were strong supporting characters in this book! It was fantastic! My favorites were Abigail Hart, a kindly old lady, and Archibald Addleshaw, Oliver’s grandfather. Oh, and obviously Buford (the dog). The plot of this story was downright ridiculous. At totally unbelievable. And absurd. And I loved it. It was so much fun to read and it didn’t go in the direction I was expecting it to even if once it started going that way it got rather predictable. I had a lot of fun with the plots and subplots and I hope to read the next two books in the series to see where all of those subplots go. I was confused about if this book was a Christian book or not. Because going into it I didn’t think it was, but then Harriet prayed a lot and sort of seemed to be a Christian maybe (though her faith seemed more based on works, so I dunno). And then minor spoiler Oliver goes to church and prays for forgiveness at the end of the book. It kind of felt like the author had read 2 Corinthians 6:14, remembered that Harriet is (possibly) a Christian but didn’t say anything about if Oliver was so she decided to quickly make him one (though no one ever mentioned Christ in this book even if they mentioned God quite a few times). End minor spoiler. So I’m just not sure if this is a plain old historical fiction or if it is a Christian historical fiction. Another problem I had with the book, though I could overlook it, was the historical inaccuracy. I didn’t feel like there was much research done for this book. There were just a few things that seemed off, but given the plot was pretty unbelievable to begin with I just shrugged and moved on. If you are really into the historical aspect of books then this may not be the book for you. Otherwise, I truly did enjoy this book and had a fun time reading it. I will be interested to see what happens in the two sequels and I hope they are as amusing as this one is. I recommend After a Fashion for a bit of light reading, a lazy reading day, or if you really like cheesy romances. Thanks for reading, but I really must be off as I have a very fancy dinner to get to with a duke. Image source: https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1403190200l/22504489.jpg
0 Comments
Your comment will be posted after it is approved.
Leave a Reply. |
Categories
All
Archives
April 2024
|