After the Kiss [Paperback]

The relationship between Eliza and Marcus is odd to say the least. Why would a person who is so badly scarred emotionally and physically force a woman to marry him? Why resist her so much if he wants her that badly? Why does she agree to it all? What is the secret she is hiding?

There are many things wrong with this book, but it does compel you to finish it! Despite the inaccuracies that will frustrate and irritate you... You still find yourself turning page after page, so... there must be something in it to merit a good rating!!

There are other grating inaccuracies and impossibilities which also irritated me: for instance, Marcus travelling with his twin nieces without a maid or governess in sight?! No way. Absolutely would that not have happened. These are daughters of a duke. They would be protected and chaperoned at every turn. Marcus may have been a relative, but he was still a man; he would not have been alone with them.

And then later in the book, Marcus sends someone to ride from Kent to London, to see his solicitor and a vicar and arrange for a special licence and dispensation to be married after dark, then visit Eliza's friends and get them to Kent for the wedding. All in the same 24-hour period! No chance; that's a complete impossibility. Sure, a rider on a speedy horse could get to London within a day, but do all this and get back again??? And, if I'm not mistaken, a special licence could only be obtained *in person* from the man about to be married, and only from a bishop.

I do find it irritating when writers clearly haven't bothered to do the most basic research.

Johnston doesn't take care with her language, either: her characters are supposed to be English, and English aristocracy at that, and yet a lot of the time they talk like Americans. Simply omitting contractions doesn't cut it, Ms Johnston. For instance, no young lady of the aristocracy - or even any English person - would talk about 'fixing' hair. One 'arranges', or - for that period and class - 'dresses' hair. That's just one example of several irritating Americanisms which leapt out at me. And Ms Johnston or her editor really needed to pay a little more attention to grammar, especially punctuation.

Some of this wouldn't have mattered so much - as with the inaccuracies in Edith Layton's early books - if at any time the characters had engaged my emotions. They did not, in any way. I found them flat and one-dimensional. And when I think of what someone like Mary Balogh or Mary Jo Putney could have done with a premise like this, I feel bitterly disappointed. This premise, in the hands of a Balogh or a Kelly, would have been a tear-jerker. Johnston's book has simply left me bored.