Almost a Bride

A fascinating, intriguing, irritating and annoying historical romance. I have no idea why the author decided to put the Epilogue at the beginning of the book. Beginning with the ending might have worked with classic TV series such as Perry Mason and Colombo, but it doesn’t work with period romances in which the author builds the tension to a climactic happy ending.

My knowledge of the complexities of British aristrocracy comes from reading hundreds of historical romances and a couple of Wikipedia articles. All of these seem to agree on precedence and forms of address. For some reason Ms Feather ignores basic rules of title capitalisation and her characters aren’t sure whether to address a duke as ‘Duke’, ‘Sir’, or show more ‘Grace’.

Otherwise this tale of a haunted and traumatised duke winning the estates and possessions of his nemesis and then proposing marriage to the loser’s sister is tremendous fun. All the stock characters of an off-the-shelf HR are there: the moody, handsome, arrogant and mysterious hero and the intelligent, sharp-witted and eloquent heroine. A doting, loyal girlfriend and a bunch of drunken cronies.

For all the warts, I truly enjoyed this book. The change of scene from England to Paris in the aftermath of the bloody revolution was particularly well written. show less

Jack Fortescu intends to break Frederick Lacey. He saw Lacey betray friends during the French Revolution to save his own neck. Now he's going to get his revenge and the revenge is going to be terrible. He succeeds in winning everything from Frederick, including his lands and all his property, Lacey commits suicide.

Now Fortescu comes to his estate, where Frederick's half-sister Arabella lives, he gives her a choice, pack her bags or marry him. She doesn't know his long-game and after time he's not sure either.

It's pretty predictable but I enjoyed the read. The characters came across are very real. While some of the situations stretched credulity they did come across as full people with motives and personalities.

As usual, most historical romances are fairly similar but I still can't resist reading them. In Almost a Bride, Feather creates a story of a vengeful man (Jack Fortescu) who brings his enemy to suicide and then claims all of his property including his half-sister (Arabella Lacy). After some thought of fearing she'd lose her independence, Arabella agrees to marry Jack with the understanding that they were marrying for convenience and that neither expects the other for anything more but to keep their freedom of independence. Over time you watch the passions spark in overdrive and the compassion the other has for the other while trying their hardest "not to care" about the others supposed "actions". When Jack finally learns to allow show more someone to step up to carry an act out to save his lost sister you can't help but feel compassion for him and wonder for his wife's selfless act of love. The book was a page turner, often made me grin, made me want to jump up and "high five" or slap a character for their actions. The only thing I wanted to read more about that was lacking was the dispensing of Jack's mistress. I actually wanted some sort of "cat fight" between his wife and his old mistress and to know if Jack finally let her go financially. show less

Really more in the realm of two and half. This book suffers greatly from the hero just being not even little bit likable for 9/10ths of the book. Maybe for the whole book. He's not irredeemably awful. I just don't like him. As a person. (Well, as a character.) And the heroine is fine? She's not awful, but she's not inspiring either.

Not to mention that I just didn't feel like this story had the right pacing. At all.

Good but not great. This book kind of dragged in a lot of spots where others were alright. The characters also were back and forth a lot leaving me unsure what to make of them leaving me some what irritated.

Lite fluff, but good story line

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