RomanticLeads Recommendations and reviews of romantic fiction
Click to subscribe to romanticleads
|
RomanticLeads Recommendations and reviews of romantic fiction
Click to subscribe to romanticleads |
|
|
Here is a mixture of recent releases in the romantic genre. First there’s a Regency with a decidedly odd heroine, then a contemporary novel with deceptive packaging and a medieval finale to a trilogy by Canadian author Claire Delacroix. The Wild Child This pretty regency has a whole host of eccentricities to steal your heart. Meriel is an heiress, thought mad since childhood. That’s when she stopped speaking after witnessing the murder of her parents in India. She has lived silently at her private estate, Warfield, in the care of two nice old spinsters and an Indian guard. But not any longer. One of her guardians has revived her betrothal arrangement with the heir to Wrexham, Lord Maxwell. The hitch? Mad Meriel must be comfortable with her fiancé. Dominic Renbourne arrives to woo Meriel and is enchanted. He realizes that Meriel is merely hiding in her silence, keeping herself apart and seemingly safe from obligations while reading and understanding all around her. In his efforts to free her from her self-imposed cocoon he falls in love. When reality invades and threatens Meriel’s well being, Dominic risks his newfound love and his brittle relationship with his brother. You see, unfortunately it is not Dominic, but his 10-minute older twin brother who is heir of Wrexham. Worse yet, Dominic took a bribe to replace his brother who was unable to visit his bride-to-be due to his mistress’s illness. This will tug at the heartstrings with a nice set-up for a sequel with the every-bit-as-handsome brother Kyle.
Baby Love Watch the title. If you’re attracted to cute middle-class stories about Moms looking for Daddy’s for cute babies, you may get a lot more than you bargain for in this one. How about a dark Cinderella and Prince Charming tale served up with a bittersweet side order of homelessness, mentally incapacitating grief, alcoholism, incest and obsession? A dangerous looking drunk, Rafe Kendrick, seems like an unlikely hero to Maggie but when he chases off her attackers in the cold boxcar, she has no choice but to accept his dubious protection for her and her newborn son. When Rafe intervenes in the attack, he begins a journey back to his charmed existence before his family was killed in a car accident. Just so happens Rafe is also a multi-millionaire who now wants to save Maggie and her baby from an obsessive predator. Alright, so the title and the cover are trite and boxcars are not likely rife with millionaires. But despite a few odd quirks this story works. The Heiress Rowan de Montvieux, you may remember, is one of three sons of Gavin Fitzgerald who are on a quest to find brides. Taking a long shot dare, the vain gamester Rowan has set out from France to marry the wealthiest heiress in all of Ireland. Problem is, he’s deathly seasick and the gamble has lost some of it’s appeal. He arrives at the London docks and is goaded into purchasing a slave and boarding another ship bound for Ireland. The slave is a brash, yet secretive woman who swears she can lead him to the wealthiest heiress in Ireland in exchange for her freedom. Of course along the way they are sharing space in a cramped ship and one thing leads to another. Enough said. The Heiress was a nice finale in the Bride Quest Trilogy,
if not the fireworks show hoped for. Janine Taylor is a Halifax writer. She can be reached at romanticleads@hotmail.com or at http://welcome.to/romanticleads Copyright © 1999 Janine Taylor Distributed By Writers Syndication Services -30- |
|
|
