Entertaining Mr. Pepys by Deborah Swift

Indifferent

Of course I have heard of the most famous diarist in the English language, Mr. Pepys. So, of course, I was intrigued by the concept of this novel, where the life of one of the women mentioned in his diary is explored. Of course, we cannot know as much about Mrs. Knepp as is told in this tale, but oh, what a life she led. I will admit I did not like aspects of this book. I think I have been reading far too many dark romances lately, and I am quite sick of the darkness. As one who reads a lot of romance, I tend to like the relationship aspects of a novel to have a little more lightness to them. This one is quite heavy. I know that this book is meant to be historical fiction, not historical romance. But, still, I would have liked it better without the unpleasant relationships (or at least if they were turned down some.) In fact, I had a hard time getting to the more interesting parts of the book as reading about her marriage and married life was just so terrible. Her husband only wanted a wife for what she could give him: an heir, a cook, and a worker in his business. He didn’t care about her at all, and I found that hard to read. At least in the beginning of the book, too, everyone outside of the heroine is a villain of sorts, from her father who just wants to get rid of her because of his new wife who doesn’t appreciate having his daughter from a former women hanging around to that dreadful stepmother to the abominable husband, his man of business, and his workers. Honestly, I just about gave up on this story because I just did not like this level of melodrama. Once you get to the theater part and the parts with Mr. Pepys, it got more interesting. But I actually didn’t like the book because of all the difficult circumstances the author thrust the heroine into right at the start.