What would you do if you had been forced to have a London season but you had the worst luck? Diamond in the Rough by Jen Turano explores the story of a woman who finds herself in such a situation.
Diamond in the Rough Review
Poppy Garrison is blackmailed by her grandparents to have a season in New York where she is involved in one scrape after another. So much so that her grandmother hires Reginald, a proper British gentleman to tutor her in the ways of society.
I liked the concept of the story: a mishap-prone heiress and a very proper British aristocrat who were forced to spend time in each other’s company, but I did not like the execution. I’ve read a lot of historical fiction and don’t get the impression that it’s okay for a single man to spend a lot of mostly unchaperoned time with a single woman, but I could be wrong…I’m also giving the author room to use her creative license, but it was hard to get into this book.
Poppy’s spiritedness would have made for interesting reading if we had been shown the action instead of being told about it through long conversations between the characters.
The amount of “telling” in this book made it a slow read for me as I struggled to get through the tons of plot and backstory that was presented solely through dialogue.
I didn’t find a lot of chemistry between the characters and would have liked if the spiritual lessons were depicted instead of recounted through dialogue.
I appreciated Poppy’s determination to be herself and change the world. She impacted everyone around her which did indeed make her a “diamond in the rough”. Diamond in the Rough is the second book in the American heiress series but can be read as a stand-alone. Get your copy of A Diamond in the Rough.
About Diamond in the Rough (American Heiresses #2)
To save her family from financial ruin, Miss Poppy Garrison accepts an unusual proposition to participate in the New York social season in exchange for her grandmother settling a family loan that has unexpectedly come due.
Ill-equipped to handle the intricacies of mingling within the New York Four Hundred, Poppy becomes embroiled in one hilarious fiasco after another, doomed to suffer a grand societal failure instead of being deemed the diamond of the first water her grandmother longs for her to become.
Reginald Blackburn, second son of a duke, has been forced to travel to America to help his cousin, Charles Wynn, Earl of Lonsdale, find an American heiress to wed in order to shore up his family estate that is in desperate need of funds.
Reginald himself has no interest in finding an heiress to marry, but when Poppy’s grandmother asks him to give etiquette lessons to Poppy, he swiftly discovers he may be in for much more than he bargained for.
About Jen Turano
Named One of the Funniest Voices in Inspirational Romance by Booklist, Jen Turano is a USA Today Best-Selling Author, known for penning quirky historical romances set in the Gilded Age. Her books have earned Publisher Weekly and Booklist starred reviews, top picks from Romantic Times, and praise from Library Journal.
She’s been a finalist twice for the RT Reviewers’ Choice Awards and had two of her books listed in the top 100 romances of the past decade from Booklist. When she’s not writing, she spends her time outside of Denver, CO.
She can be found on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/jenturanoauthor/ or visit her on the web at www.jenturano.com. She is represented by the Natasha Kern Literary Agency.
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