Shades of Georgette Heyer mixed up with a bit of Far Eastern travel!
A story involving a young girl, brought up by her father in a very unconventional style (for the time). Living her life in archaelogical ruins and coming to London as they are dead broke and he must find a financier for his next trip to discover the temple ruins which beckon so enticingly. Linley knows that her duty is to help her father obtain those finances by hook or by crook and to this end she goes along with his plans in London.
Meeting up with a Marquess seems fortuitous but things are not what they seem as he is not as well heeled as he sounds. His main idea was to find an heiress and marry her to bolster the family fortunes. Meeting Linley puts a spoke in the wheel in that scheme of things!
Covering London with all its conventionality at the times, and then moving across to Northern India almost at the Nepalese border was descriptive enough for me.
I did not like the title though as I felt it was not apt for the very lovely story it covered.
English Ein historischer Liebesroman mit einigen netten Ansätzen, aber auch einigen Tiefpunkten. Die wechselnden Schauplätze von Marokko über London und Indien hatten ihren Reiz, besonders das Kennenlernen in Marokko und das Wiedersehen in London haben mir gut gefallen. Die Liebesgeschichte war bis dahin auch wirklich süß, was mir aber nicht gefallen hat, waren die Gespräche über Sex, die fand ich unpassend. Es gab immer wieder Stellen, in denen mir die Personen zu modern und zu wenig nach 1913 klangen, auch die sehr negative Haltung zur Frauenbewegung fand ich einseitig und abwertend. Der Part in Indien war eine echte Achterbahn, auf der einen Seite spannend (besonders der Showdown am Ende), auf der anderen Seite hat ich das Buch bei den Sex-Szenen total verloren. Das war so gar nicht meins. Wirklich gar nicht.
Gelockt hat mich auch das archäologische Setting, aber mit Archäologie hat das Buch nichts zu tun. Besonders die Reise in Indien ist die reinste Katastrophe, keinerlei Vorbereitung, kein Proviant, null archäologische Forschung, reine Schatzjägerei. Auch ist der Rest des Teams, mit einer Ausnahme, ein echt unsympathische Truppe und ich hätte ihnen allen gewünscht, dass sie scheitern. English Trigger warnings: serious illness, slut shaming, death of a sibling (in the past), graphic description of wounds.
Their love may never tire, but I certainly did.
I think a big part of my problem with this is that it was described as Downton Abbey meets The Mummy when it was in fact neither of those things. The two leads were utterly lacking in chemistry. The writing was aggressively mediocre. The extreme hatred of suffragettes was...baffling, to say the least. I rolled my eyes on every second page. The sex was...weirdly violent and not at all okay. The ending was beyond ridiculous.
And the constant references to how much time Linley had spent at Machu Picchu made me roll my eyes repeatedly because a) archaeologists are experts in ONE civilisation, not all of them, and b) it had only been discovered two years before this is supposed to be set so, uh, NO. Also, the moment where they locate a temple in the jungle and then immediately decide to........walk to the Himalayas???........was beyond baffling.
Basically? This was terrible and I hated it and I definitely won't be continuing the series. Not even the fact that it was free helped it to not suck. English I will admit that I read this just as a lovey-dovey fluff piece, but I was very pleasantly surprised by what I found! This book has a depth I wasn't expecting and fairly believable characters that I was able to connect with which was completely unexpected. I wish the ending had been drawn out more, but overall a really enjoyable read! English First, this is a cliffhanger book; which is not told in the blurb. Second, this isn't really a historical romance, which I've read lots of. Third, the book is at it's best at the beginning, and is downhill from there.
The beginning of the book is the best part. But the latter half of the book is not very good, and rather gruesome towards the end. The characters aren't that great, and the storyline drags on too long and isn't very good.
Bright spot is I picked this book up for free. English
Librarian note: Older cover of B00OECC9VS.
Linley Talbot-Martin is a girl who likes to get her hands dirty. As the daughter of a famous archaeologist, she’s been everywhere and seen everything—except London. When the Talbot-Martin team travels there for her father’s investiture, Linley finally gets her wish. But when the time comes to trade her jodhpurs and work boots for silk gowns and kid gloves, she may be in over her head.
Even though she can out-ride, out-shoot, and outsmart any girl in London society, Linley is destined to be the failure of the season. No one she meets cares about ancient pottery or lost Buddhist texts, and fundraising efforts for future expeditions keep coming up short. If the Talbot-Martin team doesn’t find money soon, they will be out of a job, and Linley will lose everything she holds dear.
Patrick Wolford, Marquess of Kyre (pronounced 'Keer'), is a man who knows his place. Well-connected and respected, he is everything everyone expects him to be, but beneath his façade, he is as neglected and crumbling as the family estate. Now the strain of keeping up appearances is taking its toll. The smart thing would be to marry the heiress nipping at his heels and be done with it, but when he meets Linley Talbot-Martin, who dares to shake up his seemingly proper world, he must choose between the life he’s always known and one he never dared to dream of. A Love That Never Tires (Linley Patrick, #1)
The descriptions are magnificent, the characters are likeable (mostly), and the story itself is wonderfully written. I absolutely loved how the scenes and settings are so well integrated between dialogue--a miraculous feat for a debut indie novel--instead of lumped into long winded narratives. You get behind the eyes of the characters and see what they see, as they see it. Just wonderful.
I agree with another reviewer that in the follow up (which I hope comes fast!) that we see less of Linley's father and his friends.
I wholeheartedly recommend this book to all lovers of historical fiction, romance, and Edwardian love stories.
I received a free copy of this book from Story Cartel for the purpose of an unbiased review. English A little bit of an unconventional historical romance that takes readers from Morocco to London to India as an archeologist 's daughter finds herself falling for a British lord in pre World War I (1912/1913) It started out really great and I loved free spirited Linley, but once part two began and Patrick was rushing to India to surprise Linley, I suddenly lost interest. English A Love That Never Tires - I was tired of it by the end.
Most of the book I found very forced. Linley and Patrick spent a lot of time moaning at one another. I think this was to create a kind of 'heated passion' but personally I just found them irritating.
Linley's Father was very selfish and his team was the most unorganised archaeological unit I have ever read about. Every part of this book seemed to be a lucky coincidence.
I also felt like the book wanted to address female oppression, but failed - Linley questions (twice) why is ok for men to have a sexual history but woman must remain virgins. Yet her and Patrick were exactly that. Linley can apparently out ride and out shoot any other girl in London, she carries a pistol and there was the incident with the French at the beginning of the book. Yet through out the rest of the book she kept needing to be rescued by Patrick.
The attitude and description toward the Suffragettes I also found very annoying and kinda insulting. English There was obviously a lot of time, effort, and research poured into the contents of this book. They all melded together very nicely. I would much rather give up the sexually descriptive scenes to have learned more about how the archeological party reunited, how the father of the bride reacted to his daughter's recovery, the wedding news, as well as the place and wedding event. I felt very cheated by the conclusion of this particular book. Discovering there are three more to follow about this particular couple does not give me any hope.
I liked the book and the characters up until the explicit sexual scenes invaded the otherwise entertaining book. I don't understand why some authors think minute details convey any more imagination than allowing each reader to derive their own interpretation from those scenes. I just read the first few paragraphs of the second book through the Amazon preview and and was even further disappointed to discover that profanity has been added as well.
I am a fan of each book in a series standing on its own. This book did not meet that scrutiny. I am not a fan of having to read 4 books to find out what happens to one single couple. I am discouraged by the obvious desire of the author to stretch out the story to make more money. So I do not plan to purchase any further books in this series.
English So this book was ok for me overall, it wasn't bad it wasn't great. There were some funny parts that made me laugh, and there were some sweet moments too. This was another free book I found on the Bookbub.com website and I will say that I am glad I didn't pay for it solely because it was just ok. There were moments and behaviors that seemed incongruous with the characters (mostly Linley), from one moment to the next that made them seem inconsistent and unbelievable. That worked on my reading nerves. There was also a different outcome I was hoping for from this book just because, as sad as it would have been, it would have been a great spin on the originality of the storyline. Anyone who has read this before probably knows what situation I am talking about. I think a lot of the reasoning behind my rating is due to the ending; I wanted it to end differently and it didn't. Do I think it was worth the read?? Maybe/maybe not, this book will NOT resonant with me like others have so that tells me a lot. English
