Tuesday

Beauty and the Blacksmith by Tessa Dare

May 14, 2013
Welcome back to Spindle Cove

http://tessadare.com/

The Spindle Cove series is one of the best series' around currently.  I don't think I've enjoyed a continual storyline quite so much since Julia Quinn's Bridgerton family flew in.  However, I
did have a problem with Tessa Dare's latest, Beauty and the Blacksmith.  That problem was the length of the story.  Much to my disappointment, Beauty and the Blacksmith was published as a novella aka short story, so there wasn't much in the way of rich narrative.  And, that's too bad because this story just screams for more details. 

You see, we have an unlikely couple pairing - one between the beautiful aristocrat Diana Highwood and the local blacksmith Adam Dawes.  I found the pairing of these two from totally different classes very intriguing.  However, there just wasn't enough time allotted in this book to make their relationship work (without a very big stretch of the imagination, that is).

The set up for Adam and Diana's romance was pretty funny.  When the story begins, Adam was hammering away on some of Diana's broken jewelry.  He was shirtless and sweaty and muscle-ly and Diana was discretely drooling.  You see, this wasn't the first time Adam had to fix one of Diana's jewels.  She'd been secretly breaking them just so she could hang around ye ol' anvil and feast her eyes on all that manliness.  I do have to say that Adam was drool worthy - he was one hot blacksmith.  The chemistry between Diana and Adam fairly steams off the pages.  Both characters are great, but their story really needed to be longer.  There wasn't enough of this tale to make it really outstanding.

Overall, Beauty and the Blacksmith makes a nice addition to the Spindle Cove series, it just wasn't as special as I wanted for the characters of Diana and Adam.

Time/Place:  Spindle Cove 1800s
Sensuality: Hot

1 comment:

nath said...

Too bad this one was too short. Although I'd probably not read it since I'm one of the few who doesn't love Tessa Dare.