Enjoyable regency. I read the next book in the series which I liked even more. The books felt like they could be in the Regency with no glaring errors but the plots seemed pretty far-fetched. For example, in this one a naval officer comes back from being imprisoned by pirates, etc., in the nick of time to prevent the marriage of his secret wife (who thought he was dead after the Navy said he was dead) to a Duke. It was a fun read but the plot wasn't meant to be taken seriously. ( )

Since Rose has always been my least favorite of the Rutherford women, my hopes for her story weren't all that high, even given the mystique of a secret marriage. I didn't expect to find this so utterly disappointing, though. Other reviewers are correct when they mention how thinly drawn the women are in this book, and the plot requires epic levels of willful blindness and stupidity on the hero's part, but the final straw, for me, was the confrontation between Thomas and the villain.

I certainly understand that Thomas' situation has taught him how powerless other people can feel, but in no way has the villain experienced anything approaching slavery. Almost all people from this time and place in history had very few choices in their lives. Even the very wealthy, if they cared at all about the people on their land, weren't free to leave the country to do whatever they wanted. But they still weren't slaves.

They weren't bought and sold. They weren't forbidden from leaving a patch of land or whipped if they tried. They didn't have masters. Or shackles. Or the daily awareness that no one thought of them as anything more than useful animals. Did they live in an inequitable society? Yes. Was changing their lot or improving the lives of their family extremely difficult? Yes. But they were not slaves.

And this villain? This privileged person who had more choices than 90% of the people of the time, even if those choices weren't perfect? This person is absolutely not a slave. And furthermore, clearly doesn't care about all the less fortunate people they trampled on the way to achieving their goals.

Thomas isn't portrayed as any kind of intellectual giant, but the allowance he makes for the villain because he sees his own experience as a slave inside them is patently absurd. Perhaps you should think of all the women in your life, Thomas, who have no legal standing. Or your fellow sailors, impressed and then enslaved alongside you because the villain spurned your request for aid. Or the boy supporting his family, whose proximity to you put him in danger. These people deserve your consideration, and instead you're offering clemency to someone who will go on to hurt more people whenever it's convenient for them.

Had Thomas seen beyond his own experiences into the wider world, beyond his surface similarities with the villain to the deeper ones in every other person around him, the book could've redeemed at least some of the bad characterization and lazy plotting. Obviously, it did not. I may have found Rose tiresome and frequently selfish in the previous books, but she deserved a better story than this. ( )

Lady Rose Rutherford's comfortable marriage ceremony is interrupted by a disreputable scruffy man who claims to be her husband. A husband who no-one else knows about, he was lost at sea and declared dead shortly after the marriage and she didn't think it was important.to let any one know.
Thomas Beresford survived his ship sinking and was sold into slavery where he eventually escaped just in time to interrupt the wedding. He has to cope with coming back to life and the fact that his family left him to be a slave. He's also not sure he wants to, or will be able to have a relationship with her.
The struggle was real and I enjoyed the story and I also liked how things weren't easily resolved. She was determined to be his partner even if it was going to be a lot of work. ( )

This one wasn't terribly memorable for me. I'd been looking forward to Rose's story from the first, but she didn't really seem to have the spark she'd had as a supporting character. Her sister Lily stepped up in her book, but Rose just sort of sat down. Linden's books tend to be above average for me, but this one was just fine. ( )

Never have I been so happy to have a back cover blurb that was so laughably wrong about the story contained between the covers. If you read the blurb, you'll come into this book thinking that it's going to be a marriage-as-revenge story, but it is very emphatically NOT that. If you're looking for that, look elsewhere - this is a rather extraordinary second chance romance, as our hero comes back from the dead to reclaim not only his wife, but his place among the living.

Thomas Beresford and Rose Rutherford were secretly married when he was 23 and she was 16. They got married so they could have sex, but they only had 2 weeks together before naval officer Thomas boarded his ship again, and then he was shipwrecked and declared dead, which devastated our heroine, Rose. Knowing what it is to love and lose, she's determined to never put her heart on the line again, so she knowingly walks into a marriage of convenience with *the* Catch of the Season. In the middle of the Wedding of the Season, Thomas suddenly appears again, looking like a madman, and stops the ceremony.

Both Rose and Thomas are torn - they loved each other four years ago when they married, and both thought the relationship was lost (Rose because she thought Thomas was dead; Thomas because he wasn't dead but was living in horrific circumstances). The Rutherford family had no notion of this secret marriage and are all up in arms. Rose, the daughter of an earl, is a very wealthy heiress, and nothing less than a social equal will be tolerated (by her social climbing Aunt Agatha, at least). Everyone is 1000% suspicious of Thomas's motives and his ability to oh-so-conveniently reappear during the wedding ceremony.

Everyone, that is, except Rose. Once she gets over the shock of her beloved being alive, she is determined to make their marriage work. She is very stubborn, and tips into TSTL territory as the story goes on, which was irritating.

Thomas, on the other hand, is a lot more than the vengeful fortune hunter he's portrayed as in the blurb. He was shipwrecked, yes, but he and five of his crew managed to swim to shore, only to be captured on the Barbary coast, held for ransom, and then sold into captivity when the ransom fell through. His time in captivity has changed him through and through, and he has a lot to work through when he returns to England. First and foremost on his list is trying to bring those five crewmates back; second is trying to figure out why his uncle and cousin refused to pay the ransom for him.

I suppose its not enough these days to just have a book about putting a marriage back together after the miraculous reappearance of one of the spouses; there has to be a mystery tacked on, too. Unfortunately, the mystery felt very tacked on: the moment the villain was mentioned in an afterthought, I knew exactly who was responsible for Thomas's misery. (To give this author credit, at least he had a more interesting reason than just being an evil personage, and the way Thomas ultimately dealt with him was also rather interesting.)

So the mystery plot was "meh" (and Rose was being stupid with her insistence on accompanying Thomas on his journey to rescue his crewmates, because WTF Rose, it's the goddamned Barbary coast and you've heard your husband's horror stories so why in the hell do you think it'd be safe for you to go traipsing around there?), but the romance was tender and sweet, which is what I was looking for. I enjoyed Thomas and Rose coming together for a second time after life-altering events, and there wasn't too much "woe is me/I'm not good enough for him/her anymore" angsting.

Thomas's captivity was based on a true story, and there's a great author's note at the end with mentions of her research and where to learn more about it. I certainly appreciated that =) So while this book wasn't quite as good as the first two in the series, I'll definitely be adding it to my collection.

I've been most curious about George's story (she'll be the final heroine in the series), but the hints that she's going to be paired up with this cold and indifferent duke that Rose almost married has not exactly set my heart aflutter. ( )