A review by kamahi
First Comes Marriage by Mary Balogh

2.0

Rating this book is hard. It was my first *romance* novel years back and I remembered it fondly but found my tastes have changed in the years since. This is one of those books that in theory should work for me. It's got a lot of my favorite tropes; marriage of convenience, historical setting, somewhat grumpy male lead with a willfully happy female lead, but I've since read a lot of novels and fanfiction with those trope that I like a lot more. I found the constant talk if the heroine being plain and self conscious annoying. Believable? Sure. But there sure was a lot of it. That element could have been toned down quite a bit and been just as effective without being as annoying as it ended up being to me. Overall there was stuff to enjoy but I found myself speed reading to just finish it already.