More than Words has plenty of melodrama

More than Words has not only a historical mystery, but also a fabulous setting, some secret pain for its hero, and even more.

There’s a lot that More than Words, sent to me by Forever, throws at its readers in its fairly short amount of pages. Not only do Jessica and Callen, our protagonists, have a childhood connection, but they’re also a supremely talented (at a fairly young age) translator and composer. And they’ve both lost parents. And there’s more, too, but this is the first paragraph, so it doesn’t seem fitting to overwhelm you.

This is not to say that author Mia Sheridan doesn’t make you feel, at least a little bit, for Jessica and Callen. It’s practically impossible not to — because they have a lot that could tug at your heartstrings.

But amid all of the character traits comes a slight problem: a reader might feel for them, but it’s hard to enjoy the prose they’re presented in at points. There’s a lot of repetition of Callen insisting that he can’t be Jessica’s “prince,” despite that being a thing the two of them shared as kids, as he’s devolved into being a bad boy (albeit one with some serious repercussions from his youth, which, to Sheridan’s credit, she actually includes).

Jessica, meanwhile, doesn’t really get to do much growing as a character, although it’s impressive that she does realize that she cannot change Callen. Callen refers to her often with words like purity, and that raises this reader’s hackles pretty quickly.

And then we get to Jessica’s own side story, where she translates some documents about Joan of Arc that come with a romance of their own set in the same Loire Valley where she herself is doing the work. The story itself is fine; there are a couple weird things (for example, Jessica doesn’t know that Joan of Arc signed her name “Jehanne,” despite having plenty of other knowledge about the era at the tender age of 24). But it’s a nice subplot of sorts.

Next: 3 reasons to read Starless

Here’s the thing: I still haven’t covered everything in this book. Normally, that’s fine, but I feel like I’ve only barely scratched the surface. Yes, More than Words is a pleasant enough read, but there are lots of pleasant-enough romances out there.