Title: A Very Ruby Christmas
Author: Lavinia Kent
Series: Bound and Determined #4.5?
What is going on?
I would like to thank Lavinia Kent, Loveswept, and Penguin Random House for allowing me to read this novel in exchange for an honest review.
Madam Rouge aka Ruby aka Emma Scanton finds herself with a dilemma. She’s had plans to sell her pleasure house for months now, but it’s not as easy as she’d thought. She doesn’t trust anyone to run it as it should be run. And now the man she loves, the man who wants to take her away to start a life together, is back, waiting for her to get her affairs sorted. Complicating the matter is the sudden appearance of her—very pregnant—half sister. How does Ruby make the best decision for everyone?
I did not enjoy this book. I was so confused. This book was a continuation of Ruby’s overall tale, which has been slowly told over the course of the Bound and Determined series, primarily in Revealing Ruby and Ravishing Ruby. As far as I can tell, because I’ve only read A Very Ruby Christmas (VRC), each book in this series is like an episode of a TV show—smaller segments of a bigger story—which, in theory, sounds like a reasonable method of storytelling…but not in this case. This is a mess.
Allow me to briefly outline the series, because unfortunately, you may need me to. I wish I’d known this in advance—I’d have saved myself the headache—but as of 11/3 neither Amazon nor Fantastic Fiction was clear, and Kent’s website wasn’t up to date, so this is my guestimation. Also, without knowing word count, I’m judging novel or novella by page count…but as the series goes on, the harder it is to tell what’s supposed to be considered a full-length novel and what’s a novella—which is why I have a ? by 3, 4, and 4.5.
Book #1 – Mastering the Marquess – Louisa and Geoffrey (Lord Swanton) – 369 pgs
Book #1.5 – Revealing Ruby – the beginning of Ruby and Derek’s relationship – 108 pgs
Book #2 – Bound by Bliss – Bliss and Stephan – 340 pgs
Book #2.5 – Sarah’s Surrender – Sarah and Jonathan – 128 pgs
Book #3? – Angel in Scarlet – Angela and Matthew (Lord Colten) – 282 pgs
Book #4? – Ravishing Ruby – the continuation of Ruby and Derek’s relationship – 267 pgs
Book #4.5? – A Very Ruby Christmas – Ruby and Derek’s HEA – 198 pgs
FYI, Bound by Bliss and Sarah’s Surrender are irrelevant to VRC, as far as I can tell, but the others are involved.
Note I didn’t dislike the writing style, more the confounding storytelling. Adding to my complaint that this is nowhere near a stand-alone book—and yes, obviously it’s a series, but an author worth her salt would make each part an independent story, which this is not—are the two chapters told from Angela and Louisa’s point of view. Two completely unnecessary, irrelevant, time- and word-wasting chapters. Long, long chapters full of nothing but kinky sex. Or at least, I assume so—I got halfway through Angela’s chapter and thought, “This cannot be just sex between two characters who have nothing to do with the central conflict.” But it seemed to be, so I skipped them, and I don’t think I missed anything important. Perhaps I’d feel differently if I’d read the stories of Angela and Colten and Louisa and Swanton, but I haven’t, and since they probably got their HEAs in their own books, I could care less about their sexcapades. They’re Ruby’s friends, I get that, that’s fine, but I believe this was Ruby and Derek’s story, so those chapters had no place here, in my opinion.
I liked Ruby and Derek as characters. I didn’t particularly connect to either of them, but I cared about them enough to want to see them happily sail off into the sunset. They both seemed like good people and didn’t do anything irrationally stupid. I could relate to Derek’s struggle to maintain hope and patience with his sort-of-fiancee, and Ruby’s position between a rock and a hard place, just trying to do what’s right.
The plot was..lacking. It revolved around Ruby’s indecision (regarding what to do with the brothel) and everything branched off of that—Jasmine’s appearance and what to do with her, Derek’s return and plans for the future, Thorton’s trouble-making. It was not enough conflict to sustain even a long novella. By the end it had been drawn out and I was frustrated. Don’t misunderstand—it was certainly an interesting conflict, but it ran its course and then some.
Loose ends include the reasons for Thorton’s change in attitude and Jasmine’s baby daddy, whose identity is likely being saved for a future installment. Also, Ruby’s grandfather was mentioned several times but never appeared, but I understand he might have shown up in one of Ruby’s previous books.
There were things to like about this book, such as the writing style and characters, but for me those positives were largely overshadowed by the strange way the story was told and the fact that there wasn’t much going on. I was disappointed to learn that I wasn’t going to experience the whole of Ruby and Derek’s story. Although, I have to admit, even if I’d loved them enough to want to purchase the previous installments to read their introduction, I don’t think I would, because Ruby mentioned in VRC that she’d first met Derek while he was fucking one of her girls. Just…no, thank you.
