Like other reviewers, I felt like I was coming in the middle of the story because it's part of a series. Any nuances could be lost because the other books are unread. The first person narrative is nice but the shift is annoying. We start with the Duchess and then Richard takes over and I could hear myself saying, "cut to the chase already!" The time traveler aspect is interesting but my mind immediately goes to Doctor Who and from there the story gets predictable. An interesting read, but not something I'd pick up on my own. ( )

My first impression as I started this novel was annoyance and frustration. Having come to this book cold without knowing it was part of a series I found the first two chapters extremely frustrating as character names kept appearing without any explanation of who they were and how they fit in the story. As I started to get a rough idea from the dialogue I had no way of confirming what I thought was being implied. A family tree would have been very helpful here. I've read many historical and time travel novels before, many as part of series and never had this problem. Secondly despite a heading that chapter 1 was set in 1781? And some dialogue around historical events at that time there was very little scene setting, I didn't feel like I was in that time period as you do with other historical novels. The modern speech can be explained away due to the first character Richard being from the future but this needed to be balanced with other scene descriptions. Thirdly Richard struck me as a rather weak and whiny character. Chapter 1 reads in the first person by Richard perhaps if I'd known him in the previous novels I might have a different impression but even further into the novel when his situation improved his character depth didn't. He was not a character I could relate to and he did not appeal even though he was cast as the romantic hero so to speak.
Things improved a little as we entered chapter 2 although it was confusing to have the first person narrative change the first person. In chapter 2 we are now looking through the eyes of the other main character Fancy or Franchesca. Fancy had a lot more depth and was more engaging to read than Richard but there was still the difficulty with placing other characters. Once I got past this problem and knew enough to follow the story it became interesting. Although there were random switches back and forth between who was narrating without warning and this made it difficult to follow who's perspective we were reading from. There was even a couple of points where we switched to third person narrative. I would have found it better, less confusing if the author stuck to one person as the narrator or simply wrote in third person or at the very least made it clear who was narrating when. I've read first person narratives before that don't switch around and still manage to tell the story at the times when the main character isn't directly present.
Nevertheless Fancy's story is engaging, I did appreciate the way the author discussed hard topics like rape without having to describe every little detail, this would have been distressing and yet the descriptions when she arrived in the future were fun and interesting. As we kept going into the story though while interesting I began to wonder where we were going, what was the climax of the story so to speak. I never found it, when I got to the end, it just sort of stopped the narrative without any rhyme or reason. So I was left feeling 'what was the point of the story?'. So despite the interest in the middle I can't give this more than 2 stars. ( )

I have mixed emotions about this book, I have to say. For me, the downside was the changing of viewpoints, with different first person sections intermingled with other sections that were in third person. Some chapters that were first person clearly indicated at the start which character the viewpoint was from. Other first person chapters gave no indication at all. The result was that I did spend quite a long time silently asking myself 'who is saying this??'.

However, despite the confusion I felt at times about who was telling certain parts of the story, this didn't detract too much from the story itself. That is something well worth reading. I hadn't read anything else by this author, so it probably took a bit longer for me to sink into the characters, but once the story got going, I did enjoy it.

From me, only four stars out of five but that is purely because I personally would have enjoyed this book a great deal more if it was just all written in third person. That, however, is a personal preference thing and not something that will necessarily affect another reader.

Overall, a good storyline and worth checking out! ( )