Not to my taste, but I do like some of this author's other books. ( )

fluff romance, but had some plot ( )

This was a fun regency romance. On the Nook the story is approx 216 pages out of 224 total. You have to like Mirabella for her loyalty to Sarah.

He has a scar on the back of his neck. That's all Mirabella Whittingham knows about the man responsible for her best friend's death --- so she's been kissing bachelors all over town in hopes of finding him. London society is shocked --- but why should she care what people say? Her fiance --- a man she's never even laid eyes on --- has been gone for years, and shows no signs of returning. She's given up hope of ever becoming a bride ...

Then, having resigned herself to a lifetime of pretend passion, Mirabella is shocked when a man's kiss makes her tremble with lust. She is even more shocked to discover that he is none other than her long-gone betrothed. His painful past and her ruined reputation may stand in the way of true love, but if there's one thing Mirabella's learned, it's never say never ... ( )

Never a Bride is a reprint of Amelia Grey's first novel, which was originally published in 2001. (She does have other older published works under a pen name.)

Mirabella Wittingham has been engaged for what feels like forever with no fiancé in sight. She has given up hope that he will return and instead decides to try her hand at investigation. You see, her best friend and cousin was seduced by a gentleman and when she got pregnant, he abandoned her. Mirabella's cousin killed herself rather than deal with the scandal of an illegitimate child. Now Mirabella is out for justice and she doesn't care if she has to ruin her reputation to get it.

Camden, Viscount Stonehurt, the fiancé, has returned to England from America after 6 years. Just in time to hear the rumors about his betrothed. He first left London because of another betrothal that went horribly wrong and he does not want to be the cuckold for the second time in a row. He does not want to marry Mirabella and is quite happy that she doesn't want to marry him. But his parents desperately want the marriage to continue on so Mirabella and Camden start acting like the engaged couple, meanwhile, they will use their ruse for their own ends.

I always wanted to read Amelia Grey's work and unfortunately, I was not impressed with Never a Bride. I knew from the minute Mirabella's cousin, Sarah, was introduced, that Mirabella was going to get into shenanigans that would annoy me. And I was right. Mirabella was stubborn to a fault. Camden was ok. He was vulnerable and afraid to put himself out there again. All the fault lies at Mirabella's feet.

Also, the plot was predictable. I knew how things were going to roll out and I correctly guessed the identity of the villainous seducer. There just wasn't enough to keep my interest. In the end, I need to give Never a Bride a 2.75 out of 5. It wasn't bad, it just wasn't good. ( )

The best thing I can say about this book was that it was very readable – I got through it fairly quickly. However, it was definitely not the book for me, for several reasons.

One of those reasons was Mirabella. I hated Mirabella. I hated her for not thinking things through, for not seeing all the possible consequences of her actions, and for abusing the power she had over her maid. She didn't care what happened to her reputation, but she worried that it would affect her father's health if he heard what she had been doing. And yet she kept on kissing men anyway, and didn't stop until after Camden came back. Even after Camden came back, she continued to do things that could have ruined her reputation and would have upset her father. Who made sure things didn't go hideously wrong? Camden. He got her out of the club before anyone realized there was a woman dressed as a man among them, and he hushed up anyone he found out had kissed her.

Was that reason enough to confide to Camden why she did what she did? No. Did starting to fall in love with him lead to a greater feeling of trust in him? No, or at least that was the impression I got based on her actions. Had Mirabella worried about telling Camden about Sarah's suicide because suicide is a sin (we're talking about a Regency romance here, after all), then I might have been a bit more sympathetic, but the thought never even crossed her mind. The one reason she used, over and over, to justify not telling Camden was that he would make her stop looking for the man.

I'd have thought that a man worth falling in love with would be worth trusting a bit more, but apparently that's not the case. At the very least, I'd have thought it would have occurred to Mirabella that a man would have an easier time getting to see another man's bare neck. When the thought did finally occur to her, she didn't approach Camden, an actual man, for help, but rather dressed herself up as a man. I found myself wishing someone would catch her, since I seriously doubted she could pretend to be a man so well, so easily.

And, by the way, she didn't dress herself as a man on her own. No, she got her maid Lily to help her, even going to far as to convince Lily to sneak some of her father's clothes into her room. Mirabella also got Lily to help her dress as a maid, implying that she might dismiss Lily if she didn't help. When Lily brought up the perfectly understandable worry that Mirabella's father might dismiss her if he found out what she'd helped his daughter do, Mirabella assured her that her father would never do such a thing and that she'd see to it nothing happened to her. Yeah, right. Mirabella's complete lack of knowledge about the realities of Lily's life was probably realistic (although it made Mirabella's ability to convincingly pretend to be a maid, even just for a few hours, even harder to believe), but that didn't make me hate her any less. Besides, why worry about realism in a book where the hero and heroine spend quite a bit of time alone and unchaperoned?

I shouldn't limit my complaints to just Mirabella, however – Camden inspired a few himself. After what he went through with his first fiancee, I could understand why he didn't want to marry Mirabella after catching her kissing another man. It's not like Mirabella and Camden even knew each other all that well to begin with, so there wasn't much of an emotional attachment to break off. Okay, so I ground my teeth a little at the idea that Camden could kiss a few women while he was engaged to Mirabella and Mirabella was expected not to do the same, but, hey, it's a Regency romance. What really got to me was Camden's reaction when Mirabella started musing that she might make a good mistress.

Camden had basically said that he couldn't marry Mirabella because he couldn't trust that she'd be faithful to him, and that their renewed engagement was a sham. However, even though he didn't think she was good enough for him to marry, he didn't think she was so soiled that she should become someone's mistress. She should find a nice man to marry. Just not him. Maybe someone who didn't know she'd kissed other men and wouldn't worry that she wasn't being faithful to him? But, oh, wait, Camden still had to get a few kisses in, because he found Mirabella so sexy. But not pure enough to marry.

Oh, barf.

So, I hated Mirabella, I was very, very annoyed by Camden, and I figured out who Sarah's former lover was within the first 50 pages, due to some ever-so-slightly icky behavior on that character's part and the very obvious “he's short” clue. Like I said, this book is readable, and the pace is fairly good, but it definitely didn't fit my tastes. Had I not disliked Mirabella and Camden so much, I probably would have enjoyed their conversations, so I'm not going to completely cross this author off my personal list. That said, I'd have to spot one of her books at a used bookstore, because I'm not buying DRM-protected e-books and Grey hasn't impressed me enough to make me want to shell out the money for a new book.

(Original review, with read-alikes, posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.) ( )