Something About Emmaline by Elizabeth Boyle

🍎🍎🍎🍎

Looking for a new audiobook to listen to at work and errands, I went through my prompts for Fall in Love and checked ideas with what was available from my library through Hoopla. There were quite a few books I wanted to read next, but weren't available. I ended up setting for Something About Emmaline by Elizabeth Boyle. This is the first book in her Bachelor Chronicles series. I am applying this for the prompt give an author a second chance. I had read His Mistress by Morning earlier this year and didn't really enjoy it. I try to read more than one book before setting an author down for good, so this was the best option going off of authors I've read this year.

Alex, Baron Sedgwick is tired of the marriage mart. To avoid marriage minded mammas and debutantes, he makes up a wife. Her name is Emmaline and she's very ill and unable to come to town. One day he receives receipts to pay for purchases made, by Emmaline. He arrives at his house in town to find that not only is Lady Emmaline in residence, but she's also renovating his house. They come to the agreement to stay "married" for the next two weeks before going their separate ways.

This was cute and I definitely like it a better than His Mistress by Morning. I think if I were to get super specific, I'd go with a 3.75 star rating. I liked how Alex and Emmaline connected and how she was constantly able to get one up on him. I also felt like when we got to the end there was too much going on that needed to be resolved. I also don't like the fact that she was made to married before on top of who she actually finds out is her birth father. It just was too much. Another thing that really bothered me was the pacing. They are spending two weeks together. The first 60% of the book is in the first 24-48 hours. We don't even get through the rest of the two weeks before the end. I almost wish that it was flipped and that we got brunt of their relationship development later in their time together than the first days. While I did understand the need to show the first little bit of time together to keep them in forced proximity, there was too much going on (once again) and we didn't move forward quick enough for my tastes.

I went with 4-stars mostly based off of my previous rating of her book. Now that I'm really getting into it, maybe I'll change my ratings to 2-stars for the other and this one at 3-stars. I might pick up other books in this series, but it took until about the 65% for me to really fell engaged with the characters and want to finish reading the book. It took me way too long to get through it. It was cute and I can see how others would enjoy this. Maybe I'll mark it as a 3.5 rounded up on goodreads

Will I pick up another Elizabeth Boyle, maybe another in this series. It depends on the tropes. Mostly likely not. I just don't get engaged with her writing and way the plot develops as I can with others. I feel like because I had similar issues with the mechanics of these two books, her other books might not be that different. We'll see. If anything it'll probably be in audiobook format if there's nothing else my library has that I want to listen to at that time. I am glad to give her a second chance though.

Have you read Something About Emmaline?

Bookishly Yours,

Stasi🍎

STATISTICS: Something About Emmaline, Elizabeth Boyle, 4-stars, 10 days, audiobook, 374 pages, published in 2005