I'm usually a fan of Marion Chesney books but this one left me a little disappointed. I read her books only for light reading as they are usually mostly fluff. But they're usually good fluff. This one...eh. I'm not crazy about the whole "fall in love at first sight" style when it's also combined with misunderstandings galore between the two. It makes you want to just knock their heads together because of their stupidity. There was some drama in this story as young Constance overhears a conversation in French between two Bonapartists (is that the correct term?). One she recognized but the other she didn't plus she didn't understand French. She did pick up on a few suspicious sounding words and mentioned them to her husband. He of course immediately brought this information to certain government officials. In the meantime, the two culprits discover the identity of the person that overheard their conversation and set out to silence her. Apparently it was supposed to be a mystery until the "revelation" of the second person but I knew all along who it was so it was no surprise. Constance ends up disappearing - is she dead? Everything gets resolved rather too quickly for my taste. I'll give Marion Chesney another chance and hopefully that one won't fall flat too. I'm wondering if my tastes are changing? We'll have to see.
I loved the heroine, absolutely loved her. Even though she was a bit of a doormat and could have done with a bit more lip, especially towards the OW, her cousin, I still loved her.Okay fine, I sometimes did get annoyed by her naïveté. But she was awesome.The hero was the problem for me. He was ready to believe anything bad about the heroine the first chance he got. And who the hell does nothing at all about his wife's disappearance for an entire month? Ugh. He actually believed that she robbed him and left, and had not his friend, the slightly (okay, very) eccentric Harry talked him into his senses, he would have done nothing at all. Quite a dumb hero, if you ask me.The odd friend Harry, on the other hand, stole my heart right from the first meeting. Excellent sequel-bait. I would love to see him in his own book! He was such a delight to read, and the way Chesney described him made it even more enjoyable. The book only gets a lower rating because the hero wasn't as much in love with the heroine as he claimed to be, and thought himself superior to the heroine, and was - like I said, a dumb hero. Not dumb as in asshole stupid dumb, actual dumb, like not intelligent, IQ-of-a-fly dumb. Actually, comparing him to a fly is an insult to the fly.
What do You think about The Constant Companion (1987)?
