Overall Response

As I grew closer in the series to reading Daniel’s story, I was becoming more and more apprehensive because I was not connecting to Daniel in any of the places he had showed up in the series thus far, save for The Many Sins of Lord Cameron. He was just too glib, too smooth, too…perfect. It’s clear that he’s one of Jennifer Ashley’s favorite characters — either he or Ian show up in every single Mackenzie book even when there’s very little purpose to his presence.

And my opinion really didn’t change as I read this book. Daniel felt…superficial. Smooth. I think I was supposed to connect to his troubled upbringing and there was definitely some moments where I could see those hints, but there just wasn’t anything there. Violet, however, is a lovely lovely character. I love every moment she’s on the page, and the real reason I decided to root for Daniel and Violet was because Violet wanted Daniel, and that was good enough for me.

There’s not much of a central narrative here. It’s mostly Violet’s journey to trusting Daniel and dealing with her past. Daniel is really incidental to it, which is good. Because if he’d been the main character, I don’t think I would have liked this.

I really love the time period this is set and the focus on inventions, engineering, and cars is really different. Right now, this is the latest book in the series — there are three more books set with this generation, but they both go back a few years.  The next three books are set a century earlier during the 1740s, I think. I haven’t read the two that are published yet. I hope Jennifer Ashley returns to this generation and decade.

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