The Dancing Master by Julie Klassen

 

 

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Category: Adult, Christian Fiction
Genre: Romance, Clean Romance, Historical Romance
Content: Clean

 

Finding himself the man of the family, London dancing master Alec Valcourt moves his mother and sister to remote Devonshire, hoping to start over. But he is stunned to learn the village matriarch has prohibited all dancing, for reasons buried deep in her past.

Alec finds an unlikely ally in the matriarch's daughter. Though he's initially wary of Julia Midwinter's reckless flirtation, he comes to realize her bold exterior disguises a vulnerable soul--and hidden sorrows of her own.

Julia is quickly attracted to the handsome dancing master--a man her mother would never approve of--but she cannot imagine why Mr. Valcourt would leave London, or why he evades questions about his past. With Alec's help, can Julia uncover old secrets and restore life to her somber village. . .and to her mother's tattered heart?

Filled with mystery and romance, The Dancing Master brings to life the intriguing profession of those who taught essential social graces for ladies and gentlemen hoping to make a "good match" in Regency England.

 

This has got to be the most disappointing book I've ever read by Julie Klassen. Needless to say, this has now taken the place of The Apothecary's Daughter as my least favorite book by this author.

The biggest problem I had with this was that I didn't connect with the characters. While Alec was a nice person, I didn't find him all that attractive as a leading man because he was somewhat of a dandy and that didn't come across very masculine to me. I'm also used to reading about leading men who can stand up to bullies and Alec gets bullied in this book more than once by the town bullies. I did like the clever way he stood up to them eventually, but I just wanted to read about a character who could have done that from the beginning. He wasn't a child, he was a grown man and I wanted to read about a capable one. There were also the times when he didn't want to get dirty or do any sort of hard labor that were also turn-offs for me.

Then there was the leading lady, Julia. I didn't like Julia at all throughout most of the book. She was so immature. It took way too long for her to grow up and realize how stupid her selfish, vain, and reckless behavior was. Not that I didn't understand why she had issues, but I didn't enjoy reading this book with her as a main character. There were supporting characters that I would much rather have been reading about than the main characters in this book.

The plot of this book was sort of like Footloose in the regency era. It didn't work for me. The reason why dancing was banned in the town was based on one selfish woman's secrets. I'm calling her selfish, because this woman had something happen to her and then she decided that no one else could enjoy dancing because of it. Overall, this is just a really flimsy plot that was easy to puzzle out. There were no real surprises here, just annoying characters. 

I think if this had been any other author I would have overlooked some of the annoyances, but Julie Klassen has written so much better than this. This was the last of her published novels that I hadn't yet read, and even though this one was a disappointment, I will of course keep reading her other books as she publishes them.