Notorious Pleasures

I feel like Ms. Hoyt has forgotten to make her characters likable. It's really a pity, because her writing is very captivating otherwise. She does a great job at capturing the feeling of London in the 18th century, from its pleasure gardens to the slums. I love her writing style, her dialogue, and her crisp plotting. Unfortunately, I hated the main characters.

Spoilers from here on:

I'll forgive main characters for a lot of missteps, but Hero and Griffin are really just horrible people. Hero repeatedly sleeps with her fiancées brother, while never giving up plans to marry the unwitting fiancée. When she's called on it by her own brother, she promises to stop and then sleeps with him again the next day without a moment of guilt or remorse about breaking her promises. In addition to a kind of rapey attitude, Griffin pursues his brother's betrothed with little remorse as well. It also would have been a lot easier to accept his "excuse" for running a gin distillery if Ms. Hoyt hadn't done such a wonderful job evocatively describing the social harms it was causing, such as whole families starving to death, abandoned children of alcoholic prostitute mothers, and gang wars. She writes the societal effects of gin like it's crack cocaine, which makes Griffin's justification of paying for his sister's coming out season a bit like asking us to forgive a drug dealer because his sister needs a Bentley to impress her friends.

Once again, I think she's a talented writer, I just wish she'd write characters I like as much as I like her writing.