Publication date: August 28 2018
Published by: Avon
Genre: Adult, Historical Romance, Regency, Chick-Lit
Rating:
Like any self-respecting
libertine, Chase lives by one rule: no attachments. When a stubborn
little governess tries to reform him, he decides to give her an
education—in pleasure. That should prove he can’t be tamed. But
Alexandra is more than he bargained for: clever, perceptive, passionate.
She refuses to see him as a lost cause. Soon the walls around Chase’s
heart are crumbling... and he’s in danger of falling, hard.
I don't know what went wrong with this one, because I absolutely love Tessa Dare.
But The Governess Game was sloppy and quiet honestly, not memorable.
First
off, the romance started right away so there was no angsty suspense or
any sexual tension/anticipation at all. That didn't feel right to me,
because when I'm reading an HR book I expect to be seduced, and this one
didn't deliver.
Very quickly Chase wanted Alex, and Alex was
thinking about marrying Chase and having his babies from the moment she
met him, so that was a huge red flag right from the get go.
I was willing to look past it though because it's Tessa Dare and she is a romance master.
I'm afraid it didn't get much better after that :/
I
think my main problem with the book is that I didn't see any chemistry
between Chase and Alex. I didn't buy into their attraction and
consequently, love. Everything happened way too fast for me to fully
understand either of their characters and, so I didn't really get why
they were together.
I personally find it very hard to dislike a male
character in HR, but Chase was pretty unlikeable. There were times when
he was being deliberately mean to Alex and I was angry at him and her
for just taking it, despite her self-proclaimed independence. His reason
for not wanting to be there and raise the wards that were left in his
care was pretty stupid, and it painted him as a complete coward.
As
far as Alex goes, I felt that she was blindly in love with Chase and she
would do anything for him, whereas he was just infatuated with the next
pretty little innocent thing that cam
e his way. I know a lot of HRs
have that premise of the rake unabashedly lusting after the cute girl,
but a lot of them (the good ones) have provided a fully explained change
of character in order for the reader to believe and accept the
inevitable HEA in the end, something that The Governess Game never did.
Chase
and Alex agreed to engage into some sort of teacher/student
relationship in regards to sex, but that was never shown! Instead, we
get a sense of time passing by other things occurring, and we think that
all the while Alex and Chase are having these lessons somewhere. And
they must have been, because Alex was very masterful in the last sex
scene of the book, so I guess the lessons must have worked?! We were
just never shown them, which was a major let down for me.
The
only redeeming quality of this book were the parts with Daisy and
Rosamund (the children), who provided a nice respite from the failure
that was Chase, and of course Tessa Dare's unparalleled humour, for
which I was really thankful.
3 stars on the Tessa Dare scale = pretty bad.
