The Grange, near the Peak District, Derbyshire, England, June 1815

Emma Pyrmont is the new nanny for Nicholas Rotherford and his daughter, Alice.  She was lucky to secure this position and she feels blessed to have found it.  She likes being away from London and away from her foster father, Samuel Fredericks.  

Nicholas is an inventor and widower.  After his wife died, his SIL came to live with them and run the house.  Ms. Dunworthy is a mild irritation but Nicholas doesn't care much because he is busy trying to invent a lamp that the coal miners can use underground.  

The servants get it in there minds that Emma would be a good fit for Mr. Rotherford but once this is mentioned the book changes direction to become Emma’s manipulation tactics over Mr. Rotherford and not her hooking up with him.  

Emma resents that Nicholas ignores his young daughter.  She does everything she can think of to force the two together.  He antics are very humorous but they are clever.  I didn't prefer them.  I feel like she didn't try to understand what his motives where and she efforts came off as high manipulation and creepy. 

Emma holds a secret from Nicholas about her past.  She is very careful about who knows about her past but the author just tells the reader enough to know that she is an orphan and was raised by a cold man.  There's really not much else about her life.  Nicholas hates Samuel Fredericks.  The author fills in the reader a bit about this but only just a bit.  

My point is that there isn't much substance to this book.  The author doesn't really take the characters and develop them fully.  I didn't like Emma.  I thought she was a controlling ass.  I didn't like Nicholas because I thought he was a slow witted dunce.  The rest of the characters are forgettable.    

Overall, the romance was forced and lame.  "...because they were deeply in love, enough to overlook all fault of upbringing or misfortune."  What is that?  The characters were flat, the story was boring, the romance was laughable.  Book ends with the rap up of a minor mystery.  Who stole the research papers.  Nothing was cryptic, I wasn't surprised.  Not much is historically accurate.  The science in the book was interesting.  There are discussion questions in the back of the book.  I was surprised by this because I found the book to be very low scale and hardly anything to discuss.  

Content: clean

I received a copy of this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.