The Madness of Lord Ian Mackenzie

DNF @ 35%.

Trying a new genre! That is: romance!! Look at that cover, wow.

I mean, I'm not completely new to romance - I spent most of the time between puberty and college reading and writing fairly torrid fanfic (oh, Boromir, my love! and not forgetting you, Obi-Wan). So I thought I'd give this a go. This was a recommendation from Claude.ai, aka my new fave recommendation system. He sold it to me as a fanfic-esque costume drama featuring a sexy hero who has autism. HA. Yes. I went looking for smut as a vehicle for neurodiversity lit (neurodiversity is my JAM, right now; THANK YOU to all those disability advocates out there).

Anyway, I simply could not suspend my disbelief. Just as several friends have failed me in the past, when I'd show them some treasure of a Hindi film (aka Bollywood), because they just could not get past the “breaking out into song”, I could not get past the incredible horniness of the people in this book. They just met!!! Hahaha. Also, I wasn't loving some of the window dressing around this smut + neurodiversity story - namely, the dead prostitutes, the random proposal by that random guy, the SECOND random proposal, the way that every single person was described by their eyes and their vivid color, the wandering point of view (I guess it's omniscient but ugh, I drew the line at that even in my fanfic reading).

Ah well. I remain undeterred! Expect more romance in my Goodreads in the future!

Loved my first Jennifer Ashley!

I really liked the mix of the romance plot with the murder mystery plot, and loved the McKenzie family. I can't wait to continue and find out more about the brothers.

Hmm, vlot las dit boek wel, maar het verhaal is toch een beetje dubbel.
De autistische trekjes van de held worden, zover ik kan oordelen, echt goed naar voor gebracht en ik was erg benieuwd hoe de auteur dit personage verliefd ging laten worden. Maar uiteindelijk verviel het in eerder insta-lust wat dan opeens liefde wordt voor de personages zonder dat ze ooit een degelijk gesprek hebben gevoerd. Allemaal leuk en wel om te lezen, daar niet van, maar ik had het toch liever eens iets anders gezien.
De bijkomende plot van het moordmysterie wordt op zo'n vreemde ongeloofwaardige manier afgehandeld, dat ik niet begrijp waarom dit nodig was.
Geen slecht boek per se, een leuk tussendoortje, maar eerder doornsnee.

4.5 stars

Thank the stars, I still like historical romances! This book has shown me that I've been reading duds lately. This one? I had that spark of enjoyment from the beginning – something I was doubly grateful for as I felt I was falling into a slump.
Ian is such an interesting character and not one we usually see in a historical. I'm pretty sure he is autistic. Beth is a widow and isn't as shy or nervous about things which is so refreshing.

I'm not a huge fan on how the ending conflict goes down, but it didn't bother me enough to dislike the book entirely. Perhaps I'll even try continuing on with this series.

Really I think I would rate this a 3.5, I DID like Ian, but I felt like the romance wasnt really developed well at all. I enjoyed the way JA she placed each of the brothers on the spectrum. I liked that the heroine was able to look past it. It was different from a typical historical romance for me, so maybe that was why I felt like the romance wasnt really well defined. It was a decent read though.

This book came highly recommended by my favorite romance blog but I found it to be very disappointing. The hero, who has Asperger's Syndrome, felt to me like another domineering alpha-hole, albeit one with a perfect memory. It was not clear to me why the heroine fell in love with him other than the always dangerous “nobody understands him but me” trope. Ah well, I haven't read historical romance in a long time and now I can safely go back to avoiding the genre.