Megan Bryce: To Wed a Widow (The Reluctant Bride Collection #3) – 5***** @meganbrycebooks

I got this thick ARC “A Taste of Scandal” from Netgalley – Goodreads says it’s 1000 pages – so I split the reviews because they stories couldn’t be more different.

In the beginning I wasn’t sure if I’d like the story, the first few pages weren’t really my pot of tea but within those the leads grew on me … well not only the leads but also the relationship between the duke and his wife. I’d really like to read more on them.

George Sinclair is the second son and his brother an heirless duke. The Duke, Sebastian, has four little daughter out of a 10 year long marriage. He loves them all dearly but is in need of an heir, so he sums his brother home from India. And Sebastian  has given up on a son after Flora’s last pregnancy because she nearly died, was sick for a long time after giving birth to another daughter a year ago. And for a year he hasn’t been with her.

The dutiful brother who doesn’t want to be a duke himself, comes back from India. George is a man everybody has to love. He’s a happy fellow, good looking, smart and carefree. But now his brother tells him that he has to find a wife within this season because they are running out of time. George doesn’t think so. But he loves Flora, loves his nieces and doesn’t want anything to happen to his brother’s wife.

So there is Lady Haywood – Elinor – a fine looking widow. She has already buried six men. Six husbands. Childless. Young. Beautiful. And the ton says that she’s into hunting for #6. Everybody knows that her husbands, except for the first, never survived the first year of marriage – she’s bad luck as it seems. It is not even half a year and she attends social events again, an absolute no-go but she does. She isn’t dancing yet but socializing and being talked about.

The Duke despise her because her last husband had been one of his friends. But what’s one out of five? And George likes her, likes the mystery. So he starts to talk to her, even if it against the Duke’s idea of being fashionable. She tries her best not to fall for him because she knows that she cannot marry him, his brother wouldn’t accept her and next to that – as much as she long for a child, she hasn’t one.

In the beginning I wasn’t sure why George was so interested because she is an outsider. People are talking about her and everybody thinks that she is looking for another husband. But George doesn’t want a duchess, he wants somebody he can laugh with, not a boring gay virgin who laughs when asked for, smiles perfectly and sits straight all day long. He wants passion, brain and doesn’t care about her past.

And there is so much more to Elinor. God, I really fell in love with this character. I even cried once – and I nearly never do this nowadays (in comparison to my teen years … couldn’t stop crying when I read Evan’s “The Horse Whisperer” or McCourt’s “Angela’s Ashes”). But this time, when she started to put the white christening dress to her nose, smells it a last time, puts all the things away forever and visits her daughter’s grave and lays down next to it. No joke, tears were running down my cheeks because I really felt with her. I really, really loved Elinor.

And then there are their dogs. Elinor has three mastiffs, harmless dogs if she is fine but they be protective. And to have a reason to see Elinor George gets himself a small dog too he carries around in his pocket.

But next to Elinor, who really, really is a great, strong female lead, I really loved Flora. I’d so love to read more on her. She’s strong willed and passionate and she wants to give Sebastian a son. She knows what could happen to her but she is willing to risk it. For Sebastian. For George’s happiness. For her own. But since Sebastian hasn’t touched her in a year … she’s willing to do everything and it was adorable, her attempts. I felt with her. But I also understood Sebastian.

After finishing it, I read a few reviews on Goodreads and couldn’t agree less with some of them. But I didn’t understands what Alan has against Elinor respectively what she really took from him. Maybe I over-read it, maybe I didn’t notice it but that bugged me.

And I could have lived with more detailed loved scenes. I mean the tension was so high, you could honestly feel it … and then there is already post coital cuddling. I mean it would have fit – for Elinor and George, Flora and Sebastian.

All in all I really loved this book.

Rating: 5*****

Heather Hiestand: „Christmas Delights“ (Redcakes #5) – 3***1/2

I got this book for an honest review from Netgalley.

First of all, “Christmas Delights” is #5 of the Redcakes series by Heather Hiestand. I haven’t read 1 to 4 but I didn’t get the impression that it’s a must because everybody is introduced thoroughly. The book has 252 pages but felt more like 500 to me especially after the first 50 percent.

The story is quite lovely. Lady Victoria Allen-Hill, 21, widow of a year, who was married only for a coupe of weeks to her already sick young husband, is to attend a Christmas house party with her cousin Penelope, who is not yet a teenager, in Pevensey. The only intend her father has is to marry her off again but usually widows have it easier in society, can have a lover or at least can decide whom to marry. But since she married a title the 1^st time, her father – a fabric owner from Liverpool – doesn’t allow her to loose it again.

At the party she has to share a room with her cousin, even a bed but it doesn’t take her long to long for Lewis Noble, an inventor, without a title. He is there to build a submarine. Lewis isn’t rich like the aristocracy or cares about how he dresses, he seems himself as an inventor.

Very early in the book, Victoria comes to his room one night and they indulge into a passionate night. Her intension is to lose her virginity because it would make her life easier – a widow who is still a virgin is a contradiction to her.

From this point on it’s a seesaw. They have a hot love affair, steeling moments here and there but Lewis let’s her know quickly that he isn’t into marrying her because he doesn’t want to go to Liverpool nor work under her father to inherit the factories. He is an inventor and works here in the Pevensey era. Victoria being an only child feels like she owes her father so much respect to look for a suitable husband and there are several young men in a marriageable age at the house party looking for a match.

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Of course there is much more to the story and those few lines. It’s a complex structure. Why is living Penelope with Victoria? What about all those inventions? Why does Lewis not want to get married at all? Can Victoria go her own way or does she have to stay under her dad’s spell?

Some of the details really bored me, especially the match making of the other females and males, the endless thoughts (at least it felt like that). I so didn’t care if other kids were sick and who brought them because in the beginning the author wrote that there were no kids in Penelope’s age. Suddenly there are three new sick kids. But why? Why the earthquake? Only to show the ruins? It didn’t even influence the story Victoria was telling Penelope from the beginning through the end in some special way.

Honestly I am completely torn when it comes to this book. On the one hand, I absolutely loved the main characters Lady Victoria Allen-Hill and Lewis Noble. On the other hand the book had its lengths. Pages of quite boring thoughts and so on.

I liked the language, the wordplays and the characters but the side story was too much in my opinion. I’d have gone for more steamy – and the ones which were in there were steamy – love scenes. I really wonder when I will stumble over a book again where two are caught in the middle of their first act and have to marry but don’t like each other (in the beginning) at all – like the one from Sylvia Day, when the husband returns after 7 years of abstinence. Gosh that book was hot!

So, 3 and a half stars for Lewis and Victoria -. 3***1/2