Series: Scandals & Seduction, #4
Traits & Tropes: marriage of convenience; impoverished hero; elopement; illegitimate hero
Publication Date: 11.30.10
Genre/Setting: Historical; Regency; London/Northumberland, England, 1810
Heat Level: 2
Rating: 2.5/5
Narration Rating: 2/5
When she is jilted by her fiancé, Abigail Montross finds herself with a damaged reputation and her father eager to see her safely married off to a respectable gentleman. The man he has in mind is titled, has a position in the treasury that would prove helpful to her father in his business as a banker, and he also already has thirteen children. Faced with this pressure and feeling cornered, Abby decides to instead elope with the famously handsome Baron de Vasconia. He has a reputation as the most seductive man in London, but he's clearly a better option so she decides to take a chance on him while keeping her heart safe.
Andres has lost everything he has and a marriage of convenience with a wealthy young woman seems like the best option. As he spends more time with her, however, he develops real feelings for her and soon he finds himself working to earn her love. But when truths about each of them come to light their fragile new feelings are threatened.
I picked this because I'm trying to get myself into the Christmas spirit with some feel good romance and I was super excited when I realized this was Andres' story because I just finished the first book in this series (yes I'm reading out of order) and he was a prominent character and actually a bit of a villain. Sadly, this book just did not turn out to be what I'd hoped. First off, the heroine was a complete airhead. She just came off as a spoiled brat and very much idiotic. I did like that she stood up for herself, making her own choices about eloping when her father proved immovable, but she undid that with all of her foolish actions. For instance, Abby was so determined to elope and get away, yet she did a lot to impede their flight, getting in Andres way while he was trying to get them out of the city.
I think my biggest gripe with her was that she rebuffed Andres and was unwilling to give him anything of herself while also expecting him to tell her every little thing about himself. It also didn't help that this narrator wasn't super great and mispronounced a few words/names, but the heroine was definitely the issue here for me. Also, her parents were awful and inconsiderate of her feelings. Only after her elopement did they say they would've allowed her to avoid the marriage they arranged for her; before she took such drastic measures they were set to force her into it. Abby was selfish and immature, and very callous with regard to Andres' feelings, though at times she seemed to be very aware of his emotions, which really just made her seem that much worse to me. This was just not the feel-good Christmas story I wanted and the only thing it had to do with Christmas at all was a Christmas dinner and the fact that the grand gesture occurred on Christmas Day. The people at said party were also ridiculously mean to Andres and Abby didn't really seem to even notice or care. Another case of her obliviousness to his feelings. In fact, she hurt Andres terribly and thought the resulting turmoil was hs fault. She tells him that her mother is the person she's closest to in the world and then in her inner thoughts she says that Andres is the person she's closest to and uses that to justify her enmity towards him when she's doing nothing to make him feel secure. He literally has no one but her and she's so focused on keeping her feelings from him that she makes him feel like trash then she somehow can't understand why he might think she'd have an affair with a former love. This despite the fact that she's not spoken to Andres at all about her feelings and he has no idea that she now has feelings for him and not for the former love. She was just an idiot.
There was also this weird point that came up sometimes when a justification for this behavior was needed, that Abby was insecure about her looks and lacked self-confidence. Given the description of her and her reception by others I'm not sure why she felt this way, though that's definitely a feeling I can relate to myself. I just didn't care for its being used as a justification for her ill treatment of Andres. I think the final straw for me was her testing his love for her. I found this annoying and immature rather than romantic and I'd rather they had just had a real conversation rather than a separation and some weird emotional gameplaying. Celeste had also clearly demonstrated that she was not qualified to give advice after how she tolerated and brushed aside how awful her relatives were to Andres. She assumes Andres has never had to put himself out for anyone and therefore she must show him how it's going to be by making him put himself out for her. This just made no sense to me. She had zero reason to think this of him when he had confided in her how hard things had been for him and that he had no one but him. Don't get me wrong, I love a good grand gesture but this was not it.
I did really enjoy the little bit of time we got of Andres and Abby working together to make a home out of Stonemore. They were working together and figuring out how to make things work for themselves and their feelings for one another were clearly growing, all of which I really liked. These two both had some growing up to do and that was starting to happen and I was here for it, but then we had that Christmas party and the stupid love testing to bring it down. I did appreciate Abby's parents acknowledging their mistakes, but they really only did this half-heartedly, claiming they wouldn't have forced her to marry the man with thirteen children, though nothing in their behavior made this seem very believable to me. I also don't think her father's manipulation of her and Andres even after their marriage was justified or acceptable, rather it was just another example of Andres being judged by his circumstances and appearance and not given a chance as a person. I just wound up feeling so bad for him enduring that sort of treatment his entire life and then getting this ridiculous love test from the woman he'd fallen in love with. This just was not what I was expecting or looking for.
https://www.bookbub.com/reviews/1804649663
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4362839165
Comments
Post a Comment