An Affair Before Christmas

I've actually never read Eloisa James before, although I met her at a previous CR conference, and I have several of her books in my TBR pile. I thought I'd be up-to-date for once, and read a newly released book!

An Affair Before Christmas by Eloisa James
(2007, Georgian) 11/10/07
Grade: 3.5

Although the marriage between Lady Perdita (Poppy) and the Duke of Fletcher started out as a love match, four years it’s turned into frosty coldness. Fletch decides to have an affair, which leads Poppy to discover who she is, other than a wife and daughter. And this leads their friends and acquaintances to reconsider their own relationships.

Eloisa James has a particular style - her main characters often take the back seat to numerous secondary characters. I found this style a bit frustrating at times, since the author jumps from one character to another (sometimes in the middle of a scene!) and sometimes the main story got short shrift. (The heroine’s sexual problems are resolved in one quick scene, and I thought they needed more space.) However, the Georgian world James has created is fascinating, and James does a good job in created well-rounded, sympathetic characters, even when the characters are doing things that aren’t that “likeable”. I read this book in a single sitting, so she was doing something right. I’m curious to see what happens next.

Series books that are closely related are hard for me. I'm someone who reads a book and loves it in the moment, but mostly forgets it once I'm done. Right now, the characters in this book are fresh in my mind, but once I've read a few more books, I'll have a hard time remembering them. The problem is, if the next book in this series comes out in six months or a year, I won't remember all the character development and plotting that the author worked so hard on in this book - to my forgetful mind, it will be like I've never read the author before. That makes it hard to really appreciate a multi-book series where the books are closely inter-related, unless I wait until all the books have been published and then read them back-to-back. That's a big committment.

So, will I buy the next book in this series? Unsure.