Review: Everything and the Moon, Julia Quinn

Robert Kemble and Victoria Lyndon fell in love at first sight.  Unfortunately, Robert is the earl of Macclesfield, heir to a dukedom, while Victoria is a vicar’s daughter.  They are both willing to toss convention aside and marry anyway, but their fathers will not have it.  Each father prevents his child from eloping and both Robert and Victoria are convinced that they were not really loved.  Seven years later, Robert is a confirmed rake and Victoria has had no choice but to become a governess to a series of rebellious children with indulgent mothers.  They meet again and all their old wounds reopen; they have never gotten over each other.  When Victoria seizes her independence, it’s up to Robert to show her the value of love and companionship; he can’t fail this time.

This was another “eh” read for me.  I don’t believe in love at first sight.  I just don’t see how you can love someone without knowing anything about them.  Of course, as a teenager I had plenty of infatuations and I called them love, so to me, this is what happened with these two characters, only they never quite got over it.  While I somewhat understood the fathers’ motivations in keeping apart the couple, if frustrating, it annoyed me that both of them immediately fell for the deception.  If anything, that backed me up on the fact that they didn’t love one another yet, they simply had their heads in the clouds.  The first 60 pages did not have me sold on this book.

After that, thankfully, it got better.  Victoria and Robert are far more interesting once they’ve had a proper try at life.  They have scars from both each other and from other experiences.  It took them a frustratingly long time to realize what had happened to them, but what I really liked was that they didn’t immediately fall into each other’s arms because their fathers had lied to them and they were still oh-so-in-love.  They still had to work through their problems and try to understand what they want to get out of their lives.

Probably the only reservation I had about the rest of the book was that it got sickeningly sweet at the end.  Obviously, I like romance novels, but when the moon winks at one of the characters, it feels a little strange.  They just felt a little ridiculous in their professions of love; I would have hoped that by the end, Victoria and Robert had learned enough about life to realize that one can’t promise everything and the moon.  I guess that’s just me being picky and unromantic, though.

All in all, a lovely light read; some reservations, but I did enjoy it.

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