The Perfect Fiancé (Matchmaking for Wallflowers #0.5)

After seeing several Bianca Blythe books appearing on my newsfeed and thinking the covers were absolutely stunning, I decided to check out the novella to determine if the author’s writing style was as delicious as the cover art.

This was my first sample of Bianca Blythe’s work, and unless I can access another book for free, I won’t be purchasing more by this author. The storyline is an oft-used childhood friends to lovers theme, which was fine by me. I love sweet, simple storylines if the character development is good. In this case, the character development was almost non-existent. I read a lot of novellas and I know to give them a little more leeway in the depth department, but this story focused more on abstract feelings and the setting at the expense of the characters.

I felt like the storytelling style meandered and used limited punctuation, which required me to re-read sections to grasp their meaning. Despite these, I thought that the hero, Marcus, had potential. I liked how he was physically described and his awkwardness was endearing. However, that was all I learned about him. There was limited discussion about his work, his past, or what drew him to the heroine aside from her beauty and artistic skills. As for the heroine, Rosamund, she was not fleshed out at all. My impression of her was that she was a silly young girl who wanted to play matchmaker and then became a martyr and pushed away a man even though she wanted him. I guess this is a bit like Austen’s Emma, which is not my favorite trope so perhaps it is my fault I couldn’t connect to her.

Aside from the weird first meeting of the characters, most of the development of the characters’ relationship is relayed in a few paragraphs while Marcus is reflecting before he proposes. I understand the story is short, but the story skipped the entire relationship foundation building process so the only things I saw as a reader were Rosamund’s childish matchmaking antics and Marcus’ awkwardness. It didn’t convince me of an everlasting HEA.

Overall, I found the writing style to be very wordy and hard for me to follow. There are glimmers of good writing in there, but I had to wade through too much abstract descriptions or setting and time passing to understand the story.

It is a free story so I encourage other readers who like more quirky writing to still check it out. It is a short read and an easy way to tell if the author is for you.

What a sweet read in the old fashioned style of a historical romance! The characters were likable and perfect for each other but due to a stupid assumption on the heroine’s part the romance almost ended before it could begin. There were parts the were difficult for me to believe which is why I only gave it 3 stars but the author’store writing style made it an enjoyable read and I plan to get another book in the series and hopefully, a longer book might be more enjoyable for me.

Short stories are actually very difficult to write. It’s hard to express a connection between two people when you have a limited amount of space to do it. I thought the story here was well done and sweet. I could feel a connectiom between the H and the h. It’s a completely clean romance, so for those of you who don’t enjoy sex scenes in any form, then you’ll enjoy this novella.

For those interested, this story is a prequel and Fiona’s story comes next.

Sisters Fiona and Rosamund have very diverse interests. Fiona has no interest in marriage or London, while Rosamund would like a season to meet and fall in love with a wonderful man. Enter Lord Marcus, a natural scientist who wants to escape the London scene to carry out research.
Rosamund has matched several of her friends to good men, and thinks that if she can make a match for Fiona, she will be free to find her own mate. Rosamund believes that Marcus and her sister would be a perfect match, but fails to consider her own attraction to Marcus!
I think it is hard to develop characters in a short story. Rosamund, Fiona and Marcus are interesting, but the reader does not see enough of the romantic interactions to make the subsequent events more believable. The secondary characters come across as mere caricature instead of amusing.
I certainly enjoy reading about strong women, so I do look forward to discovering Fiona’s story.

This is a prequel to the Matchmaking For Wallflowers series. I have not read others in the series, but I very much enjoyed this one. It is a sweet story with a delightful leading lady. I definitely would like to read the other books in this series after reading this one. I listened to the audio version and narrator, Rosalyn Landor, did a good job on the narration.

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