A review by una_macchia
A Past Revenge by Carole Mortimer

4.0

Fun heroine, delightfully hateable hero, delicious tacky drama, and she makes him cry! It only falls flat at the end

Spoiler

because she decides that his shittyness is actually all his ex-wife's fault and he's a perfect angel. I mean, I understand that I'm reading a romance and they're going to end up together, obviously, and that's fine by me, I just think Mortimer went overboard in trying to absolve him. I would have liked to see them come to terms with his past bad behavior without excusing everything (which to his credit, he doesn't; the narrative does). The backstory also veered a little towards "women who don't want to have children are Bad, unlike the Good heroine" -- I'm not excusing the ex-wife's actions which were not great, I just don't appreciate that implication.

Bonus: the hero spends a lot of time smoking cigars, which is quite funny to me.