My Lady's Choosing

I have to admit, I was never really a fan of the choose your own adventure books that everyone seemed to love when we were kids. I was to cautious to properly appreciate them. So many of the branches led to horrific deaths, and I didn't like those endings. I'd quickly find the single happy (safe, boring) ending and then sit there smugly while my friends recounted the various horribly consequences of their choices. I completely missed the point. Or maybe those books just weren't for me.

But a chose-your-own romance? Where every ending is a guaranteed happily ever after? That's something I can get behind.

My Lady's Choosing is a loving parody or romance novels and the women who read them. Everything is heightened. The protagonist/reader falls in love at the drop of a hat and switches her affections to the next potential love interest just as easily. It was a lot of fun to read, and to zoom through all the different romance tropes and backtracking from each new happy ending to find the next one.

There are four main branches of the story, with four main love interests. First is Mac, a Scot with a mysterious past and a heart of gold. You can help him set up an orphanage, or abandon him when you run across your first love, who faked his own death ears ago. The second branch follows Benedict, a Mr. Darcy clone with a family full of intrigue. You can help him save his fortune from his vengeful half brother or team up with said half brother and travel the world as a con artist.

Then there's Lord Craven, who hires you to be a governess and thrusts you into the world of gothic romances. There's an evil first wife, a precocious kid, and the chance to get turned into a vampire. Or you can accept Lady Evangeline's offer to travel to Egypt with her, where you'll encounter thieves, pirates, and lesbians. In addition to these, there are a bunch of places to branch off and find different happy endings with any number of characters. Pretty much every character in the book is a potential love interest, and half the fun is tracking them all down.

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