Always the proper gentleman, Phillip will do anything to protect his family from scandal, and when Maria dares to move in right next door, he knows scandal will surely follow. She is as tempting as he remembered . . . and the more he sees her, the harder it is for Phillip to keep his own secret desire for her a secret.
Comment: This is the third installment in the Girl Bachelors series by author Laura Lee Guhrke. I enjoyed reading the previous stories although they weren't amazing, but there is always hope the next one will be it. Sadly, I feel this third installment wasn't better for me than the previous ones.
In this story we finally have Maria Martingale as the protagonist. She is a baker and has learned from her father who used to be a chef. Maria was raised to be a lady but it is true she has always felt closer to her father's role and she dreams of having her own patisserie. Things finally come true with the help of her friend, the duchess of St Ives, who lends her money to do precisely that, and Maria has just found the perfect spot when she stumbles on Phillip, the marquess of Kayne. Phillip and his younger brother Lawrence were Maria's childhood friends, since her father worked for the old marquess and they got to know each other well, at least until the time they were all older and Maria and Lawrence were in love and wanted to elope. Phillip intervened, since he was by then the marquess and felt this relationship had no future. Now, years later, can they all become friends again or what Phillip did cannot be salvaged? And why was Phillip so intensely against a marriage for Maria and Lawrence?
If one ignores some obvious influences for certain scenes in this book, I'd say the story is simple but effective, for it doesn't run around in circles and many others do. However, I must say the directness or the objectiveness of the plot wasn't enough to give this book a very structured feel anyway because the pace certainly didn't help either.
The story begins with Maria looking for a place to have her shop and Phillip just happens to be the neighbor next door. All fine in romancelandia, but if this was the perfect setting to make them have to interact and deal with what happened and their feelings, I think the author didn't make the best use of these coincidences because the pace wasn't on point. I can't have precise numbers but it felt as if half the novel was setting up the stage for why they weren't in the best of terms, what happened and why did that affect them, but the actual relationship only starts to have more attention from half way on and it felt a bit too late for me.
Perhaps this impression wouldn't have been that bed if the pages setting up things had been on point, but to me they weren't. We obviously learn that Maria and Lawrence weren't really in love, it was more infatuation, but despite their now mutual understanding of this, I don't think the author conveyed the necessary angst or emotions to let us feel why their separation was such a heartbreak. If the romance now were to be with these two, there was plenty to work with but alas, the romance is between Phillip and Maria and we realize he has been in love with her, perhaps without being really aware of those feelings.We see some hints of it, but it is all so lost among the talk about Maria and Lawrence and secondary things that when Maria and Phillip do get together, it felt meh.
Since we don't really have the use of drama and angst from all the issues in the past, nor now in regards with the issues Maria and Phillip are facing, the story started to feel a bit underdone to me. I liked all the baking stuff and the little details about Maria's passion for her patisserie but not even when situations related to this could affect her opinion of Phillip made the story more vibrant. I also think their personalities - Phillip in particular - weren't very memorable and considering the supposed longing and the sort of "loved you for years" trope the author hinted at, this didn't pan out well enough.
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