The Bride Who Got Lucky

I'm bedazzled!

Oh my! I loved this. I adored the intelligent, stubborn Lady Emma Cavensham trying to find justice for her dead friend Lady Lena Eaton.
I was smitten with the damaged the Earl of Somerton, Nicholas St. Mauer who had been alone and rejected from an early age. It was after a terrible encounter with his father at Eaton, that Alex Pembrooke interfered when Nick was being bullied by other students. This later becomes the doorway into to a relationship with Pembrooke and Emma's family.
Rejection by his father, Drake St. Mauer, the Duke of Renton, has put Nick onto the trajectory of desiring to surpass his father’s wealth and to isolate himself from the hurt of meaningful relationships. He has decided to not marry. Nick focuses show more all his attention on the acquisition of wealth. He engages in trade to do with merchant ships and their cargoes, and purchases ships for new trade routes. Vengeance would be sweet. 'He could taste victory.'
I love the sometimes dim witted (where Emma's concerned), but fiercely loyal men of the Cavensham family. Their presence is a wonderful addition to the story.
Lord Somerton keeps encountering Emma on her forays into what could be dangerous, or at the very least scandalous places, and coming to her rescue, or imposing rescue on her, whichever fits the bill. His thwarting of Emma frustrates her. The repartee they engage in is amusing and invigorating. I loved Emma's thoughts after the first such encounter, When 'his laughter followed her all the way to her carriage. Insufferable cur.'
When Emma is driven to investigate her dearest friend Lena's husband, the despicable, hateful Lord Aulton, to make him pay for Lena's murder its Somerset who keeps rescuing Emma from her own fearlessness. With her brothers and father just a few paces behind.
These rescues ultimately takes a course that is in keeping with the times.
The last scenes left me somewhat teary with happiness.
As far as I'm concerned this is a rare winner in the regency romance stakes, complete with intrigue, interest and wonderful lead characters.

A NetGalley ARC show less

3.5 stars

***I won a copy from First Reads GoodReads giveaway. First US resident to pm me I'll pay it forward and mail my copy to them.***
Claimed

I received this book for free in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Ever since his father coldly rejected him in front of his peers, Nick has closed himself off from any semblance of love. He devotes himself to his business and stays clear from any marriage market shenanigans.
Blaming herself for not helping her dear friend Lena, Emma is determined to never marry and provide women with an opportunity to be at least somewhat self-sufficient.
Nick and Emma have danced around a friendship for years but when reputations are on the show more line, they find themselves forced into a situation they never wanted. Or so they thought.

Second in the Cavensham Heiresses series, The Bride Who Got Lucky stars Nick and Emma. They were introduced in the first and while the author starts us off from a situation that developed there, new readers would still have no problem starting here. You'd miss how Emma’s cousin and husband came together who are featured here but otherwise the author does a great job showing how Emma and Nick's friendship started to develop.

With a deep sigh, he lay on his back and draped an arm across his forehead. His other rested beside hers.
She dared to slide her hand over his, and he wove their fingers together. Her fear gradually receded little by little like the outgoing tide.

What I loved the most about this story was the beginning friendship that Nick and Emma shared. Right off the bat they captured me with their sensual tension that blazed from their back and forth conversations and crackling physical closeness. They danced around each other beautifully in the beginning that had me highly anticipating their journey. The resolve came much too quickly for me as their relationship started full steam ahead at around the 30% mark and fairly soon rushed to a higher sexual degree. I was settled in for a more gradual build and was a bit disappointed in how the heroine became pretty sexual and drove the focus to bedroom scenes instead of teasing tension filled hesitant touches. The bedroom scenes were well written but they became the focus for too long and took away from their friendship and the plot that brings them together.

"Sometimes, if you're lucky, a woman consumes you."

Nick was a pretty great hero, he gives Emma a book!, and the opening prologue where his father crushes their relationship provided a solid base for his contained, bury the pain personality. He had moments of sexiness and caring but also paled a bit in comparison to the deeper flushed out Emma. Emma feels deep guilt over not being there for her bestfriend when her husband was abusing her. This leads to her having a fear of marrying (an often used trope but felt real and believable here) and wanting to open a lending bank to women. Her thoughts and feelings she relays and conversations she struggles to be understood in will have you joining in with her frustration. She's a believable regency feminist who is fearful and angry about what happened to her friend and how she doesn't really have any recourse for justice or protect herself from the same fate.

While I liked all the themes and relationships happening here, there was also a bit of a disjointed feel to all the storylines. I couldn't help but feel that a feminist heroine box was being checked and the heavy sexual tone and number of sexual scenes not only disappointed me in the lack of time given to a more tension filled build-up, it also seemed to overly cover up the justice for the bestfriend thread. The heavy emotion from domestic violence and how it affected Emma and the women of the time doesn't get its due and the danger from the villain wasn't able to be fully felt because of how it is pushed to the side, in what seems to be, in favor of more sex scenes.

The writing veered at times to flowery, I would have liked more tension build-up, and the ending was a bit too pat. However, the author's ability to write great chemistry between her leads and such wonderful multifaceted relationships between family members and friends will definitely have me continuing on in the series. She has introduced a couple secondary characters that I can't wait to see how their story unfolds.

His darkness gave way to her, like the night to the day.
She had found him and brought him home. show less

As the second book in her Caversham Heiresses series Ms MacGregor does another amazing job of creating a strong female character who doesn't need a man to complete her. Lady Emma knows what she want out of life and it isn't necessarily to be married. After the death of her friend Lena (killed by an abusive husband) Emma is intent on finding a way to help other women be more independent.
Nick, Earl of Somerton has been forced to take care of himself since he was a child. Sent to school at 5 and disinherited by his father at 15 he is a loner with very few friends.
The two of them couldn't be more different and yet there is something between them that takes them years to recognize. Ms MacGregor shows that a strong man doesn't have to be show more threatened by a strong woman, rather than dominate or trying to master his wife, Nick and Emma can manage to have a partnership if he can put aside the hurts of his past and let her love into his heart. show less

Sooooo much better than the prior book.
Great growth, believable conflicts (nothing overwrought, no miscommunication, no secrets- all awful tropes) and some excellent spice.

I was invited by the publisher to read this book. When I got the invitation I had been feeling down in the dumps and thought what better way to cheer up then reading a romance novel. After reading the book I am definitely feeling better.

This book follows Nick and Emma. Both of them are really stubborn and never want to bee married; Nick because he doesn't want to let anyone in after his father basically disowned him, and Emma because she doesn't want a man to control her. I tended to like Nick more than Emma as Emma started to get annoying in the second half.

Nick and Emma's relationship grows throughout the book and grows especially fast after they are forced to marry. Their marriage seemed to be working until something threatens to show more tear them apart. Ultimately, of course, I loved where they ended up at the end.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the galley. show less

I read a copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for a fair review. This is the second book in the authors series The Cavensham Heiresses. I think it can be read on its own as I have the first book in my TBR pile but have not read it yet. Over all I did enjoy reading this book despite the heroine having a few TSTL moments and the punishment for sneaking out to purchase a book not in keeping with the supposedly loving relationship she has with her parents, plus question why the hero was sent to intercept her. The sizzle level was medium high. I loved that the heroine Emma plans to create a bank for women. Many of the issues raised in the story are ones that women are still dealing with in the present day. I also really enjoyed how show more the hero Nick and the heroine Emma talk to each other and try and work through their disagreements with each other. I would recommend this book and plan on reading the other books I have in my TBR pile by the author Janna MacGregor. show less

Nicholas St. Mauer, Earl of Somerton has a bit of a rough outlook on life. Rejected by his father - his mother having died in childbirth – Nick has sworn to encase his feelings in ice. He learned at a young age that one could only depend on one’s self and so he set out to prove to himself, to everyone, to his father, that he needed no one to make is way in life. Success was measured by the sum of his wealth and everything else be damned; most especially weaknesses contrived from emotion. He didn’t have time for it. Didn’t want it. And he definitely didn’t want even a hint of what he might be missing by closing himself off from fickle emotions that caused pain. So when he steps in to help his only friend retrieve Lady Emma from show more potential ruin and impending danger, it has nothing to do with his growing need to protect her. Protection isn’t such a foreign feeling, but everything else brewing, unidentifiable to him, is.

Lady Emma Cavensham is just as resistant to the idea of love and marriage as Nick is. While she doesn’t go the extreme of avoiding society, neither is she looking to get herself forever bound to a brutal husband. Sure, her parents share an idea marriage, as does her “sister”, but she feels theirs are uncommon matches. After all, a husband dictates to his wife and in cases like her friend, Lena, murders them. She will not be thwarted from bringing the evil man to justice, but every time she hatches a plan to do just that, Nick shows up. Pair his constant unwanted presence with a rising attraction that could be likened to electric magnetism, and you’ve got a recipe for heartache. Or maybe not. But is it worth the risk?

I found this story a fun, romantic read. While the book was quite predictable and there was very little suspense, it was time well spent. I do not regret reading this book, but I had the strangest sense of déjà vu the entire time I was reading it. Ms. MacGregor goes in to quite a bit of detail explaining the events that have molded her main characters into who they are, but I failed to make a deep connection with either of them. Perhaps if I had read the first book and came to the story with a bit of knowledge of both Nick and Emma, it would have been different. That said, even though this book is a 2nd in series, it read well without leaving a reader feeling lost in the absence of prior knowledge. I encountered a few typos while reading this story and I hate to hold that against an unreleased copy because it is very likely going to be rectified prior to the release date, but there it is. I suppose we don’t always need suspense or impulsiveness in a book when we just want something to read. And for a situation such as that, this book is satisfying. But if you are looking for a deep-rooted connection that sucks you in and leaves you aching for more, you won’t find that in this story. I would also have liked to see a bit more wit and sarcasm, sparing as it was in this novel. So overall, as a first experience with this author, it is a satisfying read, but lacking in character depth and unpredictability. Given the chance the read another book by Ms. MacGregor, I most likely would. However, I might choose outside of this series just to see if her styles vary at all.

Kindle version provided by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. show less