Wednesday, March 4, 2015

Review of Diary of an Accidental Wallflower by Jennifer McQuiston


Title/Author: Diary of an Accidental Wallflower (Seduction Diaries #1) by Jennifer McQuiston
Publisher/Date published: Avon, February 24th 2015
How I got this book: received it from the publisher as an egalley
Buy this book at: The Book Depository

Goodreads summary: Pretty and popular, Miss Clare Westmore knows exactly what (or rather, who) she wants: the next Duke of Harrington. But when she twists her ankle on the eve of the Season’s most touted event, Clare is left standing in the wallflower line watching her best friend dance away with her duke.

Dr. Daniel Merial is tempted to deliver more than a diagnosis to London's most unlikely wallflower, but he doesn’t have time for distractions, even one so delectable. Besides, she's clearly got her sights on more promising prey. So why can’t he stop thinking about her?

All Clare wants to do is return to the dance floor. But as her former friends try to knock her permanently out of place, she realizes with horror she is falling for her doctor instead of her duke. When her ankle finally heals and she faces her old life again, will she throw herself back into the game?

Or will her time in the wallflower line have given her a glimpse of who she was really meant to be?

This was a bit of a different twist on the usual historical romance, which features a duke or a viscount or a marquess and a highborn lady who fall in love. In Diary of an Accidental Wallflower, we see love blossom between a highborn lady and a doctor (gasp)!

I liked Clare, though I really wanted to shake her for pretending to be lacking intelligence. I mean, she's obviously pretty smart, but she's pretending not to be because she thinks it won't be as accepted by the rest of the ton and OMG in real life this also annoys me! Playing dumb is never an attractive feature in my opinion. But she does use her smarts in the end and I liked it. She's fiercely protective of her brother and sister and though she might be a bit overbearing in her protectiveness, I loved that she cared so much about them.

I had some issues with Daniel. While I really liked that he calls Clare out on her bullshit, the way he's attracted to a patient and decides to act on it while he's still treating her is a big HELL NO. I mean, I'm a doctor myself and that is just not done. I think you can even loose your license to practice medicine when you do something like this. So that bothered me. But I do like how he's determined to find a way to use anesthesia on patients and how he's conducting experiments on himself (which didn't seem the wisest decision to be honest, but I do appreciate his not wanting to kill a test subject by accident). Other than that, I liked how he also cared about Clare's siblings and gave them some advice and just a good example.

Clare and Daniel definitely had the banter down and I always appreciate that! They had some chemistry, but not as much as I would have liked and the conflict at the end made me roll my eyes for a bit. I mean, come on, that just felt like filler for the last couple of pages, while it could hav easily ended neatly right there. But they were good together and I kinda loved how though there was the real problem of their difference in station and how they would have an income sufficient to provide for them both, it all worked out in the end. It might be a little too convenient how the stars all aligned to make this happen, but I like a happily ever after, so I was ok with it.

There was a lot of build-up towards the taking off of the romance and I was a bit bored for the first half of the book, but after it started getting better and I could start rooting for their relationship to work out, so in the end it was a pretty ok novel, not as good as I though Summer is For Lovers was, which was AMAZING, but still a decent read.

My rating: 3 stars

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