The Bronze Horseman - Paullina Simons

I was recommended this book by a good friend of mine, who has a soft spot for romance novels. I don't mind a romance book every now and then so I thought I'd give it a go.

I've re-written this review a few times because I can't word my thoughts properly. I'm a bit confused as to how to put them on paper as they are a bit shuffled.

Yes, I enjoyed the book
but
Yes I found it very annoying to read
and
Yes it did everything that I feared and detest in Romance novels

So writing a review is very hard because I don't know how to explain all these contradictions but still say that it was enjoyable to read.

The main character Tatiana is the typical female character that annoys me in Romance books. Naive, weak, clumsy and a push-over, who falls in love with her sisters boyfriend. The male character, Alexander, is strong, smart, dependable and totaly protective, who of course falls head over heals with his girlfriends sister. There are also complications to do with Alexander being an American and his best friend Dimitri.

The other characters were good to read, and I found that the Cinderella storyline where everyone treated her badly and used her excessively was a bit over the top. Reading how others took advantage of her was one of the hardest bits to read and it made you so frustrated that she could be so weak. But of course Alexander came to the rescue.
Another annoying part of the book was the constant reassuring that Alexander had to do to convince Tatiana that he loved her. He would just finish telling her that she's the one, and something would happen where she would storm off and it would start all over again.
The book felt as if it was a bit slow in some areas where it would repeat some things over and over where it just wasn't necessary.

The Tatiana character did start to get stronger as the book went on so it started to get easier to read. However the author then went from one extreme to the other as she then became so strong that it was almost impossible to believe, almost sub-human. But it's less frustrating.

I loved reading about the war and what people went through, because in today's environment it was a huge eye opener. You really started to appreciate how good we have it now, thanks to the people that fought during the war. The storyline was good, if you forgive the stereotypical characters. By the end I wanted to know more and will move onto the next installment in the trilogy a bit later.

This book is like a friend who is annoying and frustrating when they are around, but you miss them when they are gone.

It wasn't a book that affected me deeply, but it kept me interested and I enjoyed it. Not sure if I would agree that it's one of the best books of all time but then again I'm not really into romance novels.

6/10