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I enjoyed the first two books in Anne Gracie’s Marriage of Convenience series – in fact, the first, Marry in Haste, was a DIK – but this third book proved to be something of a disappointment. The premise – a young woman about to make an advantageous, but loveless, marriage is unexpectedly confronted by the man she married years before and believed dead – sounded as though it might make for a good read, but sadly, after the initial excitement of the opening chapters, things fizzled out. The main characters were bland and didn’t grab my interest, and instead of a rekindling relationship, I got a couple who, after a bit of angsting over whether they wanted to be together, resumed their marriage and shagged a lot, and a story that revolved more around a rather weak whodunnit than a romance.
Twenty-year-old Lady Rose Rutheford is due to marry the Duke of Everingham in what has been hailed as the match of the year. Her sister Lily and cousin George (Georgiana) aren’t happy about the match; Everingham is handsome, wealthy and titled, for sure, but he’s a cold fish and they think Rose is making a huge mistake. But Rose is adamant. She doesn’t want a love match and she and the duke have reached an agreement – she will give him his heir and he will give her the freedom to live as she wants. When, however, the ceremony is interrupted by a gaunt, dirty and dishevelled man insisting that Rose is already married – to him – the reasons for Rose’s choice become apparent. When she was sixteen and still away at school she met and fell in love with Thomas Beresford, a young naval officer. They married secretly just a couple of weeks before Thomas was was due to go to sea – and just a few weeks later, Rose learned that his ship had been sunk and everyone aboard had died. Numbed with grief, and concerned for her sister Lily, who was recovering from a serious illness, Rose doesn’t tell anyone about Thomas or their short-lived marriage, and the more time passes, the more she thinks there’s no point in saying anything.
The first quarter or so of the story captured my interest. Rose, shocked beyond belief, doesn’t know how to feel or what to do while her brother Cal and her snooty Aunt Agatha insist Thomas is nothing but a liar and schemer out to get his hands on Rose’s fortune. When Rose fails to acknowledge him – to be fair, she doesn’t deny him either – Thomas is hurt and angry, and is determined to stand his ground and claim his wife. But after Rose says she doesn’t want the marriage annulled and that she will honour her marriage vows, he starts to see that perhaps he’s wrong and that staying married to him – especially give how much he’s changed over the past four years – isn’t the best thing for Rose. After this, Thomas tries to discourage Rose from her determination to remain his wife while Rose – who has miraculously turned back into the lively, headstrong and flirtatious young woman he met four years earlier (and whom her family believed had disappeared) – seems to grow only more intent on remaining by his side (and getting him into her bed!)
While Thomas continues to be torn over his relationship with Rose, we learn something of what happened to him in the years he was gone. He and a number of his crewmates were captured by Barbary pirates and sold as slaves after Thomas’ plea to his uncle for ransom was denied. It took him years to escape, but now he has, he’s determined to find the men who were captured with him and free them – and to find out why his uncle denied him. When Thomas visits his bank in London and discovers a number of irregularities in his finances, he realises that something underhand is going on; someone is stealing from him and it’s obviously been going on for some time. But who? And why?
Thus, what could have been a second chance romance about two people who married impulsively getting to know each other after their enforced separation and really learning to love each other turned out to be a not-very-mysterious mystery with no romantic or character development whatsoever. Thomas indulges in a lot of hand-wringing of the I-do-not-wish-to-sully-your-purity-with-my-degradation sort, while Rose is relentlessly cheerful and pretty much bulldozes her way through everything he says. Thomas’ experiences as a captive and slave have obviously affected the way he treats servants and others who are regarded by those of his class as beneath them, and he clearly feels shame about what happened to him, but there’s not much depth to his character or Rose’s; neither is especially memorable or engaging and I didn’t connect with either of them. I liked the relationship between Cal and Ned (heroes of the previous books) and the one that was developing between them and Thomas, but the ladies were thinly sketched and the identity of the wrong-doer was obvious.
Marry in Secret is an exercise in wasted potential in just about every way. The romance is non-existent, the mystery is weak and the characterisation is uninspired. I may pick up the next (and final) book in the series because I’m intrigued at the prospect of the pairing of the cold fish duke with the I’m-never-getting-married-and-handing-over-control-of-my-life Lady Georgiana, but I really can’t recommend this instalment.
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Grade: C
Book Type: Historical Romance
Sensuality: Warm
Review Date: 30/07/19
Publication Date: 07/2019
Recent Comments …
Yep
This sounds delightful! I’m grabbing it, thanks
excellent book: interesting, funny dialogs, deep understanding of each character, interesting secondary characters, and also sexy.
I don’t think anyone expects you to post UK prices – it’s just a shame that such a great sale…
I’m sorry about that. We don’t have any way to post British prices as an American based site.
I have several of her books on my TBR and after reading this am moving them up the pile.
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Cat, I’m sorry you felt this way. I understand your problems with the book but I saw good sides too. I liked it how the hero was depicted. He didn’t act like the usual romance hero, I liked that the author didn’t make him cruel but more understanding. The book has its flaws, but for me it wasn’t dull at all! I would give it a B.
That was something that definitely worked, for sure – that there was a completely understandable reason for his actions towards servants and those of lower station. What did you think of the romance, though? That’s where the book really fell short, because I got no sense (as I said) of a couple who were getting to know each other after a long separation – and given that they were so young (Rose especially) AND hadn’t known each other long when they married , I felt there should have been much more made of that. Thomas was changed by his experience, certainly, but there was no evidence that Rose had matured over those four years.
Dang. I was hopeful for this one, Caz. Oh, well… maybe the next one will be more romance centred.
I hope so. This one was just… dull.