My rating: 4 of 5 stars
A beautifully written ~15k word novella. Novellas are tricky things because it’s hard to strike a balance. You need to flesh out characters good enough for a full length novel, yet pace the book well enough for it to be a novella. And this job is quite well done here.
Eva Deverell has done a wonderful job here, and I’m so glad I experimented with this on kindle. I’m not a fan of historical romance but I thought of giving it a shot and I’m glad I did! It’s absolutely amazing and I love how well fleshed out the lead characters are. Beatrice is strong, intelligent, and has a great sense of humour. All of us have a little Beatrice in us and I guess that’s the beauty of this book.
Botany plays a very important role here, and that’s a refreshing change from the usual romance novels.
What I loved:
– strength of the lead characters
– unique take on the catalysts, i.e. botany
– did justice to the novella format
What I didn’t like:
– the supporting characters were sometimes one dimensional. But as it is a novella, that’s not such a bad thing.