Oof, this is a hard one. I liked the characters and I love epistolary set-ups in all their forms but, dang, I just don't know about "accidentally" impersonating someone else for that long. People can allow themselves to be very open and vulnerable with select friends but never would with others. When you present yourself in a false way to someone you take their choice away in how they would interact with you. That did not sit well with me and, thus, severely undermined the romance. ymmv ( )

Suuuuuuuper short, and therefore obvious - there wasn't near enough time to build up the romance in so few pages, though the characters had much more development than one might expect in a 24-page story. Still, it was cute and I liked it. ( )

Overall, a pleasant story. The characters were well developed, but I felt that there should have been some more action packed in the middle. I felt like I jumped too quickly from the beginning to the end. I realize that this is supposed to be a short story, but I think in this case, it was too short. Sometimes more meat is needed! ( )

Sherry Thomas wrote three stories to accompany the novels of her “Fitzhugh Trilogy”. This one is the first chronologically, a prequel telling the story of how the stepmother of Christian (the male protagonist of the first volume in the trilogy) met her second husband. It is very short (I read it in about fifteen minutes, if that many) but also quite delightful, presenting an interesting Victorian-age riff on the supposedly modern-day “No Girls on the Internet” meme. (Which is kind of a spoiler, I suppose, but then Sherry Thomas keeps dropping hints so humongous that even the most superficial of readers will have figure it out about halfway through the story at the very latest.) With a story this short, you can not really expect much in the way of plot and character development, and you will not be getting much, either – what you will get, however, is a fast and fun read, which is also (at least at the time I’m writing this) free at Amazon, so there is nothing to complain about here.