Rating: 3.5/5
Title: The Bride
Author: Julie Garwood
This books takes place during the time of William the Conqueror, so much different time frame than my usual Regency and Victorian fare. It also takes place in The Scottish Highlands, which is not my normal venue.
Characters
Jamie– I mostly liked her. I found her character a bit inconsistent when it came to her husband. I try to chalk it up to being forced to marry someone you’ve known for 5 minutes. Her childhood was hard, but it shaped her into a competent woman. She is a bit on the perfect side. Okay, absolutely perfect. But she has personality and spunk, doing what’s right even if unconventional.
Alec- Alec was your typical alpha hero. He’s not unkind to his new and unwanted English wife, though he does view her as property. If you like alpha heroes, you’ll like him. He’s also, basically, perfect.
Plot
Alec has been ordered by his King to marry an Englishwoman and the English King has decreed it will be one of Jamie’s family as her father didn’t pay his taxes.
Alec chooses Jamie, they’re wed, and he takes her back to the Highlands.
Hijinks along the way, including consummating their marriage.
They get back to the Highlands, and Jamie learns she’s married not just a Scottish warrior but a warlord with hundreds of men under his banner.
Her first order of business is healing a gravely injured man which helps earn her the respect of the clan. Even though she’s English.
The underlying plot is twofold. First, someone is trying to kill her as they did his first wife (though in his first wife’s case, they made it look like suicide). Second, there is a desire to unite the clans. Both are accomplished through the heroine’s unconventional actions.
Overall, the plot is mostly fluffy and something to do between steamy scenes.
The book was pretty good. An easy read, something new to me, but not something I’m going to be thinking about in a week.
How to Make it a 5
I’ve thought long and hard about this, and there just isn’t that much to work with. I also can’t rule out the fact that I’m being unduly harsh because it’s so far out of my normal selections.
And yet, I can like a lot of things outside my norm, so there is more to it. Perhaps it’s how quickly and easily Jamie and Alec fall for each other, even though he’s angry at being forced to take an English bride and she’s being ripped away from her home, family, and everyone she knows.
Maybe how the plot to unite the clans is so easily accomplished, I have to work harder to walk to the end of the driveway to check my mail.
Maybe it’s just how everyone is so damned perfect. Jamie: beautiful beyond measure. Yup. Brave. Check. Skilled rider. Sure. Unparalleled healer. Of course. And the list goes on and on.
Alec is basically just as perfect, but the alpha hero version of it. Handsome? yes. Tall and unbearably strong? You betcha. Wealthy? His sword alone is worth a king’s ransom. Add warlord and close ally of the king, too.
Accept this book for what it is: a quick read, not terribly memorable but a fun way to spend an afternoon.