Book review: A Knight in Shining Armor by Jude Deveraux (spoilers!)

The main problem with this book is not even the impossibility of time travel, the strange "bond" the hero and heroine seem to share (which has her experiencing a pain in her arm when his arm is cut), nor the concept that souls are reborn into different bodies and yet somehow still recognisable. No, the problem is with the heroine, whom no one could possibly identify with.

The idea of a misfit heroine would have been a great one -- which of us has not felt at some point in time that we don't really fit in? -- but the author exaggerated the heroine's differentness so greatly that instead of becoming a human being we could identify with, she became farcical.

Honey, what is wrong with you is that you are a dreamy idiot with little common sense. Robert treats you like sh*t yet you keep making excuses for him and insisting that you love him! And worse, plan a romantic holiday imagining that he is going to propose, continuing to believe that he's about to propose even though he does the extremely unromantic thing of telling you you're going to pay for half of the holiday, building castles in the air based on nothing more than a receipt from a jewellery store. "Oh, it must definitely be an engagement ring!" Oh my God, I rolled my eyes SO HARD. Everything she believed about her current relationship existed only in her head, and she couldn't see it.

In the afterword, Jude Deveraux said, "I wanted a heroine who was strong but believed herself to be weak, who was generous, the kind who'd help another human even if it caused her hardship, yet thought her generous spirit was a weakness." But Dougless (also I hate that name, I don't care how historically accurate it is) doesn't come across as strong at all. She comes across as a doormat and desperado. First of all, she's always the one making moves and throwing herself at Nicholas, and when she doesn't want to do something, all he has to do is kiss her fingers and she capitulates. Second, she cries and cries throughout the book. In fact, it's her tears which first draw Nicholas to her through time, because she's crying so hard that it disturbs his concentration and he decides to follow the sound of the weeping and ends up in her time!

I also found it difficult to stomach or understand Robert's behavior towards her, and then to have him do a 180-degree turn at the end? It was ridiculous. He behaved more like a child than his own child, Gloria. He was mean and calculative and unappreciative and his dumb explanation at the end didn't make any sense to me. So what if you were envious of her rich family? You knew when you met her that she doesn't have access to their millions, so what is this about "play at living on your teacher's salary"? It was dumb and petty and showed that he never really loved her, yet he has come back to propose? It made no sense. I felt that the author just wanted to tie everything up with a nice little bow and "redeem" Robert and Gloria because she'd made them so unlikeable in the beginning. Why does everyone have to end up being all sweetness and light? Just leave them as the spiteful and petty people they were, that's fine!

Three other things that made no sense: If Nicholas had insisted that he be buried with the piece of lace embroidered with Dougless' name, why wouldn't he have also insisted that he be buried with her miniature? How could his family not be aware of the significance of the lady in the miniature, and therefore keep it instead of allowing it to be sold, for it to turn up in an antique shop somewhere? Second, if all traces of the person's visit to that time vanished, how can one or two things remain? The miniature shouldn't even remain, as the painter ought to have no memory of even meeting Dougless or having her sit for him; likewise the lace ought not to have remained, for Honoria also wouldn't have remembered her, much less remembered her name. Third, James couldn't have inherited the Stafford estates because he was illegitimate!!

I had to read this book for a book discussion, but I hated the heroine so much that I did something I never do -- once I got an idea of what was going on, I would skip 500 locations (since I read it on Kindle, there are no page numbers), read a little to see what was going on and if I'd missed anything fundamental to the plot, then skip 500 locations again. I couldn't have gotten through it otherwise. It is supposed to be a classic tale, but I would give one out of five stars! It failed me as a romance because at no point during the story was I rooting for Nicholas and Dougless to have a happy ending together.