Welcome Back, Booklovers! We're starting to see more and more diverse historical romance popping up. And in a sub genre so dominated by images of European aristocracy it's a refreshing change. The cover alone sucked me in and I decided to borrow the audiobook from my local library.
Ana Maria is one of the daughters of a powerful political family. She and her sisters are secretly sent to London during the French occupation of Mexico where she meets Gideon Fox, a mixed race member of Parliament determined to outlaw all that allows Britain to continue to profit off the slave trade.
This is a very slow burn romance which can be hit and miss for me and in this case it was a miss because we didn't always have enough one on one interaction between Gideon and Ana Maria for me to find their chemistry believable. There was so much talk of tension and pining but I didn't actually feel any sparks between them until their wedding night which was much later in the book that the synopsis implied. For a book marketed off the marriage of convivence it didn't happen until well after the halfway mark.
While I appreciated that Ana Maria was very outspoken about racism, slavery and women's rights I didn't like her approach. It was very in your face. Shortly after we meet her she's at a ball lecturing someone about it in a way that felt a little unrealistic and took me out of the scene. Every time this book handled issues it was just so over the top. A scene that comes to mind is how shocked and appalled Ana Maria and her sisters were when some woman suggested she whiten her skin. It was almost comical how that scene was played out.
To be quite honest I was bored until the conflict start picking up after the 70% mark. I spent most of the book wading through the repetitive dialogue and fact dropping while trying to connect with these characters. It had all the elements to make a good story but that got lost and it ended up feeling like yet another beautiful gowns regency romance.
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