Though Micaela falls in love with pirate’s son Dominique, she agrees to marry Celestin, the man she’s been betrothed to since she was a child.
I went into this book expecting a historical romance – I was not aware that the Baroness Pontalba was a real person with a lengthy Wikipedia entry, and so that the story does not necessarily have a happy ending. In that light the way this book is written, with plenty of emphasis on the more mundane up ands downs of Micaela’s life, makes more sense.
This is a well-written, straightforward book with a likable and strong-willed lead character in Micaela, who grows to become more capable and self-reliant as the story goes on. There’s plenty of drama and intrigue to be found here in her dealings with her in-laws, and as I’d known nothing about Micaela’s life every twist and turn caught me by surprise.
However, the story does suffer from how we skip around from point to point in the story, with many of the later interactions with Dominique being sometimes shoehorned in. I wish we got more of a view of Micaela as socialite – while much is mentioned of her vivacious extroverted personality, we don’t really see it in action.
Also, the author could not seem to get a handle on Celestin’s personality, having him wavering between admiring and hating Micaela even more than seems reasonable considering his father’s influence on him. As the other major character in the book I thought a lot more could have been done with him.
The book also shows its age in how much of a character flaw Celestin’s embroidery hobby is supposed to be. As a fellow fibre arts enthusiast, I was offended on his behalf.