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Half a Soul is equal parts well-intentioned and tedious. It's partly a reader/book misfit: this is a fluffy pink glazed donut to my salt-and-vinegar kettle chip proclivities, but it's also that the writing's not very good and the early 19th century setting appears to have been researched by reading second tier Regency romances.

The concept was fine. Dora Ettings had an unfortunate encounter with a Faerie lord as a child, lost half her soul (but only half, thanks to quick thinking from her cousin and a pair of steel embroidery scissors), and has now grown into a rather odd young woman whose emotions, senses, and ability to navigate social situations are muted. She and her cousin, improbably named Vanessa (not a name in common circulation during this time period), are heading to London to find husbands (Vanessa) and cures for Dora's condition (also Vanessa; Dora's happy to just be tagging along). The most likely source of a cure is the Lord Sorcier of England, Elias Wilder: gorgeous, talented, and also probably the rudest man in England.

OK, but rude is Mr. Darcy's snubbing of Elizabeth Bennet as 'tolerable,' not this:

"You were very curious?" Elias repeated, in that low, sonorous voice. He added a soft laugh, which also seemed friendly, but now Dora wasn't quite sure whether she should take it as such. "Well then. That makes it all better. Was there anything else you were curious about, while we're at it? Shall I take off my trousers and let you take my measure?"

Aww...hell no. Author Olivia Atwater tries to explain the behavior of her protagonists by Dora's condition and Elias's infamous rudeness, but no one who has spent any amount of time reading early 19th century writing (or even Georgette Heyer, FFS) could find any of the circumstances Dora and Elias find themselves in remotely credible. Their mannerisms, diction, and cultural practices are all firmly of modern people - and not Brits at that - in fancy dress.

She frowned vaguely at the fountain in front of her. That is a lot of water, she thought. Enough to soak my dress properly. Perhaps I can scrub out the worst before the party is through..

Dora got to her feet and wriggled the dress over her head. Only a moment after she'd dunked the whole thing in the fountain, however, she heard a man's voice utter a foul swear word behind her.

"What are you doing, you mad little twit?"

[...]"I would have thought the situation was self-evident," Dora said calmly. "Does a man of your formidable knowledge really require the concept of laundry to be explained to him?"

Elias pinched at the bridge of his nose with his fingers, sucking in a breath. "My dear Miss Ettings," he said slowly. "You are standing in a viscount's back garden in your unmentionables, washing your dress in a fountain. Have you truly no concept of the strangeness of your situation?"

The writing is a mess of anachronisms, unnecessary adverbs, and italics; people sigh heavily, think dimly, and smile wryly with such frequency that the eye begins to jump from tag to tag.

Dora's half-a-soul condition also leads to some conveniently malleable symptoms. She mostly doesn't feel strong emotions (but she does at times...because love). She seems intellectually unimpaired, yet after 19 years of life as gentility, it doesn't occur to her that taking her dress off to wash in a fountain might not be socially acceptable. She doesn't notice physical sensation - again, unless predicated by the romance. (Also: given that sensory processing issues, social awkwardness, and difficulty with emotion recognition are typical of autism spectrum disorders, I'm a little uncomfortable with the implication these traits come from being half a soul short. Then again, I haven't seen any good evidence for the existence of souls.) Other characters are maybe more consistent but equally one-note. Elias as the rough-edged but heart-of-gold sorcerer is eyeroll-inducing for the romantically disinclined.

I'd recommend this one to romance fans only. 1.5 stars, rounding up because I finished it without chucking it across the room once (only partly because it's a library book).