Hello, Book Nerds! Welcome back to Reading Has Ruined My Life or welcome if you are new. As always, my name is Hannah and I am your captain on this journey into my bookcases.
Special hello goes out to Egypt. It’s so nice to finally see you! Welcome to RHRML. I hope you have a lovely time here.
It’s time to dive back into the Whispers on the Moors trilogy by Sarah E. Ladd. Break out the tea, fancy Regency gowns, and diadems! I’m back today with the second part of our three part series. Gotta say, this one is quite different than the first. You’ll see what I mean in a few minutes.
So with that, please welcome to the stage: The Headmistress of Rosemere by Sarah E. Ladd!
As always, a spoiler alert is in order. If you’ve read any of my other posts then you know I tend to spoil the majority of the books I read and review. Synopsis time!
The second entry of this series follows Patience Creighton who is, of course, our titular character. She’s 25-years-old and a self-proclaimed spinster. She’s not opposed to love, she just doesn’t get out much…or at all. Patience’s father has recently passed away, her brother left to settle the family’s affairs in London six months ago and has yet to return, their mother is hella depressed, and Patience is tasked with running the school and taking care of everyone. So yeah, she would love to find love she just doesn’t have the time.
This leads us to a one Mr. William Sterling. William is the brother of Captain Graham Sterling, and if you read the first book in this series or at least last week's post, then you already know William. He’s a gambler and an alcoholic and not the greatest person. Throw all that out the window though cause he’s not like that now! He has some massive debt and is beat up by some thugs on the way home right at the start of this novel. William doesn’t make it home and ends up at the Rosemere school where Patience tends to his wounds.
They’re totally not crushing on each other at this point. This is totally not the basis for their whole relationship. After this we lose the plot for most of the novel, but the TL;DR is because of his debt, William must sell parts of his ancestral land. At first he thinks this makes him less of a man but he comes to the realization that a woman’s love is more important. Or something to that extent.
Back with Patience, she’s struggling with everything I mentioned earlier plus a fire happening on the school's grounds, the reemergence of her first love, and more familial issues. And all she wants is to run the school! I make it sound like there are some big issues in her life, but they don’t feel that way in the novel.
So…this book is boring. There’s no tension, no plot, and no love story.
I honestly don’t know where to start. I guess I’ll start the review proper by saying I read 300-pages and maybe 100-pages had plot. And that’s me being generous. This whole book is filler! Honestly, this should have been a novella. There is no need for it to be just over 300-pages. It hardly constitutes as a novel.
Somehow, our main couple evades each other for the majority of the text. This is a romance with no plot and a couple who rarely have scenes together. How is this 300-pages? How is it possible to write 300-pages where nothing happens? The main characters who only have a handful of scenes together magically come to the conclusion they’re in love at the end?! I have many questions and they all are “why?” and “how?”
Also, the main characters have no personality. Patience has the personality of a wet piece of bread. William once had characterization. In The Heiress of Winterwood, he was a shitty person. He didn’t have a great personality, but he at least had one. In The Headmistress of Rosemere, he…well, he’s a cardboard cutout. I don’t know what happened between the writing of the first and second books for the author to make a shell of a once thought out character. Together, William and Patience are two halves of a whole character shell.
Full disclosure, I was expecting our male lead to be a reformed Rake. I wanted this beautiful character arc with a female lead who brings out the best in the male lead and puts him in his place. I got jackshit. I got nothing. I got a speck of dust blowing in the wind. I was highly disappointed and it just kept getting worse.
Um, yeah, don’t read this book. There is no reason for Patience and William to fall in love, they hardly spend time together, there is no plot, grammatically this book is fine, but yeah, there’s no plot! This novel has nothing. Watching paint dry is more exciting than anything in this novel. I question how it has nearly four stars on Goodreads.
With that, I shall bid you adieu. I know this was short, but it’s very concise. I do not recommend this read. I’ll see you next week with the finale of our three-part series. I hope the third novel is better than this one.
Until then, stay safe, wash your hands, and read some good books for me.
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