Instruct: Classify a given review as either positive or negative.
Query: Practice Makes Perfect

I love Janet Mullany's later irreverent Regency romps, so I thought I'd take a look at her earlier work."Dedication" is decidedly an earlier effort--when Mullany had not yet hit her stride.The plot and characters often make little sense. The characters are two-dimensional and the dialogue lacks the snap and fizz of later works.There are nuggets of humor and irony to be mined here and there, showing promise of what will come in subsequent books, but on the whole the story is tedious and unconvincing.The plot device of heading each chapter with excerpts from imitations of lurid gothic novels as a way to preface to the melodrama contained in the the next chapter is the one fun aspect of the book.Save your money for her later works.