Review - "The Elusive Miss Ellison"

The Elusive Miss Ellison, Regency Brides: A Legacy of Grace #1
by Carolyn Miller
rating: ☆☆☆☆
published: 27th February 2017
spoilers? some

Goodreads

Galley provided by publisher

I'm on something of a regency kick at the moment. No other books have appealed to me so much, so obviously I had to pick this one up.

And, while it shares a lot of similarities with Austen novels in particular, it is a good one. To start with the similarities, in the beginning, it is almost to a T, Pride and Prejudice (in fact, the blurb even makes that comparison as well). Then there are scenes which remind me of Emma (specifically, a certain picnic scene). But if you're going to write regency novels, you're obviously going to run the risk of having an Austenesque plot (which, honestly, is no bad thing, because Jane Austen is amazing).

If anything, the pacing in this book seems a little strange. There's a rapid transition from hate to friendship, followed by a lot slower transition into love. And there are long passages where nothing seems to happen, that feel unnecessary or at the very least, like they could have been shortened. Near the end, there's also 1) a kind of flipping back and forth between 'oh he likes me' and 'he only wants me for ___' which doesn't make sense, and 2) a scene of attempted sexual assault which I thought was pointless, frankly. I mean, it doesn't add anything to the storyline, only gives the male character the chance to rescue the female character, and show how disgusting another male character is, but that whole thing is possible without recourse to attempted rape.

I also wasn't a huge fan of the implication that one can only truly be good if one is religious. Before Lavinia's miraculous recovery from severe influenza, which leads to Nicholas becoming a "believer", it's implied that she could never see him as a good person, because he doesn't believe in God. Which, honestly, is a load of bullshit, but one that I might overlook because it's set in regency times, and that's probably pretty close to what they believed. Even so, there was a whole section in the middle where it gets very religious all of a sudden, and I don't know how I felt about that.

But, in general, it was a great book, with wonderful characters, and I definitely can't wait for book two (especially to see if Nicholas and Lavinia show).