Ann, it was a perfect read for me, too. My eyes teared up at the end of Part 1, and I can be one cold fish, too. To know that the heroine went sort of mad and then painted herself out of madness and all the loneliness. Art and writing are such solitary labors. I loved the story. I haven’t been able to write a thing today, for thinking of how moving it all was.

There was *some element to the author’s style* which I cannot express in words, a sort of movement or pattern that just swept *you as reader* away. This prose-like-song carried the reader, and then Part 2, it changed into another song, and moved quite differently, but with compliment.

When those two, Julian and Emma, got into that carriage, driving away from Colthurst’s house, I thought, OMG!–(the latter part of Chapter 18), there’s the usual way out of kind of scene and this there is this, this wonder.

I emailed all my friends and told them to buy the book!

When I said the book was perfect, I perhaps should have said, perfect for me. When I’m reading, I look for a book that will shut my internal editor up. I find it increasingly harder to read without my internal editor rewriting, culling phrases, tsking over comma splices and whatever else. With Meredith’s book, I was so swept into the story that all other considerations became irrelevant. I’m sure if I took a red pen to it, I could find imperfections, but the story and characters wowed me so that I just didn’t want to. And that’s close enough to perfect for me.

What has not been talked about is the layering in this novel, the emotional truths, the honest characterizations. (although the nasty Marcus reminded me of a similar character in the movie version of The Jungle Book) Most romances (and they should be) are riddled with fantasy characters who move above reality. Not so here. The motivations and conflicts were well-grounded.

Other elements that was shockingly good, the narrative pacing, how the author moved from plot to character to sexual tension. POV was excellent. Description remained part of character, not outside of it. Prose, very nice. None of this may matter to the ordinary reader, but to those of us who want to promote romance, it should. It’s a very well written novel.

It is odd that I felt the first two chapters were the weakest, but only in terms of execution, not content.

In terms of history and all the artist elements, well, this is my time period and I’m also an artist, so I was attracted to the plot and characters by nature. The Lady of Shalott references and how the author played that out were wonderful. It was a layered novel. A novel that really worked on more than one level. And that’s a gift in this genre.

Lastly, it was a wonderful romance.

In some sense, I felt that Duke of Shadows was a traditional historical romance wrapped in a fancy India cloth rather than having that cloth woven throughout.

When Amazon was having its contest, I only had time to read and critique about five of the entries. Meridith’s was one of them, and this comment right here was exactly the problem I had with it. I remember writing that it seemed as though Emma was viewing India through a picture window, rather than being immersed in it. When I heard that she had won, I remember hoping that this had been corrected in the editing.

Otherwise, however, the first two chapters were great. (I don’t remember the shipwreck, so I think the prologue wasn’t included.) I liked how she portrayed Julian, especially. I’ll have to read the final product and see how I like it.