A Gentleman Undone: Blackshear Family Series, Book 2

Top 15

So many,but I believe the story changed midway through the book in a week long house party scene.

Susan voice bring such emotion to all the books she narrates, but I believe she really enjoyed this book.

Yes , it was a little slow in the beginning,but progressed quickly to the end.

If you love damaged, but loveable characters, math and card playing, you'll love this book.

This book and Grant’s, Lady Awakened, are definitely a cut above the average romance, IMHO.
Well developed non-stereotypical characters, well narrated.

The writing--exquisite. The storyline--gripping. The characters--damaged but not destroyed. A Gentleman Undone is literary writing at its best. Cecilia Grant manages to avoid all of the canned gimmicks that so many formulaic romance novels resort to using, and the end result is a novel that is original, profound and poignant. I do enjoy novels that trend toward the darker side, though sometimes the darker they are, the less I'm convinced in the end that the characters can truly ever be happy (see Judith Ivory's Black Silk). Grant does dark well, but she knows how to convince the reader (through the aforementioned exquisite writing) that the characters can survive, heal, and eventually thrive together.

Because this is a romance novel, there is obviously going to be a sex scene or two, but what sets this romance (I'm loathe to even categorize this in the romance novel genre--it's that good!) apart from so many others is that each sex scene propels the story forward. Every sex scene is necessary to the story because it is part of the plot; none of them have the author-must-meet-their-sex-scene-quota feel. Miss a sex scene and you've missed a good bit of character development essential to your understanding of the plot. Oh, and the sex scenes are so good (what a paltry word!) they should be measured on the Richter scale.

I waited for this book for five months after reading A Lady Awakened (worth it, of course!), and it looks like I'll have to wait eight months for the next (A Woman Entangled). I don't mean to be pushy, Ms. Grant, but you really do need to write a bit faster.

I love the dialogue ..its such an important part of the book. The story was great, characters richly developed. The story has a start, middle and a terrific ending....

I almost stopped reading this one. I kept hitting the chapter skip button waiting for "interesting" to happen. Finally the middle of part 2 got interesting.

This book started off slow, slow enough to make me stop and remove it from my ipod. It took a lack of credits and pure boredom to make me re download and try and suffer through it. I made it all the way through, but I would never repeat the experience nor will I make the mistake of giving the author another chance.

Here is what went right with the book. I love love love Susan Ericksen from the "In death" series and the book has a decent summary. I love cards and black jack in particular and all of the fancy tricks, probability kept me going. I'm ok with some historical romance, though I will have to stay away from the genre for a while to recover from this book.

But that is where the goodness ends. Susan has a very bland and slow english accent that she uses for all the characters and the narration (which wasn't necessary). The issue is that she can do the accent for maybe one character but doesn't have the talent to do it for the whole book. The story of this book is just hard to believe and incredibly predictable. There is no reason a gentleman can fall in love with a whore at first sight. There is no way he should be so guilty for doing what anyone with a brain would consider a good deed, to the point that he considers it to be a secret shame. All the sad background stories will not convince me that the premise of this romance makes sense. Not from his perspective anyways. There is also a stupid pending duel that covers like half of the book, and it really was ABSOLUTELY NOT NECESSARY (either party could just call it off).

I won't give away any more of the book, but BUYER BEWARE, there are better books out there, even for this genre and definitely by the narrator.

I really enjoyed the first book in this series but even Susan Ericksen could not make this book interesting.

This is the 2nd book I've listened to from Cecilia Grant and I am a huge fan of her writing. The book combines adult and sometimes dark themes, adult reactions and witty writing. I don't know how Ms Grant is going to top this installment but I'm anxious to see if she can.