Today's author has been failed by her editors.
Working on a book that's actually pretty good. The author can put sentences together such that I feel inclined to read the next one, and the characters have some depth (I'm about 1/3 of the way through). There are only three problems, all of which could have been helped by editors:
1. A little too much of the historical romance problem of the heroine being a liberal progressive and criticizing her own time period. While it is true that there were people of this sort (else nothing ever would have changed), the whole "We should reform the unsafe mills" business is too heavy-handed and sounds forced. It's been shoved in, and the heroine speechifies a little too often.
2. Similarly, the main conflict for the heroine sounds contrived to me. I'm still trying to understand how her husband wants an heir even if he isn't the person to father it. (Note, he's not likely to live long enough to raise the child.) I'm willing to grant that perhaps there's something culturally in the era that would make this make sense, but really I don't get it. This launched the book right there in chapter one, and I wish it had been explained better.
3. The usual bad copyediting. Past for passed, missing words, places where the author must have cut/pasted and made an error but no one caught it. It's a shame, because her writing ability is a cut above the usual.
The good things about this book, other than the prose, are the characterization (even minor characters have a couple of facets hinted at) and the treatment of social structure. There are noblemen in the book, but the husband is a commoner businessman and the hero is a lowly millworker. Most of the characters aren't nobles. This is a nice switch.