When I first released Clytie's Caller, I found myself surprised by a review that said I repeatedly misspelled the same word. I looked and looked, running spell checker, reading the manuscript back to front ... all of the usual things. It took me a while, but I finally figured out that the reviewer was referring to this word: nuncheon.

Believe it or not, we didn't always call the noon meal lunch or luncheon. During the Regency period, during which I set the book, the meal was referred to as nuncheon. It comes from the word none, meaning mid-day, or (you guessed it) noon. The word "lunch" was considered vulgar at the time; it was something only workmen would have said. It was only over time that nuncheon was replaced with luncheon, or what we now call lunch -- at least on the West Coast of the United States. My East Coast family members still refer to breakfast, dinner (the noon meal), and supper.

One of the things I enjoy most in my research is learning how people would have spoken and what words they would have used. This example is a favorite.

I won this in a BookLikes giveaway held by the author.

This short story takes place in England in 1816. Clytemnestra, nicknamed Clytie, used to enjoy going out and meeting people. Then something happened, and she became fearful and nervous around others and often resisted leaving her room. Her behavior threatened to have an effect on her family's standing and her brother's relationship with his fiancee, Isabel. Only Samuel, a doctor and a cousin of Isabel's, seemed to know what to do. He promised that he could help Clytie become more like her old self. What he didn't count on was that his feelings of sympathy and compassion might blossom into love.

I had seen Clytie's Caller in the Smashwords store but ultimately decided against buying it. The heroine's name didn't appeal to me, and I was doubtful that 6,270 words would be enough for a believable romance. When the story popped up as a giveaway, I decided it was at least worth trying for free.

Unfortunately, my concerns about the short length turned out to be justified. Twenty-two pages (on my Nook) were not enough to believably pair up two people who did not previously know each other, one of whom had PTSD. And by “pair up” I mean there is an actual marriage proposal by the end of the story.

All in all, I felt this was a very bland story. The source of Clytie's “battle fatigue” wasn't hard to guess at, and I didn't find either Samuel or Clytie to be very interesting. While I understood that some artistic license was necessary in order to bring Clytie and Samuel together, Samuel's quick understanding of Clytie's condition and the techniques required to help her strained my suspension of disbelief. He was practically psychic about it – all it took was one look, and he instantly knew that she was going through the same thing he'd seen before in soldiers he'd treated.

Some readers may like that Clytie isn't magically cured by the end of the story and even experiences some backsliding. While I applaud this, I didn't think it worked well at all in such a short romantic story.

Additional Comments:

I counted five typos and might have overlooked more. It was little stuff – a name that wasn't capitalized, a misspelling that should have been caught by spellcheck, a missing closing quotation mark, and a couple punctuation mistakes. Still, more than I expected to see in a work this short.

(Original review, with read-alikes, posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.)

As a newbie on BookLikes, I was extremely excited when I discovered the giveaways. Thinking of it as a lottery, a game of numbers, I entered ALL the giveaways that were organized for what-looked-like interesting books, hoping that, maybe, I will win one. 

I have received seven so far!

And I have made a commitment to myself that I will read and review all of them, of course. But, God, when? And, please, make them stop!

Am I complaining about winning? No! Or am I? I guess I am... a little...

Seriously now, I want to thank all the authors for organizing giveaways, for sending me their work, and I also want to thank the automatic system that chose me as a winner (w00t! w00t!).

Also, a word to the authors: please be patient with me, I do have a day job, unfortunately :(

I'm maybe 30 pages away from finishing Medusa, and then this one is next.