If You Give a Girl a Viscount (Impossible Bachelors) [Englisch] [Taschenbuch]

In crumbling Castle Vandemere in Scotland Daisy Montgomery lives a horrific life due to her cruel Cheapside London stepmother Mona and malevolent stepsisters (Perdita and Cassandra). She dreams of a Prince Charming coming to her rescue, but knows that inanity only occurs in fairy tales not for someone like her. When she finds a note that says she has a Godmother Lady Pinckney, she writes in hope of a recue. Instead of her Godmother responding, the grandson Viscount Charles Thorpe does.

Cut off from his family funds and after a bet with his now married Impossible Bachelors pals (see Cloudy with a Chance of Marriage) Charles travels to the Highlands hoping for an adventure of a lifetime. She wants to save her home but he lacks the funds to do so. As they fall in love, the pair persuades a neighbor to use his estate to host a gala for outsiders to experience the Highlands.

The latest Impossible Bachelor historical romance stars a Cinderella heroine and a not so charming Prince Charming. Filled with jocularity yet containing a deep poignancy as the lead couple finds they are more than just a victim and a wastrel, fans will appreciate the tale of a Godmother giving her goddaughter a viscount to love and be loved in return.

Harriet Klausner

Did I like it? It was okay as a stand alone book but it was not the greatest way to end the series. I'm glad other reviewers summarized the book so I can focus on the good and the not-so-good points of the book. This review may contain some spoilers but I will try my best to be vague and to warn you ahead.

Good:

The plot is inspired by the Cinderella story and starts off as you would expect: heroine scrubbing the hearthstone while the evil stepmother looks onward. Don't get me wrong, I love stories with a fairy tale bent (like some of Teresa Medeiros' or Robin McKinley's stories) but sometimes those stories can stick too close to the fairy tale and then it becomes cliche and boring. I was glad that Kramer was able to give the story an interesting modern twist where there was no fairy god mother to whip out her wand and bippity-boppity-boo problems away. It was great to see Charlie and Daisy work together to solve Daisy's problem because you really get to see the chemistry between them.
The light humor and whimsicalness of this book actually reminds me a little of Julia Quinn's earlier books, however Quinn has a lot more finesse than Kramer in that department. Like Quinn, Kramer uses everyday interaction to demonstrate their mutual attraction to each other, rather than using physical attraction as the main driving factor of the relationship. Another way to put it is that you can really tell that the H/h not only enjoy each other's physical body, but they also enjoy each other's presence. I definitely like me a good sex scene too. However, I've been feeling jaded lately because the H/h in books these days seem to be driven by their sexual need for each other so much. If you take that factor away, there really is nothing else in the relationship. This is why this book was really refreshing for me to read.

Not-So-Good:

In my opinion, the sex scenes are pretty mild and there is no actual intercourse until the epilogue and even then it's quite mild. This is not a complaint from me. I don't mind mild, especially if the author is skilled enough to build chemistry between the couple without it. If you want some uber steamy sex scenes, there is always erotica novels or other writers such as Lora Leigh. However, this is a warning from me to those readers who expects some steam and may feel disappointed at the lack of it.
With that warning out of the way, I do have a few problems with the book. As some reviewers mentioned, I did find the book to be confusing at times. For example, the transitioning between time frames could be smoother. First, the book starts off with Charlie at the club with the other Impossible Bachelors, discussing his plan to journey that night. Then in the next chapter, the first sentence was "He was there" as in he had arrived to Glen Dewey. Initially, I had to backtrack to check if I missed a few pages. Although Kramer does eventually give a cursory explanation here and there about what happened to Charlie on his journey, it was still a little abrupt for me . I may be nitpicking but I had hoped to hear more of how Charlie made it to Glen Dewey, surviving on his wits and resourcefulness alone. After all, it was the first time he had relied on himself instead of his money and it would have been interesting to see how he did it. It didn't have to be drawn out but it seems Kramer cut short Charlie's achievement and I, the reader, ended up not fully appreciating the "hardship he faced getting to Scotland in one piece" when the couple started to have problems. I definitely would have rather read that than the sheep shearing contest scene.
Also, I had a problem with the epilogue. The transitioning between the last scene to the epilogue was abrupt. It didn't help a bit that epilogue had a year on it because I didn't even know what year the book started out with. While I was trying to figure out how many years had passed and what happened to Daisy's mother and sisters, there was a bevy of characters introduced and I ended up having to reread it twice. I understand that Kramer may have been trying to write a fully detailed and satisfying epilogue but she ended up rushing and cramming too much information. I found the situation in the epilogue to be ridiculous and unbelievable. Thus, I finished the book feeling strangely unsatisfied especially because this book is the last of the Impossible Bachelor series.
Another thing to note is that although I liked Kramer's light humor and whimsical writing, some people may be turned off by it. Sometimes Kramer can be a little too whimsical that the conversation or characters start to look ridiculous or absurd. I believe many people found this a problem especially in her earlier books. I think in this book, she listened and was not quite so heavy handed in the whimsical aspect. I , at least, did not find too much of a problem with it in this book. I found her to be a little more whimsical in the beginning and then it began to taper off in the end -- well, until the epilogue.

Last thing I'd like to mention is that I really liked Mr.Beebs and wished Kramer wrote more about Mr.Beebs and his lady love. He seemed like an interesting character and I wanted to learn what his lady love saw in him that made her fall in love with him.

I enjoyed this book...and I didn't. Both main charcters were likable and I wanted a happy ending for them. But, as mentioned before, the sisters flip flopping from evil to misunderstood was confusing and in my opinion their actions were unforgivable - they did some really awful things! The last few chapters made me feel like the author wasn't all the way sure where to write the resolution and the epilogue made me think that whole paragraphs if not pages had been cut. All in all though, I think that the author has some real talent and I will continue to watch for that talent to grow in future books.