My Surrender by Connie Brockway

Disappointing...

My Surrender should have been a rousing final to the unevenly written Rose Hunter trilogy (My Seduction, My Pleasure). Instead, it is rife with inconsistencies and incredible blindness on the part of both Charlotte and Dand.

Charlotte is the feisty and rebellious youngest Nash sister. Burning with patriotic fervor and buoyed by the heroic actions of her father in saving 3 young Scotsman years earlier, she decides to enter espionage, although in a somewhat peripheral way. Her characterization veers from smart and sassy to morose and TSTL (too stupid to live). An example of the latter: When events conspire to throw her into the path of a suspected traitor, she only realizes on the eve of traveling to his home that she might need to get rid of her pesky virginity -- all after 2 weeks of pretending to be someone else's mistress, namely Dand's. The only "realistic" flavor within the story's setting is when Charlotte comes to understand exactly what it is she's lost in the eyes of society, and possibly her family, when she ruins herself. The scene with her "adopted mother" is poignant in that regard.

The denouement -- the revelation of the betrayer of Dand, Ramsey, Kit, and Douglas in the French gaol years ago -- wasn't much of a surprise given the hints in the book, as well as the previous ones. However, I was still confused at the end as to whether the betrayer acted both before the battle on French soil and in prison. That is, the author wasn't entirely clear about the fact that if he also betrayed them before they landed in France, how and why he did so. And if he didn't do so, then who did betray the battle plans?

All in all, My Surrender was full of plot holes and roll-your-eye moments when it could have been quite a tale and conclusion to the Rose Hunter series.

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