Book Reveiw: Fool Me Twice by Meredith Duran

Fool my Twice
By: Meredith Duran
ISBN-13: 9781476741352                        

Publisher: Pocket Books

Publication date: 3/25/2014

Synopsis:

Sensible and lonely, Olivia Mather survives by her wits—and her strict policy of avoiding trouble. But when she realizes that the Duke of Marwick might hold the secrets of her family’s past, she does the unthinkable, infiltrating his household as a maid. She’ll clean his study and rifle through his papers looking for information.

Alastair de Grey has a single reason to live: vengeance. More beautiful than Lucifer, twice as feared, and thrice as cunning, he’ll use any weapon to punish those who fooled and betrayed him—even an impertinent maid who doesn’t know her place. But the more fascinated he becomes with the uppity redhead, the more dangerous his carefully designed plot becomes. For the one contingency he forgot to plan for was falling in love...and he cannot survive being fooled again.

I have been consuming historical romances at a startling rate this past year. I remember my mom suggesting them to me a few years back, "You should try them, you might like them." But I thought, no, not for me. I hated history in high school.
But for some reason, I think it might have been Lisa Kleypas, I moved from contemporary to historical romance and haven't looked back.

I still read contemporaries of course, along with suspense, but there is something about the historical drama and teasing and dialogue that I find very satisfying.

This historical is the first I've read by this author. I received a free copy in exchange for an honest review, so here it is.

I liked this book for the most part. The opening pages were a little confusing, but I allow for that to a point because I assume I will understand it as I read further into the book.

Then, when the main characters met, it became very interesting and entertaining. I liked the whole idea of this confined, depressed duke brought back to life by a house keeper who was much more than a house keeper. The whole plot of the book was fresh and interesting.

But....the middle DRAGGED. The only word I can think to describe it is wordy. It wasn't bad, its just that so little actually happened, but yet it took forever to make it to the end. Again I'll stress that it wasn't unpleasant because I liked the characters and I liked where the story was eventually going, but it took a lot of words to get us there.

Also, there were some word choices in this book that just didn't work. She used a lot of unfamiliar language. And while in any historical the language is much more formal, and pleasing because of it, this word choice was such that I had to actually look up words to figure out their meaning. And I'm pretty good at either knowing my vocab or using context clues to keep reading. But some of the words took me completely out of the story. I especially didn't like how she referred to body parts. Some of her body terms were very clinical while others were very crude. I think the author needs to find a better middle ground here.

Overall, I enjoyed the book. The characters were unique and I could always understand their motivations. The author did a good job with making their feelings very clear and their behavior reflective of those feelings, which isn't always an easy thing to do!! I also enjoyed the over all plot. It was interesting. However, I didn't enjoy the pacing or the physical scenes in this book.

If another Meredith Duran books happens across my e-reader, I will definitely give her another chance.

If you've read any Duran books, I'd love to hear your thoughts on this author as well. Or if you have a historical author you'd suggest, I am all ears!!

Happy Reading!