By the time The Trouble with Anna made its way to me through the library hold list I heard so many people complain about the characters that I fully expected to hate it. Turns out I didn’t hate it all but I also didn’t love it, and that was frustrating because I ALMOST loved it. I would have loved this book about fifteen years ago, but these days I just don’t have the patience.

The plot of this story is that Anna loves horses (as do I) and her Grandfather’s estate is largely built on horseracing. When her grandfather dies, he stipulates in his will that she can only inherit the estate if within six months she marries Julian Averton, the Earl of Ramsay. In the meantime, she falls under Julian’s guardianship (eeewwwwww). If she doesn’t marry Julian, then the estate will go to a detested cousin who doesn’t even care about horses, damn him. Julian feels honor-bound to marry Anna; Anna feels honor-bound to come up with her own money. So Anna and Julian trip all over themselves and each other and generally act like lustful, prideful idiots to the great delight of Anna’s bestie (and Julian’s sister) Charlotte who thrives on playing matchmaker to the reluctant pair.

You know the drill people! We have:

• Childhood trauma.
• Fashion!
• “The crush” at parties
• Making out in back rooms at said parties and almost getting caught.
• Horsies!
• An improbable amount of time spent together without a chaperone.
• Earls work hard, OK? And this one doesn’t evict anyone! So don’t google “The Enclosure Movement” whatever you do! These are ethical earls!
• Brooding.
• Tea, embroidery, sneaking off to be a jockey (?)

I enjoyed everything having to do with horses in this book. I also enjoyed everything having to do with clothes, especially the way Charlotte helps Anna find her own style, or rather, picks a style that works for Anna and makes her wear it. Charlotte is a bully, but a benign bully, by which I mean she bosses Anna around shamelessly but does it with such gleeful abandon that I found her to be more amusing and endearing than otherwise. There are hints that hers will be the next book. I’m not fond of the trend in which characters are left underdeveloped so as to be sequel fodder, but here we are. I adored Charlotte’s grandmother and any scenes involving Charlotte and her grandmother were sure to be delightful.

All I have to say about Anna is that for a character who is supposed to be very strong-willed, she sure lets herself get bossed around a lot. I found her to be bland which is not a word I’d normally apply to someone who sets up a secret horse race with her as a jockey (again I say – “?”). I admire her sense of independence and her desire to do right by the people the estate depends upon. I also thought she showed remarkable maturity, given her overall naivete, for understanding that her relationship with Julian is superficial because he shuts her out of his deeper emotions.

There was a time, dear friends, when I loved an angsty alpha hero with brooding emotional issues. Now, I have no patience for this shit. Julian had a shitty upbringing and that sucks but that doesn’t mean he can bully everyone around him, including, most damningly, the servants. He has a particularly nasty tendency to go cold on Anna when he feels vulnerable which triggers the absolute shit out of me as a reader and a person. I thought his issues around food needed more exploration and I don’t think his issues with emotional control or intimacy were dealt with remotely adequately. He’s a mess at the start of the book and, despite considerable character growth, he’s still messy at the end.

If you like alpha heroes, and many of you do, then you might really enjoy this book. Julian is a pretty mild alpha and in sexual interactions he always practices consent. He’s smart, he can be funny, he respects Anna’s intelligence and capabilities, and he’s very supportive of Anna once he learns how to be supportive in a way that actually helps her. There’s no bullshit about her having to conform to respectability to be a fit countess. His reaction to a plot on the part of Anna and Cassandra to raise their own money is everything I could have wished for. I may have swooned a teeny bit.

If only I had read this in 2005, when I had the patience for a properly broody man. Nowadays I lack the time and energy for heroes who require the kind of emotional coddling that I foresee Anna having to deliver in the future. If you do like an alpha, then you will have a lot of fun with this historical.