Beauty and the Beast meets Cyrano in this tale of a wounded war veteran and the woman who makes him reclaim life.

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This book was quite interesting, though at times it borrows plot elements from Cyrano de Bergerac and Jane Austen, which weakens its originality.

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Good romance - kind of corny in spots but all the requisite bits including a happy ending.

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Having enjoyed another Deborah Hale book, Lady Lyte's Little Secret, this book came as rather a disappointment. The writing wasn't as lovely, the story not as tight.

The two characters meet and he asks her to be his fiance within the first few pages. No getting to know you stage in this book. While there was immediate attraction, the love story built slowly, which is good, because stories where their sexual attraction = love are never very convincing. However Hale drags things on too long and suddenly switches from a beauty and the beast story to a Cyrano de Bergerac knockoff. It seemed an unnecessary addition to an already difficult situation, like she just added it to make the book longer.

Much as I generally enjoy scarred hero stories, this one just didn't work for me. I didn't think we dug deeply enough into either of the characters to be very emotionally attached to them or their situations. Both carry wounds - both of her parents are dead, she's been living with relatives who treat her with little care, he's physically scarred from Waterloo and also lost both parents at a young age. There should be a lot more emotional depth in this book.

As with the other Deborah Hale book I read, this book has little in the way of sensuality, and that which there is can be described as fairly abbreviated.

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