I was really hopeful going into this book that I would absolutely adore this book, or at least strongly like this book. I however found that it didn’t quite live up to my own expectations.

It started off with a very strong precise and one of my favourite tropes: strange girl is hopelessly in love with a man far out of her reach. I also love the very specific trope of mistaken identity through letter writing; I know its strange, but I have read a couple books that I can’t remember right now off the top of my head.

The things that I enjoyed about this book:

-Beatrix’s independent, unique personality/characterization
-Beatrix’s tight family dynamic throughout the entire book
-Beatrix and Christopher’s relationship building from the initial deception of her writing the letters for her former friend Prudence
-Albert and the other charming and strange animals Beatrix trains/takes care of
-All of the detailed explanations of the Crimean War

Overall, my main issues come to this: some of the main and secondary storylines were not explored or concluded in the way that I think they deserved. Prudence mentioned after her “break up” with Christopher that he would regret treating her like that, but there was absolutely no follow up on that threat. I would have preferred that her character flaws and storyline were followed a bit more and not essentially drop as soon as the secret was out over the true writer of the letters.

Additionally, Audrey goes off to grieve with her family and Christopher’s mother seemingly never gets better in her own grief of Christopher’s brother dying. She instead stays away in her brother’s house, never really to be mentioned again in any substantial way. Then the PTSD that Christopher is experiencing is basically solved by him just living and getting used to a chaotic and noisy household that Beatrix seems to thrive in. I feel that would help, but ultimately, I don’t feel that there was a full acknowledgement what Christopher actually goes through and why, for example, he refused to share a bed with Beatrix, even after they slept together the first time and subsequently got married. I know that back then there were no such things as PTSD specialists or at the very least psychotherapist/counsellors, but it felt like an existing character in the story could have offered him some better advice other than “it will get better with time, you’ll see”.

Finally, Mark Bennett’s character is mentioned a lot throughout the troubles and guilt that Christopher faces about how he handled the war in Crimea. It felt like his character just popped up in the eleventh hour to teach Christopher a lesson about not blaming himself for all the problems that happened on the battlefield and to let go and love Beatrix the way she wants and deserves. It also felt like Mark Bennett’s storyline turned from a horror story to a happily ever after in 10 pages from the introduction of his character on the scene, to the epilogue/ending.

Largely I did enjoy this book, especially Beatrix, her family and her growth throughout the book. However, there were a lot of negative, challenging aspects of this book that I mentioned above, which is ultimately why I gave this book a middling, average rating. Not great, but not terrible either, just meh to most of it TBH.

Love in the Afternoon - Likewise Book Reviews

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