In the 18th century, two teenagers (Deb and Julian) with noble heritages are secretly married off at midnight when she is 12 (and drugged) and he is 16 (and drunk), then immediately separated. Nine years later, Julian returns from the Continent to England to claim the bride he doesn’t know because his father is ill (in France where he lives) and Julian must have an heir. Poor Deb is just the proper broodmare. When she first encounters him, Deb has no idea he is her husband. He claims to be a commoner of another name and intentionally charms her with the thought of a second marriage to seal the deal. Thus we have deception at the outset as he proposes and she accepts early on in their relationship.
On a positive note, I liked the tension between the leads when it was there. Often it was lacking. And when he suddenly turns cold and cruel to his “new” bride after their honeymoon, I was shocked. There was no reason for it. She rightly gets angry when she realizes she has married the debauched Marquis of Roxton. And when she later turns to mush when she should still have been angry, again I was amazed. Very inconsistent. So, I went looking at other reviews to see if they agreed. They did. Here are some I found helpful:
“Heroine annoyed me. At first, I was rooting for her, all independent with a you-can't-tell-me-what-to-do attitude. Go heroine! Then after the hero tells her they are to marry (actually, it's remarry but she doesn't realize it), she just goes, "Ok...coz' I'm following my heart...even when he doesn't tell me anything about him & he's such a bully". Ack! Wtf happened to my strong gal? Then I applauded her later on once she discovered his deceit & stayed away from him for a while. Whew, I thought, thank goodness she's awakened from her lapse of stupidity...NOT! She then succumbs to him after taking one walk with him. Huh?”
“How could the duke be throwing a welcoming party [a major ball in Paris] for his son's bride the night they first meet her when they didn't know she was coming?”
“The introduction of so many characters in the beginning of the book and the lack of clear identification of these characters made it hard to understand who was who.”
“It was confusing due to an undefined flow in the story. It had a tendency to ramble repeatedly describing non essential items pertinent to the plot as though filling space.”
“...the lack of fight in Deb where it concerned Julian made me want to bash my head against the wall. She carries a gun, can match men wit for wit, has mouth for her sister, goes against her older brother in favor of helping out a child and loses her bite where it counts? Forgive me but it’s too convenient.”
And since I’m a Georgette Heyer fan, I found this review interesting. “...if you’ve ever read Georgette Heyer’s ‘These Old Shades’ you will find that Julian’s parents (Reynard and Antonia) are highly evocative of Heyer’s Justin and Léonie: elderly English duke married to a ravishingly beautiful French noblewoman half his age who was briefly his ward, in an obvious love-match that reformed his previously dissolute character and turned him into a devoted spouse. Even the description of the duke’s elegant white, long-fingered hands is similar.”
