Slightly Wicked

Man, I'm at a loss to know how to rate this book. I enjoyed myself so much in the first half, but the enjoyment dwindled steadily in the second half. The first half read like a silly but entertaining rom-com with so much promise for light-hearted fun and romance, but then the second half got bogged down with unnecessary melodrama and the tropes that I hate the most: noble idiocy and lack of communication.

Our heroine, Judith Law, is on her way to continue her drab genteel impoverished existence as her grandmother's companion when her public stagecoach meets with an accident. Lord Rannulf Bedwyn happens along to assist the group, and our couple form an instant and strong attraction to each other which culminates in a few nights of mutually consensual passion under false pretences. Eventually, Judith gives Rannulf the slip and continues on her way to Harewood Grange to live as the poor relation to her Aunt Effingham while waiting on her grandmother, Mrs Law. Little does she know that Rannulf was also on his way to his grandmother's estate, Grandmaison, where she is neighbours and close friends with the family at Harewood Grange. Chaos ensue.

The first half was great. I loved Judith and Rannulf immediately. I loved Judith because she wasn't a wilting flower that couldn't do or decide a thing for herself - she knew she was destined to lead a pretty boring life and wanted some adventure while she had the chance, and she wasn't afraid to take it when it presented itself to her. Of course, the part where she agrees to spend the night (and a few more) with Rannulf in the beginning does require some suspension of disbelief because obviously Regency-era ladies would generally not behave that way, but whatever. I loved that both of them lied about their identities during their first encounter, and I was excited to see how things went down when they eventually met each other again under their real names.

I loved Judith and Rannulf and their respective grandmothers, but aside from them, pretty much every side character in the book was annoying. Aunt Effingham and Julianne were your typical evil stepmother and stepsister, one being cruel and jealous, while the other was just wholly self-absorbed and narcissistic.

Even more annoying was Judith's brother, Branwell Law, who is such an archetypal well-meaning spoilt brat - the sort who just obliviously and naturally expects the world to bend over backwards for him simply because that's how the natural order of things have always been for him, simply because he is a son and is completely unaware of his own privilege. He's not exactly malicious and probably does love his sisters, but that sort of ignorance makes him even more annoying to me.

Where the book really flagged for me was the introduction of Horace Effingham, a son from Sir George Effingham's first marriage and stepson to Aunt Effingham. He is a leering lecher that really got under my skin and is actually so viscerally repulsive that his existence and machinations in the book kinda dampened my enjoyment of it somewhat.

The second half of the book was where everything started going downhill for me. It starts from the ball at Grandmaison and the discovery that Mrs Law's jewellery had been stolen. The missing Branwell is suspected and Judith is immediately taken as his accomplice because some evidence is found in her room. This was a turn for the melodramatic that I really didn't need. Then after that, Judith had to suddenly become a noble idiot and start consistently running away from everywhere. She first runs away from Harewood Grange in order to pursue her brother, only to be caught up by Rannulf who takes her to Bedwyn House in London. Then comes the very tedious and unnecessary chapters of them trying to locate Branwell in London but with no success, and then having the repulsive Horace Effingham trying time and time again to pin the burglary on Judith and Branwell simply because he was so offended that Judith had fought back against him when he attempted to rape her at Harewood Grange. After Branwell is found, obviously knowing nothing about the burglary and having actually just been attending some week-long gambling party, Judith decides to run away AGAIN, because she's just oh so much beneath Rannulf that she has to save him from the madness of proposing to her. She even tells him earlier that she doesn't love him, and that they were just lusting after each other with some liking beneath it all - even though she's already admitted to herself that she loves him.I JUST-WHY?!I hate the noble idiocy and lack of communication tropes SO MUCH.Even when Rannulf finally catches up to her at her family home and proposes to her, he basically has to list down every single thing he has done and obstacle he has overcome to convince her that their marriage is fine and he actually loves her. It never felt like Judith ever wanted to fight for this, and it was just Rannulf fighting for it all the way until Judith eventually caves. I really wanted to see two people fighting to come together, rather than just one person trying to be the noble idiot and the other one breaking that down in order to get through to them.

So, yeah, in the first half, this book would've easily been a 4, maybe 4.5 stars. But the second half was pretty disappointing to me, and knocked it down to 3 stars. I still enjoyed myself overall, but man, when I was reading the first half, my predictions of how the book was going to go down would've been so much more enjoyable than how it actually did.