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Lancaster Hall, home to the exacting
Earl of Hacclesfield, is turned upside down with the arrival
of Miss Amy Pringle. Though the earl selected Amy himself
to become affianced to his eldest son, Ralph, Lord Fitzroy,
the day she arrives it is clear that she is in no way
appropriate to become Lady Fitzroy. She’s brazen,
opinionated, and utterly shameless – a minx through and
through. But the earl has a plan. He’ll punish, humiliate,
and do anything else required to bend Amy to his will. Too
bad for him that Amy has no intention of becoming the lady
the earl desires her to be. She has, however, set her
sights on Ralph, who is determined to ignore her. This is
just the kind of challenge a minx like Amy needs. The
battle of wills has begun.
Minx starts out with the
promise of being interesting. A fiery heroine is determined
not to bend to a pompous, dictatorial earl’s will. Yet
Megan Blythe never seems to capitalize on the possibilities
of her own story, which left me disappointed. Amy, whom I
wanted to like, never rose above the level of
one-dimensionality. Ralph, the object of Amy’s desire
(inexplicably so until the very end of the story), never
comes to life. The earl, so determined to break the
intrepid heroine, is never fleshed out enough to rise to the
level of villain, so he quickly becomes tiresome and
repetitive.
Minx wanders from one sexual encounter to the
next, taking extensive journeys to the land of backstory
that overtakes the current storyline and delving far too
much into the sexual history of minor characters. The
result was a mishmash of erotic scenes that are perhaps not
quite as titillating as the author intended them to be. The
plot suffers for this and I yearned for the story to have
more direction. Sadly, Ms. Blythe never managed to engage
my attention, nor did she make me care what happened to any
of her characters. This was a pity, for Ms. Blythe has a
lovely writing style which made me desperately want to like
some part of the story. To me, Minx is an
example of missed opportunity. The characters and storyline
never live up to the author’s beautiful prose. |
