Review - - The Groom Says Yes

The Groom Says Yes

By Cathy Maxwell

Publisher: Avon

Release Date: September 30, 2014

Cormac Enright, Earl of Bellin, the “Irish Murderer,” is waiting to be hanged for a murder he did not commit when a visiting clergyman offers to help him escape. Not knowing whether the offer is genuine or a trap, Mac decides he has nothing to lose and follows the cleric. When the Reverend Kinnion is shot, Mac escapes. The clergyman identified Richard Davidson as the man whose guilty conscience had pushed him to help Mac escape his unjust sentence. Mac is willing to risk everything to find out why Davidson gave the false eye-witness testimony that led to Mac’s arrest and conviction. He ignores the instructions he has been given to leave Scotland and instead heads for Kenmore, Kinnion’s village in search of information on Davidson.

Sabrina Davidson, daughter of Magistrate Richard Davidson, niece of the Earl of Tay, and cousin to Lady Aileen Davidson (The Bride Says No) and Lady Tara Davidson (The Bride Says Maybe), is a twenty-nine-year-old spinster and dutiful daughter with a reputation for seriousness, sagacity, and charitable works. Confident that her father is too devoted to the memory of her late mother to remarry, she expects to serve as his hostess and secretary and maintain her respected place in village society. Her confidence is shaken when she learns that her father plans to marry the Widow Bossley, a “robust woman of relatively good looks and lax morals.” Sabrina will soon discover that the Widow Bossley is only one of the secrets her father has been keeping.

Angry and wounded by the news of her father’s plans, she retreats to an abandoned shepherd’s hut that had served as a refuge when she needed to escape the pressures of caring for her dying mother. Inside, she finds a critically ill man whom she manages to maneuver into her pony cart and take home so that she can treat his fever. The man is Cormac Enright. She saves his life, and, in a different sense, he saves hers.

Cathy Maxwell gives readers another hero and heroine with significant flaws and places them in circumstances that foster their growth. Sabrina begins as a proud and essentially passive woman, quick to judge others and frustrated by a limited life in which no one values her intelligence and common sense. Mac has inherited an Irish title that holds little value for him. Weary of war and deeply grieved by the loss of all his family to typhus before he could reconcile with them after a decade of estrangement, he is reaping the fruit of pride, temper, and foolish choices. When Sabrina’s father disappears, they must work together to find him and the answers they need. In the process, they discover far more than they expected about one another and about themselves.

The third book of Maxwell’s Brides of Wishmore series blends mystery and romance with flashes of humor. Like the two earlier books in the series, this one is a memorable book with engaging protagonists who are distinctly different from the usual. I suspect some readers will take the author to task for the first passionate scene between Sabrina and Mac, but I thought Maxwell made it work by revealing Sabrina’s character early on and by showing afterwards her comprehension of all she had risked. My only complaint concerns the last part of the book. I would like for the conclusion to have been a bit longer. I wanted to see more of the transformation of Sabrina and Mac’s lives.

Although the thematic connections in this series are strong, this third book is connected only loosely to the earlier two in terms of plot. Thus, The Groom Says Yes can be read easily as a standalone. However, I recommend all three books. I have found the series refreshing to a somewhat jaded palate, and I am eager to see what Cathy Maxwell has next for her readers.

~Janga

Review - - The Bride Says Maybe

The Bride Says Maybe

By Cathy Maxwell

Publisher: Avon

Release Date: February 25, 2014

Lady Tara Davidson was once one of the London season’s most brightly shining diamonds. Now she is one of its most titillating scandals. Furthermore, she believes that she has lost the love of her life, the man for whom she forfeited her reputation and marriage to a wealthy, highly connected man. Tara is feeling sorry for herself when things get even worse. Her profligate father has gambled away the small fortune he gained from his new son-in-law (The Bride Says No) and is heavily in debt. All his debts have been bought up by Breccan Campbell, the Beast of Aberfeld, who has demanded marriage to Tara in exchange. Leaving Tara little time to protest, her father has arranged for the wedding to take place in an hour. But Tara refuses to accept her fate. She reverts to type, disguises herself as a boy, and runs away.

Breccan Campbell may be the powerful laird within his clan, but in the larger community, he is viewed as a big, dumb, graceless beast, the very opposite of his polished, gentlemanly cousin, Owen Campbell, and the last man expected to win the hand of an acclaimed beauty. But Breccan is far smarter and more determined than his critics can imagine. Fascinated by Tara from his first glimpse of her when she rode into his stables looking for Ruary Jamerson, he refuses to recognize obstacles. He is not only stirred by Tara’s beauty, but he also sees marriage to her as a way of assuring that his children will not share his awkwardness and become targets of mockery. When Tara runs away, he pursues her and persuades her to accept his bargain: marry him, give him a child or two, and he will fund her escape to London where she will be just another married woman living a life separate from her husband’s.

And so the two are married. What comes next is predictable, of course. After all, this is romance. But the journey to the HEA is filled with conflict, machinations of those with evil intent, sage advice from loyal relatives, advances and retreats, and surprising sweetness. In other words, it is one fine story.

I confess that I approached The Bride Says Maybe with some trepidation. I actively disliked Tara in the first Brides of Wishmore book, and I harbored doubts that she could be redeemed in my eyes. I should have trusted Cathy Maxwell. Not only did she reveal unexpected depths to Tara, but she also showed Tara’s growth into a person who truly loved and thus lost her self-centered modus operandi. To my surprise, I found Tara a sympathetic character, one whose HEA left me sighing blissfully.

Breccan had me from the beginning. I love variations of the Beauty and the Beast tale, and gentle giants are among my favorite heroes. I particularly loved the heart of Breccan, the man he was behind his rough exterior, a man with dreams, intelligence, and an underlying morality. The fact that Tara came to appreciate all that he was and to love him devotedly certainly raised my estimation of her.

There were so many things I loved about this book. I loved the conversations, sometimes beginning in contentiousness, that Tara and Breccan shared, conversations that resulted in revelations that allowed them to know one another beyond their preconceptions. I also loved the flashes of humor in this book. The incident with the broken bed and the erroneous conclusions left me laughing out loud, as did Tara’s relationship with Daphne, one of Breccan’s beloved dogs.

The result was that I liked this book even better than the first one. So if, like me, after book one, you have reservations about the redemption of the heroine, know that Cathy Maxwell proves fully capable of transforming Lady Tara into a heroine readers will understand, like, and root for. If you did not read the first book, Maxwell gives enough of the backstory early on that The Bride Says Maybe can effortlessly be read as a standalone. For readers who love Beauty and the Beast stories, this one offers a new twist. For readers whose hearts beat faster when the hero is a Scotsman, Breccan is a delight. For readers who enjoy historical romance that evokes a few laughs, inspires ample sighs, and reminds that characters are not always what they seem, I think you will love this book as much as I did.

~Janga
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