Quick Hit of Romance

Okay, I need to officially stop trying to grope blindly into the dark in search of a good romance novel.  The masses have spoken: Courtney Milan's The Duchess War will be my next romance attempt.

It's just that a novella seemed like such a good way in.  And I'd heard of Emma Locke's The Art of Ruining a Rake.  So when I saw the prequel novella, A Game of Persuasion, on Netgalley, it just seemed like a brilliant plan.  Lusty romance, minor commitment, and the series is called The Naughty Girls--I mean, this is the sexy, lowbrow stuff I'm looking for, right?

Sigh. Can't even blame the book--it's a prequel/setup for the novel, and while the blurb seemed to hint that it was a good way, in, I disagree.  Because we get zero impression of the hero--the heroine was great (although quite anachronistic in her thinking about sex; still, I can deal with that), but there was so little information about the object of her affection that I got no picture of him at all.  There was a lot about how she liked and loved and wanted him, but not one interaction or memory or personal anecdote or even good description that made him seem like a worthwhile person, or even a person at all.

A lot of the action seemed to supplement the other books in the series; apparently the first one was about our heroine, Lucy's brother.  She spends some time with his inamorata during what is probably the "misunderstandings" part of their book, and that's all well and good.  But there's a lot of Lucy thinking about going into society and caring about Roman and etc., and very little showing it. 

So, not what I needed after all.  I feel somehow that I'm letting the romance genre down.  Sigh--back to my smutty fanfiction!