The Wild One (The de Montforte Brothers #1) By Danelle Harmon

1 out of 5 stars

Shorter Version (spoilers even here):

Great set of characters, interesting situations, well-written action scenes that focus on showing and not telling... so why the low rating? Cringe-worthy set-up (ex-fiancee journeys from America to London and falls in love with her dead fiance’s younger brother), followed by eye-roll-inducing situations (wedding night in a brothel? check, hyperbolically maniacal villains that are set up to make fatal errors? check, check). Parts of it were really well-written, the rest of it was like a trainwreck, I couldn't stop reading, but hated myself for it!

Greater Detail (even more spoilers ahead):

This was a freebie ebook for Kindle, otherwise I might have paid more attention to the setup:

1. de Montforte brother #2, a soldier in America, dies right after proposing to his beloved Juliet (a colonial)

2. Juliet travels, a year later, with her daughter to see the help of her dead fiance’s family.

3. She’s held up by highwaymen (in an action scene that spans a few chapters but was actually quite well done) and saved (miraculous coincidences!) by Gareth, her dead finace’s younger brother (the “wild one”)

4. She’s attracted to him -- but in a gee, you remind me a LOT of my dead finace way (because um, they’re related)

5. They’re manipulated to be together by the eldest de Monforte (imagine a puppeteer with strings, cue villain-y music, while he plots and plans and then shares all of his ill-conceived intentions with a throwaway sidekick/henchman).

6. They fall for the machinations... get married, are almost broke, fight about money, and decide to spend the night in a brothel (because you know, why not, that can’t go poorly)

7. Oh wait, it goes poorly. There’s a fight... and (another great coincidence) the fight is observed by a swindler who makes all his money arranging (and rigging) fights, a villain who JUST SO HAPPENS to own a juicy estate, once owned by Garteth’s grandfather, an estate he would love to be able to magically obtain so that he can support his new wife and daughter.

Oh. My. Goodness.

I really, can roll with the punches, especially when there’s a doozy of a setup, but the problem is that in this book, the eyeroll inducing scenes just come, one after another.

Which is all the more surprising because there are genuinely well written scenes... the problem is, I’m so busy rolling my eyes from the setup (poison, pugilism, dumb villains, every-imaginable awkward scene like new wife drooling over dead fiance while new husband watches jealousy) that I almost don’t get to enjoy the bits of good writing.

And... final spoilers ahead...

AFTER the hardwon, completely unbelievable climatic scene/fight (which again, is well-written, if you can get over the absurdness of it)... in the epilogue, we find out the that dead fiance, wait for it, IS ALIVE.

Argh. I hate myself for reading this book, it’s free and I want my money back. Worse, because I’m a completionist, I now have to go track down the next book, so I can continue to not-take-my-eyes-off this trainwreck.

Comparison to Other Authors/Books:

What kills me is that this is my first read by Danelle Harmon and she’s actually a good writer -- the action scenes are really well done. The dialog (even the parts where she’s playing with dialects) is also pretty good. If someone would just sit down and outline and not completely absurd list of plot twists followed by plot twists, I think it would be a good read... but... with this plot... argh. If you want a widow with a young daughter who used to be in love with a milder man and now falls for the rake-reformed-rake who is a former pugilist try Lisa Kleypas’s Where Dreams Begin (not her best, but good, and a LOT better than this one and yes, the two books have ALL those similarities).