Milan's THREE WEDDINGS AND A MURDER

Lynda X · Joined: 05 Apr 2007 Posts: 1260

I bought THREE WEDDINGS AND A FUNERAL only for the Courtney Milan contribution and I have not read the other novellas. This is the first of her books that has really disappointed me. It's blah. Yes, the hero and heroine are interesting, but maybe because I was never in doubt that the two would finally get together, the internal tension was missing. It's her first book that I would say was undeveloped and the characters are not fleshed out. It took me a while to figure out the heroine's "shocking" decision at the end, and I still had questions. Yes, we know what the heroine's first marriage was like, we know the h&h as kids when they fell in love, we know their motivation, we know why they didn't marry before, but that's not enough. It's almost as if Milan had a check list, but the magic wasn't included. I didn't have enough invested in the romance. It was like expecting Thanksgiving dinner (although in only one course) and getting a plain cheese sandwich on Wonder bread.

MEK · Joined: 09 Dec 2010 Posts: 228

I started reading it, got about 10 pages in, then put it down and began rereading Lady Be Good by SEP because I got so excited by the Susan Elizabeth Phillips thread on the potpourri board!

I guess it didn't grab me, either.

catgrace · Joined: 02 Jan 2008 Posts: 22

I am midway through the final story in this anthology, and was not terribly impressed with Milan's story, either. It really wasn't a bad story, but it also did not live up to what I've come to expect from her.

Part of the problem for me may have been that I did not know all the story lines would be so similar from all the authors. Each has a separation between the H/h which must be explained and overcome. I thought it really worked best in the first story by Tessa Dare. I'm not sure if it was because it was the first, or if she just made it work better than the others, but I've hit my "Big Sep" limit for a while. Wink

janet w · Joined: 11 May 2007 Posts: 363

I thought Milan's story was very cold. I just couldn't get that into it. Also, if tulips are going to be a metaphor (and I like the tulip story), even at the risk of info-dumping, it would have been nice to know what happened 400 years back in Holland. As always, Milan is a gifted writer so no complaint about the actual mechanics.

So after I read Milan's tale, I turned to Dare's and as one of the commenters has said, I felt like I already knew what would happen.

Here I fault the folks putting together the anthology. Don't force the writers to fix into so small a template or the reader will feel the know too much. This happened in the most recent Balogh/Laurens antho ... a feeling of ennui while reading.