#19 [2017/CBR9] "Bound by Your Touch" by Meredith Duran

I can't remember where or how I found Bound by Your Touch (2009) by Meredith Duran, but it's another historical romance that didn't quite do it for me. On paper, it looks like I might like it. There's a strong, smart, independent heroine, a tortured hero, and some mystery thrown in to spice things up. But I couldn't get attached to the characters and the mystery didn't make any sense to me. In the end I was disappointed.

The book started out very promising. Lydia Boyce, expecting to be asked for her hand in marriage, is instead told that her suitor wants to marry her younger sister. Although Lydia's suitor is horrible to her in this scene, what makes it so heart wrenching is the betrayal by Lydia's sister. It's just so mean and sad. I was impressed with what Duran had me feeling in just a few pages.

Unfortunately, those few pages probably moved me more than any of the rest of the book. Lydia Boyce is the responsible older sister. She is an intellectual and she supports her father's Egyptian excavations by selling some of the artifacts he finds and sends back to England.

Viscount Sanburne is a rich heir who is very angry at his father. We find out eventually that Sanburne blames his father for his sister being charged with murder of her husband and sent away to a sanatorium. Sanburne  knew that his sister's husband was beating her, and she must have killed him in self defense. This anger causes Sanburne to act out against his father and society in rebellion.

Lydia and Sanburne are somewhat thrown together when Sanburne accidentally buys a relic that Lydia quickly and easily sees as a fake. Soon they are running around London trying to figure out where the fakes are coming from. I don't remember all the particulars of this mystery, but it brings the two together. Sanburne gets Lydia to see that her father is not always perfect, and Lydia gets Sanburne to begin to forgive his father.

The problem I had with the mystery was that the details  were so convoluted that I lost interest in it. I was also disappointed in the storyline involving Sanburne's sister. ***SPOILERS*** This great injustice has haunted Sanburne for years. The poor woman was beaten and feared for her life. Yet when he finally talks to her, she says that she's fine and prefers the Sanatorium. So that's it. After all those years, all he had to do was talk to her. Some of the day-to-day interactions between Lydia and Sanburne kept me entertained, but I spent a lot of the book frustrated with the plot.