The Viscount of Maisons-Laffitte
By Jennie Goutet
What a sweet little book. This is most definitely a clean romance with underlying Christian themes, but I wouldn’t go as far as saying it is strictly a Christian romance. Surely, anyone who grabs a copy of this book will most definitely enjoy it, no matter what their beliefs are—or aren’t. The characters are sweet, realistic, and enjoyable, but the journeys that they take with one another are as original and intriguing as the very concept of the story.
Chastity is the main character of this book and she’s someone who is very easy to like. Right from the start, her personality came through and it was one I enjoyed very much, especially for the gentle—yet passionate—romance that would soon play out. While many events come about in the pages of this book I do believe each character remained in character and reacted in the way readers would expect them to.
The relationship between Chastity and Charles is sweet but sometimes gets steamy. That’s what I enjoyed about the novel, there was plenty of passion and you don’t often find that in sweet Christian romance. While it remained clean you felt the intensity of the emotions the characters experienced and you felt the real connection they had with one another. The romance was thrilling and a little suspenseful, especially when other characters were put in the mix. Throughout the book, the story moved at a decent pace and kept me interested until the wonderful end.
My only complaint about the book would actually be the style of writing. It wasn’t BAD. But it felt stiff at times. To be more specific, the dialogue was written well and realistically but all the details and background information was relayed almost like a grocery list. I noticed that right away and I hoped it was just something the first part of the book suffered from but no, that awkward narration of “She grabbed her files and sat her desk. She flipped through the files, searching for the test results. She found the results and frowned” was prevalent throughout the entire novel. The story was interesting enough to make up for the narration but in an emotionally driven romance such as this, it was definitely distracting at times.
That being said, I still enjoyed the novel and would most definitely recommend it to avid fans of romance and especially Christian readers too.
*I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review*