3.46 AVERAGE

rinda_reads's review

2.0

Boring, Dull, and not a Romance

If you’re looking for a typical Suzanne Enoch romance, this is not it. This could have been a great story about two people reconnecting and falling in love because they found what they didn’t know they were missing. Instead, it was long, boring, had a character added that was unnecessary, and had a predictable ending that I skipped through the last third of the book to get to.

Emmeline was to remain her childhood home, Winnover Hall. Will was secretly in love with Emmeline so he said yes to marrying her 8 years ago. After drifting apart over the years, Emmeline has to come clean. She lied to her family about having children in order to meet the Duke's demands to be able to stay in Winnover Hall. Now they have to continue their charade and find two kids to pretend to be their children so they can stay in their home.

I wanted to love this story as I thought it was a cute, sort of second chance romance. However, there were some pacing issues and repetitive passages that cause me to give it 3 stars. Also, while the book was written in third person, it bounces from POV to POV without a smooth transition making it difficult to know whose perspective we are in.

I enjoyed the story overall but also felt like there were a few unnecessary subplots and a lot of character development that seemed to happen off page.

It was a refreshing story, if somewhat predictable and I would recommend it to anyone who likes historical fiction. It was an easy read and had some charming moments.

Thank you to NetGalley for an eArc in exchange for my honest opinion.

This book is fluffy historical romance at its wittiest.
In a moment of panic, Emmeline asks her childhood friend William to marry her in a partnership that will allow her to keep her childhood home and give him a wife that can help him with his career. Fast forward 8 years and they live in a loveless but very successful partnership that would have continued thus if it weren't for the fact that Emmeline's grandfather, the Duke who owns the house, demands to see all his relatives for his birthday. This includes the made-up children Emmeline created in order to fill the terms of living in her home, which was to have at least one child before 5 years of marriage were up. So now Emmeline confesses to Will that they have not just one but two children and need to show up with a 7-year-old boy and a 5-year-old girl. This begins a story that starts out as logical desperation and quickly becomes emotional fun.
The children are as different from anything either Will or Emmeline have ever encountered, they show up in the very organized and regimented household and quickly change everything about the couple and their servants. George and Rose are delightful and their story is as heartbreaking as it is fun to see how it puts everything the couple thought about themselves and their lives into wonderful disarray.
I loved the characters and the fact that even secondary characters get their personalities fully developed and little moments to shine. It makes the stakes of being able to pass off the children as Emmeline's and Will's feel even more important when you care about everyone in the household. Not to mention that the future of the kids remains in the air and is a big motivator for much of the story.
The plot moves at a great pace that includes slowing down for emotional moments and ramping up for the action and pivotal moments. It makes reading pass by in a flash that still feels extremely satisfying.
Overall, it's a very satisfying read that is utter fluffy romance goodness.

Very happy thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin's Griffin for the delightful read!
adventurous emotional funny lighthearted medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

It was so good! The couple marries so she can keep her family house. It starts as a partnership and turns into a relationship. There are so many twists and turns in this book that it’ll keep you on your toes. Emmie was to have children but was unable so she created fake children to keep the agreement that keeps her childhood home but when her grandfather invites her and her husband and two children to his birthday party things go downhill. So they devise a plan to find two fill in children to pretend to be their sick children… what could possibly go wrong? If you want to know I recommend buying it as soon as possible.

I adored this book. I was lucky enough to get an ARC from Netgalley and breezed through this fun read.
I never thought that I would be interested in these sorts of adult romance novels (I'm usually a YA fan, and my mother read books like this growing up so I never thought I would).
I'm so glad that I did! The characters are the sweetest, I was rooting for Emmie and Will the entirety of the book. I loved their relationship with the children, and their growing relationship with each other!

It's not often you find a unique plot when reading in this genre, but this book had a pleasantly surprising plot.

I couldn’t get into this book. The description: two aristocrats in a marriage of convenience (but with secret pinings) need to pretend to have kids to keep their estate. I thought maybe this would be funny? Or something? But Emmeline is a narcissistic psychopath and Will is a colonizing dud and they “borrow” two orphans and just yuck.

DNF at 25%.


* Thanks to St. Martin’s Press for the NetGalley review copy.

While completely predictable, I enjoyed the characters. The inclusion of the children and their perspectives was a nice addition to your classic hallmark style romance novel.

This started off intriguing - a pair of friends marries so that Emmaline can keep her family estate, but her now husband Will is secretly in love with her. As part of the requirement to keep the estate, her grandfather requires that they have children within the first 5 yrs of marriage (which does seem a little contrived, but I can go with it.) I don't know why Emmaline is therefore quite so shocked and put off when Will attempts to consummate the marriage--seems like she should have known how all this worked--but after 7 months of trying (I gather as little as possible), when Emmaline doesn't conceive, she's relieved to declare she is infertile and they can stop now. But, Emma invents two children in writing, to make her grandfather believe they've fulfilled her terms. (Why she thinks this will never be discovered, I'm not sure...) Eight years later, though, her grandfather is throwing himself a birthday party and wants to meet the kids. So Emma has to confess to Will, now all but a stranger given how the marriage has gone, that she lied about their offspring. She contrives to find two stand-in children who can pass for theirs, and they end up going to an orphanage to collect some who fit her description.

I thought this was going to be a sweet story that focuses on how Emma falls in love with her husband many years later, and it probably will become that at the end... but once the orphans enter the picture, the story suddenly becomes almost entirely about them, their street life, and then their older brother... it just seems to get further and further away from what seemed to be the story's original direction. Eventually I gave up.