Title: A Dash of Romance
Author: Paullett Golden
Series: Romantic Encounters Anthology Series #1
More is certainly not less
Much thanks to the author, who provided me with a free ARC in exchange for an honest review.
I don’t think there are any big spoilers, but beware to those who are super sensitive, I guess.
This book is comprised of 15 different stories, all sharing genre and tone and style, so it’s not jarring to go from one to the next. I admit I was wary when I began reading, and I’m not entirely sure why. I’ve read anthologies before, and I’ve read short stories before, yet there remains a stigma against them deep in my brain, a malevolent whisper insisting short fiction is cheap fiction. Where that ludicrous notion came from, I have NO idea, but this book is a perfect antithesis—I enjoyed each and every story.
The main event is a novella starring Abbie and Percy; it fills about 75% of the book. To ward off an unwanted suitor, Abbie claims to already be engaged to a knight with dark hair and hazel eyes. The unwanted suitor searches for a man fitting her description so he can intimidate and bribe him into giving her up. He finds Percy Randall, and shit meets fan.
There weren’t any major flaws, just a few weaknesses. Some readers might consider the premise too far-fetched or the plot predictable, but I was too busy enjoying the skill and enthusiasm that comes through in Golden’s writing to care about plausibility or predictability. For myself, I could have done with a little less inner monologue and a little more action to hold my attention in the middle.
That action could have better utilized the plot device that was Lord Dunley; I was surprised he never appeared to try to break Percy and Abbie up. He just performed the inciting incident and disappeared until the end. Regarding him, it seemed like Golden tried to have her cake and eat it, too; she wanted Dunley to be aloof and disinterested so as to not be a contender for Abbie’s heart, to keep him out of the way, yet she wanted him to care enough to make the time and effort to scour the countryside for Abbey’s fictional secret betrothed. He couldn’t be bothered to get her name right, yet he wanted that badly to eliminate his competition? And after going to the effort of tracking Percy down, ceased to do anything else about it? Just let it go? Doesn’t quite make sense to me.
But I can’t fault Golden for that too much, because she was obviously focused on character development over plot, which is rarely a bad thing. Percy and Abbie were both endearing and relatable, flawed and sympathetic. I enjoyed watching Abbie hold tight to her self-respect even as she opened herself up to rejection, and I enjoyed watching Percy mature and gain some self-respect of his own. Percy’s humor and personality brightened the pages; Abbie could have used a little of that charisma in her personality, but she had her own quirks and was by no means dull.
I did get the pregnancies confused; I remembered Abbie’s sister Pru was pregnant, but I totally spaced on Mrs. Bradley being pregnant too. When Mrs. Bradley’s baby was born, I thought it was Pru having her baby, because it made more sense for Abbie to be present at her sister’s delivery than the innkeeper’s wife’s; I knew Abbie was friendly with the innkeeper and his family, but we never saw Mrs. Bradley nor witnessed the close relationship she and Abbie must have had for Mrs. Bradley to want Abbie at the birth, so it failed to register. Then when all of Abbie’s and Percy’s families converged and it was once again mentioned that Pru was still in a delicate condition, I did a mental double-take, ran a search, and realized I’d gotten the two women mixed up. Does it matter? No, but I wanted to mention it because I’m nitpicky like that.
The last quarter of the book is a collection of short stories ranging from a few hundred words to a few thousand. Three were notable to me. First, my favorite was the gothic Haunted, in which a group of marriageable women and their chaperones go to stay in an Earl’s haunted castle; the woman who doesn’t get scared away by morning shall become his wife. (It’s not as cheesy as it sounds.) It was everything I want in a story—creepy haunted castle with secret passages, rumors of werewolves and vampires, ghouls and ghosts, a misjudged man who only wants to be loved despite his “beastly” appearance, and a stalwart heroine with common sense and an open heart. It was like Christmas to me, it really was.
Secondly, the one I would choose to be turned into a full-length novel (aside from Haunted, which is a given) would be Beguiled. That one left me thinking, “Wait, what? I’m sorry, what?” And lastly, the one I found a little baffling was Beneficence. I think I understood, but vagueness didn’t do it any favors, you know?
Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed this new endeavor from Golden and look forward to next summer’s anthology.
