Book Review: The Most Improper Miss Sophie Valentine by Jayne Fresina

At First Sight: After a scandal 10 years before, and accident that left her with a scar on her face, an having been exasperated beyond imagining by her sister in law Lavinia, Sophie Valentine decides to take desperate measures and writes an add to the Farmer's Gazette, advertising for a husband. 

Later, her temper cools and she kind of forgets about it, until Lazarus Kane shows up on her doorstep, saying that he has come to marry Sophie. 

No one is happy to discover what Sophie has done as it just hints to another scandal. But Lazarus won't be persuaded from going after Sophie, as they get to know each other and start to fal in love. 

Things get complicated when Sophie's former suitor, James, decides to come back for her - 10 years after he original both proposed to Sophie and ruined her. Plus, Lazarus has many secrets of his own, which might threaten his future with Sophie. 

Second Glance: I really wanted to like The Most Improper Miss Sophie Valentine, I swear, because, really, the idea of her putting an add on the paper looking for a husband sounded like so much fun, but the book wasn't what I expected. 

While I liked the characters -even if Sophie takes forever to make up her mind - I felt the plot was too convoluted and contrived, and some characters actions just didn't make sense sometimes.

Like, for example, the whole first chapter with the origins of Sophie's first scandal? for me, both things she does in that chapter (one of them being letting her suitor, James, 'make love' to her - and in a rather public place- when she wasn't in love with him nor particularly wanted to marry him) made little-to-not sense to me at all.

Bottom Line: Basically, I think that a simpler plot would have beneficed this story a great deal because, as I said, flawed as the characters were, they had their charm. This book will be released on June 1st, 2012.

1/2