Series: The Widow Rules, #1
Traits & Tropes: widowed heroine; former soldier hero; titled hero; forbidden romance; slow burn
Publication Date: 06.29.21
Genre/Setting: Historical; Regency; London, England, 1815
Heat Level: 3
Rating: 3/5
Katherine, Lady Meriwether Vareck, is blindsided not only by her husband’s unexpected death in a freak accident but by the revelation that he had two other wives. Her linen business is competing for a contract with the Prince Regent, and she cannot afford the blemish of scandal on her reputation.
Meri’s much more morally upright older half-brother, Christian, the Duke of Randford, is just as surprised as Katherine and unsure how to help. He’s made a point to avoid Meri and the rest of his dissolute family and has only recently returned from fighting in the Napoleonic Wars. Also problematic is the surely unallowable attraction he is soon fighting for his brother’s widow.
Katherine is busy with her business and the tight friendship she’s fast forming with Meri’s other wives, so her time is limited. Yet, she still can’t help but be drawn to Christian and when he asks for her help establishing a charity business for returning soldiers in need of work, she can’t refuse. The endeavor brings them into closer proximity and as feelings develop, they find they’ll need to share more details of their pasts if their hearts and their futures are to become entwined.
I liked this book but I wanted to love it so much more than I did and am left with some mixed feelings. Christian wound up being a rather charming cinnamon roll though his portrayal as more of an alpha-hole in the first chapters really didn’t fit this and threw off his characterization for me, not to mention reflecting poorly on Katherine’s judgment. Katherine didn’t really work for me as a heroine, especially for a historical. Put a cell phone in her hand and she could be a contemporary heroine, which I don’t necessarily mind, but when combined with the other things that bugged me about her, it was a bit hard to get past.
After how horribly Katherine misjudged Christian, their friendship and deeper relationship developed really quickly and yet I still somehow felt like the attraction between them was too much of a slow burn. I found Katherine’s secrets to be very anticlimactic, so minor as to be laughable really, given how easy they could’ve been overcome if she’d only asked for help rather than remaining so fixated on doing things on her own, a lesson she still didn’t seem to have really learned by the end. She came off as overly dramatic, enough so to grow tiresome for me.
Some of the plotting also felt a little slapdash with the reason for Meri marrying Katherine in the first place never really becoming clear and all his random bequests popping up, which were perhaps designed to be humorous but at times just interrupted the flow for me. My main gripe above all this, however, is the rapid development of this sisterly relationship between Katherine and the other two wives. There was none of the jealousy or strife there that there perhaps should’ve been, but this is a little expected since none of the women knew how deceitful Meri really was, so what doesn’t jive for me is the closeness that develops so quickly. I wound up more invested in whatever attraction was developing between Morgan and Willa than I was in Christian and Katherine.
The steamy scenes were satisfying, and the romance did eventually kick in very nicely nearer the end, though I still wanted Katherine to have more faith in Christian and confide in him more as a true partner. Sometimes I wondered what exactly he really saw in her as their attraction seemed very skewed on his side more so than hers and her reasons for keeping him at a distance were rather flimsy. There were also a few holes left unexplored in the plot regarding Katherine’s friend Helen and her attempts to matchmake Katherine with her brother, but perhaps this will crop up to be explored later in the series and wasn’t merely forgotten.
Overall, despite my mixed feelings, I do like this premise and look forward to the next installment from one of my favorite authors.
I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.
https://www.bookbub.com/reviews/1931749491
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3513208147
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