Returning home to Boston after attending Finishing School in Paris, Rilla learns that not only has she lost both her mother and father. But that she’s also illegitimate and that her mother was a wealthy Madam.
What?!
Sure, she’s got money. Lots of it. But no chance to be a part of society. No chance for an advantageous marriage. So she does what any fallen woman does, she hops on the train and heads out west to find her future.
I have to admit it, the premise intrigued me. I’ve got a thing for seeing the seamier side of Society. I’ve also got a thing for women forging their own way. It seems like this would be a perfect fit.
It wasn’t.
I couldn’t get into the story, at all.
I was bored. So very bored.
Literally the best thing about this story was the blurb.
The first chapter was essentially info dump. And badly done info dump. Like I wanted to cut the entire first chapter. It was that bad. It was like the author decided that the reader needed to know every ounce of backstory RIGHT NOW!!! and slopped it down in front of the reader like a dump truck spilling out garbage into a landfill.
Yeah.
It’s that bad.
Worse, the language used was juvenile. Jerky. Jumpy. Just plain bad. It’s as if the author didn’t bother with a line edit or even attempted to read it aloud to see if it flowed.
Worse worse. This takes place pre-end of the Civil war. You know, before there was an actual transcontinental railroad. I mean even the Sunfire Romance Julie got that right. But somehow the heroine is able to ride the railroad all the way to California. In less than a week. Without stopping. You know during the middle of the Civil War. Where the railroads are mostly being used for things like… Weapons… Troops… things like that.
The historical inaccuracies abound.
Now I can often ignore some of this if the characters are amazeballs. And as you might expect, this also was not good. The characters were flat, boring, and annoying. And worse the pacing was off. Like it was both too slow and too rushed at the same time.
I gave this book a solid 20% before reclaiming my time.
One star for a DNF
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