The Watchmaker's Daughter (Glass and Steele, #1) by C.J. Archer

  

My rating: 2.5 of 5 stars

Category: Adult
Genre: Fantasy, Historical Fantasy
Content: A couple of female characters are threatened with rape

 

India Steele is desperate. Her father is dead, her fiancé took her inheritance, and no one will employ her, despite years working for her watchmaker father. Indeed, the other London watchmakers seem frightened of her. Alone, poor, and at the end of her tether, India takes employment with the only person who'll accept her - an enigmatic and mysterious man from America. A man who possesses a strange watch that rejuvenates him when he's ill.

Matthew Glass must find a particular watchmaker, but he won't tell India why any old one won't do. Nor will he tell her what he does back home, and how he can afford to stay in a house in one of London's best streets. So when she reads about an American outlaw known as the Dark Rider arriving in England, she suspects Mr. Glass is the fugitive. When danger comes to their door, she's certain of it. But if she notifies the authorities, she'll find herself unemployed and homeless again - and she will have betrayed the man who saved her life.  

 

I read this with the mystery book club. It had been on my radar for a while, and I even owned an ebook version of it, but I decided to borrow the audio on Hoopla and listen to it while working around the house. I liked the concept of this book a lot, but unfortunately, I didn't care for most of the characters. I think this was exacerbated by the narrator. She made certain characters even more unappealing than I think they would have been if I had read it instead of listened to it. I just couldn't get past some of the voices she used, especially when it came to the American accents she was trying to do.

As for the story itself, I thought some of the sexual tension was overwrought. Too much time was spent on what the main character, India, felt about Matthew Glass, and not enough was spent on them actually getting to know each other. Most of the book Matthew is hiding who he is from her, and she is guessing about him. I got tired of the mysterious, yet slightly sinister air that surrounded his character. Especially since it was obvious to me, he wasn't going to be a bad person. It was eventually, very obvious to me who the villain was going to be, and I was disappointed that it was so easy to figure out.

Matthew's associates were even worse to read about. Every time one of them opened their mouth and said something, I kind of cringed, but that was a lot due to the narrator and the terrible way she spoke for them. There were also some instances where I thought things characters did were unbelievable for the time period.

If I had liked this book enough, I would have just opted to read the ebooks, instead of listening to the terrible narration, but unfortunately, I don't like it enough to spend one of my three Hoopla credits on it every month, so it’s going on the abandoned series pile.