Elaine White's Life in Books

The Author

 

 

Elaine White is the author of multi-genre MM romance, celebrating 'love is love' and offering diversity in both genre and character within her stories.

Growing up in a small town and fighting cancer in her early teens taught her that life is short and dreams should be pursued. She lives vicariously through her independent, and often hellion characters, exploring all possibilities within the romantic universe.

The Winner of two Watty Awards – Collector's Dream (An Unpredictable Life) and Hidden Gem (Faithfully) – and an Honourable Mention in 2016's Rainbow Awards (A Royal Craving) Elaine is a self-professed geek, reading addict, and a romantic at heart.

 

The Reviewer

 

I’m an author and reader, who just can’t get away from books. I discovered the MM genre a few years ago and became addicted.

Top #50 UK reviewer on Goodreads
#1 reviewer on Divine Magazine

Cursed Miracles

Cursed Miracles - Meg Harding Book – Cursed Miracles
Author – Meg Harding
Star rating - ★★☆☆☆
No. of Pages – 48
Cover – Gorgeous, but misleading.
POV – 3rd person, present tense
Would I read it again – No.

Genre – LGBT, Holiday, Christmas, Paranormal, Witch, Historical-to-Present-Day, Romance


** I WAS GIVEN THIS BOOK FOR MY READING PLEASURE **
Reviewed for Divine Magazine


I have to say, I opted to read this one because it was Meg Harding and after loving Dinner for One, I felt sure that I would love this too. I mean, the blurb was amazing! And it promised so much.

Sadly, for me, it didn't deliver.

In Dinner for One, I didn't even comment on the unusual POV of 3rd person, present tense. It's not something you come across often, but it worked with that book. It didn't work with this one. This story had way too much background, history and needed way more exploration than it was given. This story didn't fit in the 48 pages and that became very evident when half the book was about more telling than showing. At the same time, it read so much more like a 1st person reading, because there were so many thoughts, opinions and personal remarks made during the main text – not even italicised or marked as thoughts – that it became confusing to read. It was basically a 1st person narrative in a 3rd person disguise.

I got frustrated with it really quickly. First off, the entire first 25% of the book is flashbacks. Now, I get why we needed the flashbacks, but couldn't it just have been written like a real story, in various scenes, to show us what happened rather than constantly telling us all the important stuff? It needed more fleshing out, to explore the “suffering” that both William and Brady claimed to have gone through in their 200 years apart, but which we never saw. Not one bit of it.

There's also a real issue of timing. There are two very distinct issue: one with the claiming of an era that is historically impossible and the other concerning Brady's lives.

First, at the end of the story, Brady says that they were raised with Victorian ideas. I did a little Googling, after finishing the book, because a lot of the timing issues bugged me so much that I had to discover if I was being stupid. The Victorian Era was from between 1837-1901. If you could back 200 years from 2016 (which is when this book was published, so I'm going by that, since it's billed as a contemporary story), you go back to 1816. Which would be the time that Willian and Brady were punished by the witch, cursed to this existence of the blurb. Which would mean that both men were in their late 20's in 1816 (about 28, I believe William was at the time), so it would be physically impossible for them to be raised with Victorian ideas. In fact, Brady was already “dead” by the time Queen Victoria began her reign and William would have been around forty-nine by then, if he'd kept aging.

Then we come to Brady's lives. Now, he claims that he's only had 3 lives in total: Brady, then James and Sidney. So, it's hard to say this is correct unless there are unexplained chunks of years where Brady never existed. This is impossible to tell, since the whole “curse” is never actually explained or explored. William merely mentions that he's investigated how to get rid of it, that no one knows anything about it and that's it. There's no attempt to explain it or how it functions, which is frustrating enough. But even if you're being generous and you say that Brady was reborn immediately, lived for 50 years and died, then was reborn immediately and by that time (1866) the age of living was still the same, to tag on an extra 50 years for that life. By 1916, still wasn't that great, so add on another 50 for that life (that's a count of 3 lives, so far). After those 50 years, it would be 1966, when people were living to the age of around 65. Living to 65 would mean his life was over by 2031, making him approximately 15 years old and in his fifth life. Unless you over-estimate his ability to live a long life and say that he lived 2 lives to approximately 60-70 years of age, which was near impossible in the time of his original death, then there's really no explaining the fact that he's only had those 2 additional lives.

Adding onto the confusing timelines and the lack of historical accuracy, I was disappointed that we didn't get any of Brady's POV as the blurb suggested (by heavily dividing the blurb into the two characters fates and implying that it was all on Brady's shoulders to get them back together). We got absolutely no insight into his life, how he'd dealt with his curse or what he'd gone through and how he really felt for William. The fact that he kept saying he remembered his life as Brady, but didn't feel it made me question everything about their sudden chemistry and urge to get into each other's pants.

The entire relationship felt unrealistic, for me. I completely understand the concept of living 200 years without his soul mate and how that might have chipped away at William's hope to find Brady again, but the way he reacted to the situation was unbelievable. It felt forced and fake, almost on the verge of William not loving Brady enough to keep hope alive. The fact that he kept talking about Brady like he was dead and gone, had been for centuries etc, just made me angry. He'd forgotten or chose to forget the entire point of the curse, which was to have them both in the world, unable to find each other until the “right” time, which was also never explained. When was the right time? Did William have to learn a lesson first? Did they have to do something, say something, feel something or just end up coincidentally in the same place at the same time to break the curse? We don't know.

I didn't connect to either of the main characters, unfortunately. I found William to be a complete idiot, selfish and ignorant. He completely disregarded two coincidental situations, which were glaringly obvious, and chose to believe the lies he told himself rather than spare two seconds to investigate and be proven right. I get that he might get hurt by being proven wrong, but surely after 200 years, the hope that he might just be right, this one time, would be enough to convince him?

Brady, as well, wasn't exactly my favourite. I didn't like the way he “remembered” their life together, but felt none of it. Or the way he was crawling all over William right away, just because of those memories. There was no context, no explanation, no exploration of his character except through William's memories, even though he wasn't that Brady anymore.

I found the curse slightly ridiculous. A more apt fate would have been to have William pining and remembering everything, while Brady had no recollection of William or their time together or their love. Surely that would have been a crueler fate, because it was William she wanted to punish? Instead, it felt like the whole curse was fabricated and forced into a situation where Brady got to be the bold, strong one who brought them back together.

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I hate to say that I really did get this one. I didn't feel any romance, I didn't like the characters or the way it was written and I feel like at least a good 50 pages were chopped out of the story or should have been added, to give us the story that the plot needed to make it believable.

I felt cheated by the cover and blurb, neither of which appropriately represent the story. The cover, as far as I can see, has absolutely no bearing on the story whatsoever. It certainly never happens in the flashbacks or in the text that I read. The blurb also had me convinced that William truly was “frozen in time”, as in completely unable to move on with his life, searching for Brady was the main focus of his life. I also expected at least a partial telling of Brady's story, but that never happened. It even implies that there's a risk to his sanity – though he explains that wasn't the case now, but had been a concern in a past life – and that he has to fight for what he wants. Neither happens.

I was disappointed with the lack of conflict, the lack of romance and the lack of detail and attention given to the story. With historical inaccuracies, lack of explanation for the curse and such, the story fell flat and failed to live up to the high expectations the cover and blurb placed on it.

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