A very slow start but I'm glad I stuck with it past the slow beginning. The book & author is heavily influenced by Jane Austen. While I give the author credit for attempting to write in the same extremely formal & antique style as Austen, the writing sometimes ends up very convoluted & stilted. I knew I was in trouble when I literally had to read the first few pages three times before I finally figured out the setting and characters. Worst was when the story's point of view suddenly changed from paragraph to paragraph a bit further in. I had no idea who was speaking or who was being referred to until I realized what happened.
The author also relies VERY heavily on telling, not showing. There's so much exposition, it is difficult to warm up to the characters or story. At page 20 I seriously considered quitting the book, as nothing had actually happened and the writing was so tedious. But I'm glad I kept at it in the end.
Unfortunately, although, the book short, only about 220 pages, but the two leads don't even meet up until almost a third of the way in. Up to that point almost nothing actually happens. Instead the story is endless exposition & backstory. It does pick up & flow much better when finally covering Simon's backstory. Actually his point of view in general is more interesting than Judith's.
From there the story is much more engaging, the author seems more interested, and her awkward changes in point of view settle into mostly a more omnipotent narration that is less confusing. I like how the author described Simon's adjustment after his injury going from denial to depression & anger then to acceptance. He fittingly also has flashes of PTSD. Once he does accept his blindness, he does seem to become the most well-adjusted blind man ever almost overnight, but that is what it is. There is also the idea that, while Judith does give him a wake-up call, his adjustment is not magically dependent on her. He would have gotten there on his own anyway because of the person he is. That is much more real and satisfying than what you get in most other fairy-tale style romances.
I had no idea of the book's Jane Austen connections when i picked it up. She is mentioned several times as Judith & Simon read & discuss her works. Judith herself is plucked straight from an Austen story. She is a vicar's daughter, who dies before the book starts, leaving his family poor and with few prospects. Simon is rather Darcy-ish in that he hides his insecurities & fears at being newly blinded by being very cold & imperious. Obviously, Judith's refusal of his early proposal (where the title comes from) is directly taken from Pride & Prejudice. As in Emma, certain characters make attempts at matchmaking with both good & bad results. Similar to Marianne in Sense & Sensibility, Judith is very influenced by schoolgirl ideas of romantic, perfect love. All the Austen references and influences are fun and the author even gets better at writing in her style as the book goes on. Unfortunately it has about the same quick, over & out, ending as Pride & Prejudice.
I just wanted more of the characters actually together & interacting. The book sort of has the feel of starting as a short story or novelette. Then it got padded with all the exposition in order to meet the minimum length of a novel. It seems there's still a lot of room for character interaction & development. However, I especially like how many of the characters have an understanding that life can be very hard & unfair. Not everyone finds fulfilling work or gets a happy ending. There's also a consistent theme of the benefits of looking beyond the superficial in people, not just in the case of Simon, who literally cannot see a person's surface, but with many of the characters.
One thing I was worried about, reading some reviews, some said Simon would never have bothered with Judith if he could see. This seemed like it might fall into a sort of cliched fantasy where a very plain & average woman is able to catch a rich, gorgeous husband because he's disabled. Happily, I did not get this idea from my own reading. While Judith is described as not overtly beautiful, she is attractive & can be striking, such as when she is dressed up for a ball. She is quite able to catch other men, she just doesn't have much chance to meet them. The author also seems, at least to me, to point out that Judith & Simon would have ended up together even if he had not gone to war & been blinded. After all, they had already been part of the same social circle, met, & found they had similar personalities before his injury. Circumstances just kept them apart for a while. And as Judith made sure Simon had the time to learn, he finds he is still capable even after his injury of attracting many women, so there is no feeling that he's settling for a woman not his equal.
At the end, I liked the book but I felt unsatisfied because it obviously had the potential to be mind-blowingly good. Well, since it is so old, and came out a bit before Jane Austen knock-offs got so trendy, one can always hope it will be reworked and rereleased as amazing historical chick-lit.