And Only to Deceive by Tasha Alexander

And Only to Deceive by Tasha Alexander
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Emily agreed to wed Philip, the Viscount Ashton, primarily to escape her overbearing mother. Philip's death while on safari soon after their wedding left Emily feeling little grief, for she barely knew the dashing stranger.

But her discovery of his journals nearly two years later reveals a far different man than she imagined-a gentleman scholar and antiquities collector who apparently loved his new wife deeply. Emily's desire to learn more about her late husband leads her through the quiet corners of the British Museum and into a dangerous mystery involving rare stolen artifacts. To complicate matters, she's juggling two very prominent and wealthy suitors, one of whose intentions may go beyond matrimony into darker realms.

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Sometimes, a book just doesn't work for me no matter how much I want to enjoy it. And Only to Deceive have everything that I should like, interesting characters, a mystery and a tragic love story. However, somewhere along the way the story just lost my interest and unfortunately I never found it as interesting as it was, in the beginning, to read.

So, what went wrong? Why did this book not appeal to me? I think the biggest problem for me was that the plot, Emily's hunt for the truth about Philips involvement in the forgery of art, or rather the whole forgery plot was so simple to figure out that it took away the enjoyment to read the book. Since this book is bit old now and several new books have been published was it easy to cross one person of the list as suspects and that made the list of people that could be involved pretty small. And, a book that started off interesting just lost its spark along the way.

I did find Emily's newfound love for Philip tragic and sweet, but alas even that went a bit boring after a while. She discovered new things about him and she realized that the man she married was a different man than she had imagined and suddenly she fell in love with him. With the problem that he is dead. Like the forgery part that also lost its spark after a while.

However, I do want to continue with the series. I did like Emily enough to want to read more about her. I just hope the stories in the rest of the books are better and that the mysteries will be much more interesting to read about. Also, I'm not really that fond of Colin, and I hope that I will grow to like him.