After the loss of his wife and children, the Marquess of Huntercombe closed his heart to love. But now that he must marry to secure an heir, he's determined that the beautiful, impoverished widow Lady Emma Lacy should be his . . .
Emma has vowed never to marry for money so must refuse him. But when her children's grandfather sets to steal them away from her, she has no other she must become the marquess's convenient bride!
Comment: This book got on my radar because of a positive reference to it I saw somewhere. I remember the note alluded to a marriage of convenience trope, which I tend to like, featuring a couple in different social stations, and I was intrigued.
The marquess of Huntercombe is fifty and after the death of his children, he needs a new heir. However, he isn't too keen on marrying a young woman just out of her debut season, and when he stumbles upon lady Emma Lacy with her two young children at a bookstore, he is smitten. Learning of her circumstances and of her past should be enough to stop his ideas of marrying her, even though she is certainly able to give him what he seeks with a marriage, but the more he gets to know her, the more certain he is of her character. He plans for a proper courting but suddenly the threat to her children compels him to marry her more quickly than he imagined... will they be able to put aside the reasons for marrying so that they can give love a chance?
I was seduced by the idea of an unlikely pair finding love when the connection between them should be as convenient as they claim. I tend to like these stories because the fun is in seeing the couple finding ways to be an united front and in learning that the other person is perfect for them. This being an traditional historical means we wouldn't have a lot of obvious passionate scenes but I still had hopes for these two.
At first, I was quite taken by the story and the first meet they have at the bookstore was charming and promising. The kids were also cute and it felt as if the story would be more on the cozy and tender side and I was again pleased enough by the author's writing, especially since this is not the first book I try by her. I started to have this idea in my head of how things would be but then, almost instantaneous it seemed, a lot of new situations happened and the little things I was finding sweet turned out to become annoying.
As soon as it becomes established that Hunt and Emma find each other appealing and that a marriage between them would be successful, it seemed as if all kinds of problems started happening. Emma's husband died and he was the younger son of a duke, and she married him after leaving another groom at the altar,m thus ruining her reputation anyway. She, from what we learn, had not had any proper relationship with her husband's family nor her own. She is now impoverished and having trouble to take care of her two children. Marrying Hunt should be as good a deal for her as it was for him, but both sides of her children's family now show up to cause problems.
I mean, these situations are certainly realistic for the type of story being developed but everything that kept happening, one thing after the other, was incredibly distracting and took away focus from the main romance. The things I thought would be interesting, such as them having to get to know one another, learn about who they would be as part of a married couple, adjusting to such status, dealing with others in a social context, all this was secondary to the dramas caused by the role Emma's children now seemed to have for their father's side of the family.
I don't have any particular opinion on young children in romance novels, often people like to say they seem like props or that they are included just for plot reasons, not really having a pertinent presence, but here, I will confess, I got annoyed with them. Well, mostly the girl who acted like a.. well, child! I know I'm sounding unfair but how much importance they had in the story got on my nerves to the point I wanted to put them aside and then this also affected the main characters' actions. I got annoyed the the main couple and the fact some secondary people were not likable annoyed me as well.
Things got to a point I was reading just to go through the motions of finishing because I had lot interest in the main characters' romance and developing relationship. Hunt and Emma were, by now, boring characters and while I felt glad to assume they would get their HEA, I was no longer that invested in them. Yes, all the dramas around them started being "solved" but then a new issue comes up, related to secondary characters - whom I assumed would have their own book, but I have not investigated if the author wrote about them - and their story ends with a lot of stuff going on, but the main characters' romance remained dull. I mean, why would these two matter now?
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