Jane Goodger

My first Jane Goodger book. Yet again my frenetic web trawling failed to net an established and successful romance author.

The theme of [b:When There is Hope|331975|When There is Hope|Jane Goodger|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1327994887s/331975.jpg|322523] is a perennial favourite: a nice person wakes up in the body of a nasty person. Shades of 'Good Sam' and 'Bad Sam' in Samantha Who? (Christina Applegate rules!), though clearly the book predates the TV series.

Cheerful, good-natured and show more rotundly pregnant Susan is killed in a car accident. In a passage I found difficult to understand, a flutter of angels decides that Susan is the perfect person to right a hundred-year-old wrong created by an incompetent member of the celestial host. Their plan gets a nod from You-know-who and Susan wakes up in 1888, inhabiting the body of Margaret, who has just been thrown from her horse and suffered a serious skull fracture. Problem is, Margaret is as nasty as Susan is nice, something Susan soon discovers from the way everyone, including her 19th century husband, detests her.

Realising that she's stuck in the 19th century for good, and comforted by strange voices (angels?), Susan decides to make the best of things as 'Maggie' not 'Margaret'. Her attempts to repair the physical ravages of alcohol, gluttony and sexual depravity by crafting her own version of running wear and jogging on the beach, or startling the cook with demands for broccoli and other healthy foods, are a joy to read.

No one believes her story of soul transplantation, so she plays along with the doctor's diagnosis of total amnesia, which isn't far off the mark. Maggie's attempts to piece together snippets of information about her evil past are spell-binding.

But the core of the novel is the psychological and emotional tussle between Maggie and her 'new' husband Carter . This is where the narrative could so easily have fallen to pieces, but Ms Goodger manages the vertiginous POV switches and the doubts and dismays of dozens of secondary characters with commendable skill.

The advent of the inevitable villain had me worried for a few chapters, but again Ms Goodger gets it just right, never overplaying the drama.

One very, very slight reservation. Leaving aside the angels who carry out the body-swap, the number of religious references in other parts of the book were a little more than average. I began to think this was an example of the Christian literature genre, but the metatags do not so indicate. show less

Elizabeth ‘Elsie’ Stanhope has been betrothed since she was a child to the future Duke of Kingston. She is not happy about having her life planned, but is willing to do her duty so that her father and sister can continue living a comfortable life. Then Elsie meets a most unusual man. She falls in love with him and he falls in love with her even though they both know they are doomed to never be together. However, Fate just may have something else planned for them.

I loved this story! show more Well-written and smooth-flowing the characters in this story came alive for me. I could see them and hear them as if they were standing in front of me. I liked Elsie, how she was good-natured and naturally optimistic, but Alexander was so real to me that my heart ached for the things he’d had to endure, what he continued to endure. He needed someone just like Elsie and I’m glad he found her. Never have I loved a flawed hero so much and rooted so hard for his victory.

I sincerely hope Jane Goodger is planning a story about Elsie’s Aunt Diane. It seemed as if we were given a bit of a beginning for her and Lord Braddock and I sincerely hope it comes about. Now, I need to check out other of Ms. Goodger’s books and hope they are as wonderful as this one.

*The publisher provided a copy of this book to me for review. Disclaimer on my blog. show less

Reviewed by Shannon
Review copy provided by Zebra Books
Jane Goodger is an author who is new to me, so I wasn’t sure what to expect with this historical romance. Let me say, I was pleasantly surprised and will now look for other Jane Goodger books to read.

The story for When A Duke Says I Do revolves around Elizabeth (Elsie) Stanhope and a muralist’s apprentice, Alexander. Elsie, betrothed to the heir to a dukedom, is quite taken with the mute apprentice as she watches him paint her show more mural. She finds it easy to talk to him and she feels safe since the death of her sister. Even when she discovers that Alexander can in fact talk, she doesn’t make a big deal of it, instead she relishes in the fact that her best friend can now share his story with her. She knows she shouldn’t be trying to get closer to Alexander, but he’s everything she wants and can’t stop herself.

Alexander has had much to talk about for twenty-two years. Saved from an asylum by a friendly doctor and adopted by a muralist who’d lost his family, Alexander has cherished his new life with his adoptive father. But when he meets Elsie, something about her draws out the man he thought was locked away forever. While in another life he may have been the second son to a Duke, in this life he doesn’t feel as if he’s good enough for her. He tries to stay away from her, but always seems to be drawn back.

When A Duke Says I Do is perfect example of why I love historical romance novels. The hero and heroine buck conventional society to do what they feel is right in their hearts. And when things go bad between them, it’s because they are trying to conform to societies rules.

A wonderfully written novel with an emotionally scarred hero who needs our strong, talkative heroine to prove to him that what they have is worth fighting for. show less

I discovered this author only a couple of years ago and ever since I did, I’m just enamored with every character she creates, and not just her heroes and heroines.

‘The Spinster Bride’ is the fourth book in her Lords and Ladies series, but each one is unique and stand alone, and not connected with the others story wise, but rather character wise, meaning that the main characters were introduced to us in an earlier book.

We met both hero and the heroine of this tale in ‘When a Lord show more Needs a Lady’ and while I wanted to scream and pounce on Marjory in that book, in this one, I just wanted to give her a huge hug. Hero of this book I loved right off the bat. I think I related to him on so many levels, especially being loud and rambunctious.

Another thing you’ll note if you decide to read this author is the way she weaves multiple stories within the main one. In this tale we not only get to root for Marjory and Charles, but we can’t help but fall madly in love with George, Marjory’s younger brother who suffers from an affliction that can only be diagnosed today as Autism spectrum disorder. People, my heart went to tiny pieces as I met this character. I adored him!

But what sets this tale apart as well, is another person’s point of view from as far as forty years ago, that of Dorothea, Lady Summerfield who is our heroines horrific, overbearing and title hunting mother from hell. I hated her with every fiber of my being, and then the author throws me a curve ball, and I had to come to realize why this woman did the things she did, which in the end made her more human than I could have thought her to be.

I highly recommend this story because how can you go wrong with having to read three romances within one story?!

Melanie for b2b

Complimentary copy provided by the publisher show less