Review: Sin and Sensibility by Suzanne Enoch

Title: Sin and Sensibility
Author: Suzanne Enoch
Genre: Historical Romance
Grade: C+
Summary: USA Today
bestselling author Suzanne Enoch delights fans once again with this enchanting tale
of a young lady determined to have an adventure and the white knight who charges
to her rescue.
After yet another beau was chased away by her three over-protective brothers, Lady
Eleanor Griffin decides she’s had enough. If she is to become a boring society wife,
then she’s going to have some fun first. But when her adventure turns into more than
what she bargained for, she is grateful for her knight in shining armour who rescued
her from what was sure to become a scandalous situation.
My Thoughts: For the number 1 suggestion as generated by Librarything, this was a disappointment. Although I haven’t read all that many historical romances as compared to other things I’ve read, I felt that I’d read both Eleanor and her knight in shining armor, Valentine Corbet, the Marquis of Deveril, (although sometimes he’s referred to as the Marquess in my ebook, which confused me) in other settings. Nell is your stock Regency miss who wants to escape the strictures of her society. Valentine is a notorious rake who prays to Lucifer because that’s supposed to convince us how blackhearted he is. I didn’t really like either of them, and I thought they were a bit cartoonish and over the top in their reactions to what was going on around them.

The other thing that bugged me about this book was the writing style. Enoch peppers the book with what she assumes are Regency British-isms that don’t feel right. Everyone refers to women as chits, and after a while I started to really notice it. And I’ve mentioned the part about Valentine half-gestingly praying to Lucifer. That wasn’t funny, and it was a bit lame.

What I did like were the moments of tenderness–though there were few–between Eleanor and her family. I got the sense that her brothers really did care about her, they just went about things in a very ridiculous way for large sections of the book.

My recommendation: There are so many better written regencies out there. Skip this one and read Julia Quinn instead, because she does the whole overprotective family, and a woman courting a rake, far better than Enoch, plus Quinn’s books are actually funny.