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A review by bananatricky
A Counterfeit Betrothal/The Notorious Rake by Mary Balogh
3.0
I had different feelings about the two books.
I found A Counterfeit Betrothal to be ok but didn't warm to any of the characters. A young woman tries to reconcile her parents by pretending to be engaged.
Her parents have been estranged for 14 years after her father went to a wedding alone, got drunk and was shamed into sleeping with another woman.
The young woman pretends to be engaged to a childhood frenemy - of course what is clear to the reader is that he has feelings for her and is using the fake engagement as an excuse to get closer to her.
I found the young woman to be, quite frankly, TSTL and her parents to be rather pathetic.
I enjoyed The Notorious Rake much more. Lady Mornington and Lord Waite have unfavourable preconceptions about each other. She thinks him a libertine and a gamester and a drunkard and a jilt, he thinks her a blue stocking, physically unattractive , proud and dignified. Thrown together by chance at a dinner they get caught in a thunderstorm whilst walking around the gardens. Lady Mornington is terrified of storms and Lord Waite comforts her the only way he knows how. I had some issues with Lord Waite's methods - if a woman is incoherent with terror is she really in a fit state to give consent? But she makes it clear that she feels she forced herself on him.
Anyway, it is a case of opposites attract complete with another man, an interfering aunt and deep family rifts.
Of course Lord Waite's obnoxious behaviour is as a result of his past which gradually starts to emerge.
I have to confess that I teared up a few times whilst reading this.
I found A Counterfeit Betrothal to be ok but didn't warm to any of the characters. A young woman tries to reconcile her parents by pretending to be engaged.
Her parents have been estranged for 14 years after her father went to a wedding alone, got drunk and was shamed into sleeping with another woman.
The young woman pretends to be engaged to a childhood frenemy - of course what is clear to the reader is that he has feelings for her and is using the fake engagement as an excuse to get closer to her.
I found the young woman to be, quite frankly, TSTL and her parents to be rather pathetic.
I enjoyed The Notorious Rake much more. Lady Mornington and Lord Waite have unfavourable preconceptions about each other. She thinks him a libertine and a gamester and a drunkard and a jilt, he thinks her a blue stocking, physically unattractive , proud and dignified. Thrown together by chance at a dinner they get caught in a thunderstorm whilst walking around the gardens. Lady Mornington is terrified of storms and Lord Waite comforts her the only way he knows how. I had some issues with Lord Waite's methods - if a woman is incoherent with terror is she really in a fit state to give consent? But she makes it clear that she feels she forced herself on him.
Anyway, it is a case of opposites attract complete with another man, an interfering aunt and deep family rifts.
Of course Lord Waite's obnoxious behaviour is as a result of his past which gradually starts to emerge.
I have to confess that I teared up a few times whilst reading this.