The Peasant's Dream

I just couldn't connect with this one. It had too many inconsistencies and an immature, bratty leading lady.

Adela wanted to prove “a woman can be just as talented as a man,” craved adventure, and bemoaned the fact that her siblings all ended up with boring lives after they married. Only one chapter later, Adela then decided painting and embroidery and romance/marriage were what she longed for. Those painted two wildly different pictures of what her goals were. Either she's joining the feminist “movement” a thousand-plus years before that “movement” began or she's wanting true, biblically-based femininity. She can't have it both ways.

Another part of her journey was sneaking out of the castle to fraternize with a commoner. She claimed she had good morals and wanted to do the right thing, but her actions proved differently as she continued to sneak out and deceive her parents, even going so far as to pull her servant in on it to borrow dresses from her so she could disguise herself as a commoner, making sure to extract a promise of secrecy about her going behind her parents' back. (I was glad to see that the servant objected and said the girl should not be sneaking out, but she still promised and lent the dresses, so I'm not sure the objection meant very much.) While she fretted that her mother would find out, she never received any discipline for breaking the rules and being a rebellious child. This was wrong to me, as it's a parent's responsibility to discipline their children when they break house rules. Otherwise, the child will not become a good, solid, upstanding citizen if they always get away with breaking the rules and receive no consequences to those poor decisions.

Beyond that, Adela knew she “shouldn't play games” with the commoner, since she could never marry him because she's so wealthy and spoiled and all; yet, at every turn, she flirted with him and hugged or kissed him and hung out with him and shared dreams and hopes with him. That's the very definition of toying with a man's emotions, if you ask me.

Instead of pursuing the truth and doing his due diligence for the sake of justice, the duke released a prisoner for his daughter's sake. That was not justice, no matter if the man was innocent or guilty. Justice is to look at all the facts of the case and then see what those facts indicate about the person's innocence or guilt. Justice is not to release someone just because his daughter says so, especially since the duke already determined earlier in the conversation that she might be biased toward the prisoner. Justice based on bias equals a crooked judicial system.

This was yet another book in the Hagenheim series that had an illegitimate-child background for one of the leads. The weird thing was that it only came to be known after the halfway mark.

Frederick was a great character, chivalrous and honest, until he decided he wouldn't be able to resist sneaking around with Adela even though it wasn't proper or right. That was such a complete departure from his previous character that I'm not sure where it came from.

“She just wanted the pain to end” was not a good enough reason to marry someone (or to even consider marrying someone). The reasoning on that was faulty and misleading.

The retelling origin did not feel like a fairy tale at all. It felt like a retelling of the life of Joseph from the Bible (including the prison and dream aspects). The odd thing about it was that the characters read about his story in the “Holy Writ,” then lived it out. That was a bit clunky to me.

Frederick's mom had a POV as well, in the second half. Her mindset was no more mature than that of her sixteen-year-old self. She was still very much relying on emotions and hormones in making her decisions. I couldn't relate to her lack of growth and maturity. I did like that she got a second chance at love, even if her story was condensed and too quick (it happened in basically one chapter).

The cover of this book was intriguing.

I liked that the duke's first reaction when learning his daughter was attacked was to check on her and make sure she wasn't hurt. That was a great daddy-daughter moment.

One of the late-arriving themes of overcoming fear was right up my alley.

Content: alcohol, drunkenness, illegitimate-child background