What an adorable novella. (I bet you can guess what my criticism will be already.) Our French heroine, who has escaped from the French Revolution with her father, is a heroine I haven't often encountered -- she's tiny and agreeable and doesn't argue with anyone or plot or scheme. She's funny and adorable and agreeable, but not a wide-eyed ingenue or a sheltered optimist. It's hard to describe; I really liked her, even though the first half of the book is mostly her saying "Yes, Papa," or "Please stop forging art, Papa."
Our hero, Rory, is Scottish. He's an art-fraud-discovery specialist. He says "ye" instead of you about a million times, and although he was charming and funny, too, that was pretty annoying.
Mignon (her nickname) comes from a family of art forgers; Rory catches forgers for a living. And it doesn't go at all where you think it's going to. She's precious but not dumb; he's enamored of her and not dumb either. Very very charming, even though a quarter of the book is spent in a closet together, kissing and touching and swooning.
But then, because it's a novella, it just ends. He's been lying about who he is; she finds out; she's fine with it; they agree to get married. At the beginning of the last scene she has a moment of "oh god, oh no!" and cold sweats, but then by the end of the same scene she's absolutely fine with marrying a man she was just monologuing that she really knows nothing about. Just... one more scene would have helped that a lot.
Grade: B
#51 in 2016
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