Only A Kiss

Title: Only A Kiss

Author: Mary Balogh

Genre: Historical Romance

Time: Unfinished

I have a lot of books that I start off for a few pages but realize that I don’t feel like reading something of that genre at that particular moment.  I would usually, at some point in time, (when I don’t have anything else left to read), return to that book then start and finish reading it.   

This is not one of those books.  It tends to drag.  Pages are devoted to characters’ long background on their ancestry, which is fine if it’s necessary for the plot but in this case, it feels like page fillers.. kinda like what high school students do when they need to reach a minimum word count for an essay.  It’s not just character’s genealogy, it tends to drone on and on about the scenery, etc. etc. 

But being overly wordy doesn’t really bother me as long as the story, characters and dialogue make up for it (I can always just skip past those long descriptions, preferring to make up something better with my imagination).  But nothing in it made me fall in love with characters or at least invested in them.  For a romance novel, I kept waiting for the romantic “sparks” that never came. 

It's too bad because it started promising enough.  It had the makings and ingredients of a great romance novel.  Maybe I just wasn’t in the mood.  Maybe I was craving for a Lisa Kleypas historical romance and this one just didn’t live up to Ms. Kleypas’ standards.  As much as I tried, I just couldn’t finish this book.  That said, I still might try the author’s other books.