An Author’s review of A Modest Independence by Mimi Matthews

The first book I read by up-and-coming author Mimi Matthews was The Matrimonial Agreement... which I bought upon a recommendation and then absolutely loved... but never did review here. Because I have a five year old and a three year old who basically run circles around me. It’s not that I’m not reading (and writing), but there just isn’t much time to do much else concerning books. Ever. 

Did I mention I’m now just getting into homeschooling too? Yeah, my brain is pretty much on another planet right now. 

So... I loooved TMA and immediately hopped on Netgalley and requested the soon to release next in the series, A Modest Independence to review. 

And then I didn’t review it. Because I didn’t know what to say. 

Somehow, between two directly correlated books, I found myself loving one... and being kinda disappointed in the other. 

I can say the writing is well-done, I just didn’t especially like the heroine or the hero. And the setting was everywhere between England and India.... traveling. Same people, same sort of scenes, similar conversations throughout. I never had the “I can’t wait to get into the book again!” feeling like I did reading The Matrimonial Advertisement... but then the ending. 

The ending actually made up for everything. Although it was somewhat predictable, it had tears streaming down my face at the sweetness of it all. So I can’t say it was a bad book, though I was never very excited about it—because the ending was so good! And I was so conflicted about how to “score” this strange experience... and so I gave myself some time away. 

And now that my review is here, I can honestly still recommend A Modest Independence because it wasn’t bad. It just wasn’t my style. The hero wasn’t bad, just definitely not my style of swoon-worthy-ness. I'm still going to read all of the other books Mimi Matthews writes. Her writing is absolutely excellent.