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A review by barefootamy
An Arranged Marriage by Jo Beverley
1.0
I don't have a frame of reference for Jo's other works as this is the first series I've read by her. I'm hoping she ends up redeeming herself in another series as this one is such a struggle to like.
Our protagonist is drugged by her brother to be raped by a gay man in order to prove he's a heterosexual male. Then the gay man's brother is setup to marry the woman and her second experience with intercourse triggers memories of rape for her to the point she struggles to separate the two. Oy vey! To make matters worse there's a lengthy plot involving some notion that a Frenchwoman has secrets to share regarding Napoleon and the only man in England to seduce those secrets from her is our protagonist's new husband. Yeah, so we spend most of the book wallowing through our protagonist's loneliness of an unfaithful spouse and a pregnancy resulting from either of the unwanted sexual encounters at the beginning of the book. In the end the couple magically find common ground through lust.
Our protagonist is drugged by her brother to be raped by a gay man in order to prove he's a heterosexual male. Then the gay man's brother is setup to marry the woman and her second experience with intercourse triggers memories of rape for her to the point she struggles to separate the two. Oy vey! To make matters worse there's a lengthy plot involving some notion that a Frenchwoman has secrets to share regarding Napoleon and the only man in England to seduce those secrets from her is our protagonist's new husband. Yeah, so we spend most of the book wallowing through our protagonist's loneliness of an unfaithful spouse and a pregnancy resulting from either of the unwanted sexual encounters at the beginning of the book. In the end the couple magically find common ground through lust.