Review - - The Autumn Bride

The Autumn Bride
Chance Sisters - Book One
By Anne Gracie
Publisher:  Berkley
Release Date:  February 5, 2013

Orphanage to governess to thief is not the typical path to everlasting love but Abigail Chantry is not your typical historical romance heroine.  Abby loves her governess position and the children in her charge but puts it all at risk when she learns that her innocent younger sister has been kidnapped and is being held in a London brothel.   Abby rescues her sister who refuses to leave without another young woman, also kidnapped, and the abused maid who engineers their escape, earning them all a dangerous enemy in the process.  Sacked from her governess position for bringing the young women into her employer's home, Abby uses her meager savings to rent lodgings for the four but funds quickly dwindle and when her sister becomes desperately ill, Abby has no choice but to turn to thievery.  She enters an upper window of a nearby mansion, which she believes to be unoccupied, looking for something that will give her enough money to pay a doctor for her sister.  What she finds is an elderly woman in much worse straits than Abby could imagine.

Lady Beatrice Davenham is being horribly neglected and taken advantage of by her scurrilous staff.  Her only relative, her nephew, is in India and she has been isolated (by her staff) from any friends who would come to her aid.  Abby cannot turn her back on this lady who shows her kindness and, when Lady Beatrice hears Abby's story of how she came to be in her situation, she invites Abby, Jane, Damaris and Daisy to live with her.  The four young women, now known as the Chance sisters, Lady Beatrice's nieces from the country, move in, fire the staff and set about restoring the feisty Lady Beatrice to health and setting the house to rights.  Everything is going swimmingly until the day he comes home.

Max Davenham was not yet twenty when he inherited his title and discovered the damage his uncle had wrought on the family fortune.  Unwilling to allow his beloved aunt to discover that her husband had left her penniless, Max struck a deal with a wealthy manufacturing mentor:  business advice and a loan to be repaid in ten years plus a promise that sealed Max's fate...for life.  Over the past nine years, Max and his partners have built a successful import business in India, the loan has been repaid in full but the promise hangs heavy on his mind.  When an alarming letter from one of his aunt's friends arrives, Max knows it's time to return to London; to free his aunt from the people taking advantage of her and to fulfill the promise he made to the man who saved his family all those years ago.  Only trouble is, the people he thinks are taking advantage are actually her rescuers and the "leader" of this feminine gang is pushing all of his buttons; buttons he can't afford to have pushed because honor demands that nothing can come of his growing attraction to Abby.  Or can it?

Anne Gracie is a master of family dynamics, whether the families in question are those of blood or choice.  In The Autumn Bride she brings us an appealing blend of both with all the love, heartache, mischief and joy inherent in such relationships.  Of course, there's plenty of Gracie humor in this story as well.  The scenes where Lady Beatrice explains the family connection between the "nieces" and herself are some of the funniest I've read, with Lady Beatrice's "creativity" and Max's reaction especially humorous.  

I fell in love with these characters from the beginning of the book.  By the final page, they had ceased to be simply characters in a story and had become family of the heart; people about whom I care; one more family created by Ms. Gracie.  Not just the main characters but the rich cast of secondary characters as well.  I'm now fully invested in their happiness and the assurance that Anne Gracie will do her best to bring us the happy-ever-after endings that they each deserve.

Witty banter, humor, heartfelt emotion and heartwarming romance make this well-paced book from Anne Gracie another for the keeper shelf.  Don't miss The Autumn Bride.  I highly recommend it.

~PJ

Anne Gracie Winner

The winner of a copy of THE AUTUMN BRIDE by Anne Gracie is

Donna

Congratulations, Donna!  Please send your full name and mailing address to

theromancedish (at) gmail (dot) com

Today's Special - - Anne Gracie

I'm so happy to be hosting one of my favorite authors today.  Anne Gracie is a smart, savvy, talented Aussie with a warmth and smile that reach across the globe.  Her books (all of her books) grace my keeper shelves and I still haven't stopped thanking Janga for introducing me to her books several years ago.  Her newest, The Autumn Bride, releases tomorrow, February 5th.  It's the first in a new series so, if you haven't tried Anne's writing yet, now's the perfect time to give her a try.

You can learn more about Anne and her books by visiting her website and can connect with her on Facebook and Twitter.  You can also find her at the multi-author blog, The Word Wenches.  

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 Welcome, Anne!  We’re so happy to have you visit with us today.  Congratulations on the release of The Autumn Bride.  It's always cause for celebration in my house when you have a new book out.  Will you please tell our readers what they can expect from this one? 

Thanks for having me here, PJ.  I love the Dish.

The Autumn Bride is a rags to riches feel-good, fun story with a dark undertow.  But mostly it's about the joy of friendship, second chances, sisterhood — and love.  At the start of the book, my heroine, Abby, is a governess and from there her life goes rapidly downhill to a point where she's desperate and destitute... and then finds an aristocratic old lady worse off than herself.

2        I love how the Chance sisters come to be a family.  What inspired you to create these sisters of the heart? 

Thank you PJ.  I think family is important to most people, and even if they don't have a family, they like the idea of family. People create families all the time, even if they don't call it that. So I like to explore different kinds of families. I've done a series about sisters (the Merridew sisters) and I've done one about brothers and brothers-in-arms (The Devil Riders), and I wanted to do another girl-centered series. I planned that they'd just be friends, but in the writing they became sisters of the heart — and also nieces of the heart.

I intended to have only three sisters, but then Daisy stepped up to the plate. She was supposed to be a very minor character without even a name, but she opened her mouth and she was so real and gutsy and such fun, I loved her and I had to keep her.

I'm so glad you decided to keep Daisy!  

What is one thing that you would like readers to know about Abby, the heroine of The Autumn Bride?

She's impulsive and loyal and she leads with her heart. Sorry, that's three.

LOL!  Three is good.  

4      Same question for Max, our hero?

Max is  a hero in dire need of a bit of loosening up. He's the soul of honor, and he's never broken his word — and that gets him into a real pickle. Will he follow his conscience or his heart? Can he reconcile the two? (Really, I do know what 'one thing' means — i just can't give one answer. ;)

5     Tomorrow is release day for this wonderful book.  How do you celebrate the release of your books?  Do you have any traditions? 

I celebrate on line, of course, and I often have a little celebration with a friend — we were unpublished writers together and we made a pact one year to see which of us could be published first. She got an agent first, but I was contracted first, and we're both multi-published now. So on Tuesday we're doing lunch.  But mostly, you know, on launch day I'm madly blogging and clogging up the social media. <g>

          Do you still write to music?  If so, what was the soundtrack for The Autumn Bride?

I do sometimes write to music, but I've taken to writing by hand lately, often in my local library, and they don't let people play music  there so I didn't have a particular sound track for this book. I really missed it though. Katie Melua, who is often my musical muse, has a new album out, so I'll have to listen to it and see if there's a song there for me.

Thanks for the heads up on Katie Melua's new album.  I've been a fan since you introduced me to the song that was your muse for Rafe's story.  

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Will we be seeing any of Max’s partners in future books?

Definitely. Next up is Freddy, who's not exactly the dark and dangerous alpha hero; he's more of a charming and frivolous bad boy — but there's more to Freddy than you might imagine. I'm having a lot of fun with Freddy and I hope readers will love him as much as I do.

What fills your days when you’re not writing?  Any favorite hobbies?

I could spend the entire day reading if I could but sadly, nobody will pay me to do that,  and since I need to earn a living, I write most days. I love to cook, and I also make stuff — cards, things for dolls houses, a bit of sewing. My latest hobby is making jewelry. And pretending the weeds in the garden are meant to be there.

You mean garden weeds aren't meant to be there?  Who knew?  ::grin::

9       Will readers have the opportunity to meet you at any conferences (U.S. or Australian) this year?

I'm not yet sure if I'll be going to the US this year, but in Australia I'll be attending the ARRA (Australian Romance Readers) Conference in March, the Romance Writers of Australia conference in Western Australia in August (Julia Quinn is coming too — squee!) and also I'm going to the GenreCon conference in October. So you can see why I might not be able to fit a trip to the US in this year.

Yes, I can see why coming to the U.S. might be a bit difficult but I have to (selfishly) say I hope you can make it work! 

1       What’s next?

I'm working on Freddy and Damaris's story next, and then hopefully, I'll have time to do some of Marcus's story (from the Devil Riders) before I start on the third Chance Sister's story. I'm also hoping to get started on some house renovations — long overdue.  So it's going to be a very busy year.

Yay for a story for Marcus!  I'm so looking forward to his book!

Thanks so much for visiting with us today, Anne.  I wish you mega sales for The Autumn Bride.  It's such a wonderful book!  Would you like to ask our readers a question before we wrap things up?

Thank you, PJ. And my question is:  if you could go on a Valentine's date with your favorite fictional hero, who would it be, and what would you do?

Oh, good question!  Readers, Anne is graciously offering a copy of The Autumn Bride to one randomly chosen person who leaves a comment on the blog today.  Good luck, all!

Governess Abigail Chantry will do anything to save her sister and two dearest friends from destitution, even if it means breaking into an empty mansion in the hope of finding something to sell. Instead of treasures, though, she finds the owner, Lady Beatrice Davenham, bedridden and neglected. Appalled, Abby rousts Lady Beatrice's predatory servants and—with Lady Beatrice's eager cooperation—the four young ladies become her “nieces,” neatly eliminating the threat of disaster for all concerned!

It's the perfect situation, until Lady Beatrice’s dashing and arrogant nephew, Max, Lord Davenham, returns from the Orient—and discovers an impostor running his household…

A romantic entanglement was never the plan for these stubborn, passionate opponents—but falling in love may be as inevitable as the falling of autumn leaves...