Instead of taking the veil as planned, Annabel is whisked away from the convent and ordered to marry Scotsman Ross MacKay, her runaway sister’s intended groom.
Since being sent to a convent as an oblate before she was 10 years old, Annabel has known a stern, joyless existence. Now, just weeks before she’s meant to take her vows, Annabel’s mother shows up to bring her back home, forcing her to marry the man her sister, Kate, has been betrothed to since birth. But Kate has eloped with a servant, and her parents, desperate for the dower, pass Annabel off in her place. After two decades in a stifling religious environment, Annabel’s enthusiasm for her newfound freedom and a thousand new experiences is irrepressible, and Ross MacKay, her new husband, is captivated by her charm and spirit, despite the realization she is not his intended bride. Settling into his home and her place as wife of a clan laird, Annabel falls in love with her new life—and her husband—but she has been warned by her mother to keep her convent existence a secret, a detail which rests uneasily beside her honesty and straightforward nature. Navigating her new happiness against a wealth of secrets becomes even more complicated when an unknown enemy seems determined to harm Annabel; Ross must protect and defend the English wife he never knew he wanted but now finds he cannot live without. With humor, wit and compassion, Sands spins the touching tale of a lonely outsider who is rescued from the jaws of a bleak future and finds emotional and physical happiness through a marriage that was never meant to be. Ross is Annabel’s perfect hero, allowing her to come into her own and standing up for her in quiet, powerful ways. Watching Ross and his clan fall in love with Annabel is touching, and Ross’ prowess at maneuvering the church’s “bedding laws” and Annabel’s entrenched religious obedience are highly amusing.
A sweet, sexy, fun romance, with clever accents of suspense and entertaining dollops of humor.Pub Date: June 25, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-06-196311-7
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Avon/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 23, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2013
Categories: GENERAL ROMANCE | ROMANCE | HISTORICAL ROMANCE
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A clever, romantic, sexy love story.
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The much-loved royal romance genre gets a fun and refreshing update in McQuiston’s debut.
Alex Claremont-Diaz, son of the American President Ellen Claremont, knows one thing for sure: He hates Henry, the British prince to whom he is always compared. He lives for their verbal sparring matches, but when one of their fights at a royal wedding goes a bit too far, they end up falling into a wedding cake and making tabloid headlines. An international scandal could ruin Alex’s mother’s chances for re-election, so it’s time for damage control. The plan? Alex and Henry must pretend to be best friends, giving the tabloids pictures of their bromance and neutralizing the threat to Ellen's presidency. But after a few photo ops with Henry, Alex starts to realize that the passionate anger he feels toward him might be a cover for regular old passion. There are, naturally, a million roadblocks between their first kiss and their happily-ever-after—how can American political royalty and actual British royalty ever be together? How can they navigate being open about their sexualities (Alex is bisexual; Henry is gay) in their very public and very scrutinized roles? Alex and Henry must decide if they’ll risk their futures, their families, and their careers to take a chance on happiness. Although the story’s premise might be a fantasy—it takes place in a world in which a divorced-mom Texan Democrat won the 2016 election—the emotions are all real. The love affair between Alex and Henry is intense and romantic, made all the more so by the inclusion of their poetic emails that manage to be both funny and steamy. McQuiston’s strength is in dialogue; her characters speak in hilarious rapid-fire bursts with plenty of “likes,” “ums,” creative punctuation, and pop-culture references, sounding like smarter, funnier versions of real people. Although Alex and Henry’s relationship is the heart of the story, their friends and family members are all rich, well-drawn characters, and their respective worlds feel both realistic and larger-than-life.
A clever, romantic, sexy love story.Pub Date: June 4, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-31677-6
Page Count: 432
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
Review Posted Online: March 4, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2019
Categories: GENERAL ROMANCE | ROMANCE | LBGTQ
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An unlucky woman finally gets lucky in love on an all-expenses-paid trip to Hawaii.
From getting her hand stuck in a claw machine at age 6 to losing her job, Olive Torres has never felt that luck was on her side. But her fortune changes when she scores a free vacation after her identical twin sister and new brother-in-law get food poisoning at their wedding buffet and are too sick to go on their honeymoon. The only catch is that she’ll have to share the honeymoon suite with her least favorite person—Ethan Thomas, the brother of the groom. To make matters worse, Olive’s new boss and Ethan’s ex-girlfriend show up in Hawaii, forcing them both to pretend to be newlyweds so they don’t blow their cover, as their all-inclusive vacation package is nontransferable and in her sister’s name. Plus, Ethan really wants to save face in front of his ex. The story is told almost exclusively from Olive’s point of view, filtering all communication through her cynical lens until Ethan can win her over (and finally have his say in the epilogue). To get to the happily-ever-after, Ethan doesn’t have to prove to Olive that he can be a better man, only that he was never the jerk she thought he was—for instance, when she thought he was judging her for eating cheese curds, maybe he was actually thinking of asking her out. Blending witty banter with healthy adult communication, the fake newlyweds have real chemistry as they talk it out over snorkeling trips, couples massages, and a few too many tropical drinks to get to the truth—that they’re crazy about each other.
Heartfelt and funny, this enemies-to-lovers romance shows that the best things in life are all-inclusive and nontransferable as well as free.Pub Date: May 14, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5011-2803-5
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: March 3, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2019
Categories: GENERAL ROMANCE | ROMANCE
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