Customer Reviews

The Accidental Bride

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(12)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

The book started out slowly and I thought I would put it aside and forget it. But then it took a surprising turn and I found I couldn't put it down! I loved how Cato and Phoebe developed as characters and people, and how they grew as a couple. In fact, I had borrowed the book from someone to read, then reread it again a month later. Definitely enjoyable!

Phoebe, the awkward one and sister of Diana, the late Marchioness of Granville, is ordered by her father to marry her widowed brother-in-law, Cato. Cato is also the father of her best friend Olivia, and is almost old enough to be her own father. He's distant, cold, very proper and only interested in politics and the war.

And yet one day she looks at him and falls in love.

So then she has to try to make him fall in love with her - which isn't easy, since she's overweight and awkward and informal and everything, it seems, which he disapproves of. She gets Olivia into trouble and creates chaos in his ordered manor home. And she has neither the talent nor the wish to take over housekeeping. None of her clothes suit her - which is hardly surprising, since they were all made for Diana, who was a completely different shape to her. She's not even, he thinks, all that good in bed, and she doesn't seem to be showing any signs of becoming pregnant.

Although I enjoyed this and found some parts of it humorous, I really had problems with the idea of Cato as a husband. In the first book he was very distant and cold and not at all hero-like. And, of course, a man in his mid-thirties, he is married here to a seventeen-year-old and a friend of his own daughter's. Doesn't he feel the slightest awkwardness at the thought of taking Phoebe to bed?

And as for Phoebe, I do find it hard to understand why she continued to love Cato, who for most of the book showed no interest in her beyond criticising her. I'm not even sure that he would have found her clumsiness endearing, as he eventually did.

So, although on a superficial level I found this book entertaining, I really didn't find it at all credible.

Heroine:  plump, voluptuous
     Rumpled, romantic Phoebe has the unenviable task of stepping into her late sister's place as wife to the handsome but cold Marquis of Granville, a man more concerned with the civil war outside his home than the battles going on within it. Phoebe falls in love with her husband and, desperate for him to notice her, turns to her dear friend Portia and stepdaughter Olivia for advice on how to make him love her.

What worked for me: Bright but awkward; longing to be elegant but forever rumpled; Phoebe was just darling! She was uncomfortable with her generous proportions and hid them under shapeless and ill-fitting gowns which made her seem even larger and more ungainly. Fortunately her friends take her in hand and teach her to make the most of her voluptuous, womanly figure.
I enjoyed the camaraderie between Phoebe and the other girls (who incidentally also have books about them which round out the Brides trilogy) and I particularly enjoyed Phoebe's attempts to get Cato to fall for her. There was more than one delicious love scene to savor over the course of this book.

What didn't work for me: Phoebe had three stepdaughters: Olivia who was also her best friend, and two by her late sister. The smallest girls never really factor into the story. Phoebe neither hates nor loves them, and it's nearly as though they don't even exist. (Though this is true of most aristocratic households.) 
The villain in the story didn't feel threatening enough for me, being more of a weasel than a wolf. And the hero Cato felt a bit inaccessible to me. I would have enjoyed more passages from his point of view, particularly his thoughts on Phoebe and her changes. 
The witchfinder scene didn't sit well with me either. One moment Phoebe was in grave danger from the worked up villagers who declared her a witch, and the next her troubles on that head have vanished into thin air on Cato's say-so. I think there would have been some bad feelings and grumbling after everything that took place.

Overall: A fun read, and I think I may go looking for books 1 and 3 of the trilogy despite the fact that they don't fit in with my plus-size reading list.

If you liked "The Accidental Bride" you might also enjoy "The Bride and the Beast", "The Fire-Flower", or "Suddenly You".

I wanted to like this book because Phoebe was not the physically perfect woman as is the case in so many romance novels. But the age difference really got in the way. Other reviewers say that Phoebe was 17 (and Cato was 37 and she was his fourth wife!!) but very far into the book Cato says she is 19 (probably just over 18 according to the dates given). Almost as if the author has realized that there is a problem and tries rather half heartedly to fix it. Why didn't Ms. Feather just start all three girls off a little older? Just a few years would have made a big difference. She could have even left Olivia at her original age and not caused any problems for Portia or Phoebe. As it was, I was very uncomfortable with Phoebe and Olivia being such close friends when one was the daughter and one the wife of the same man. And please, could Ms Feather not have at least given names to the two poor girls Cato produced with Diana? If that information was there then I missed it because it must have been given only once.

I very quickly lost patience with Phoebe always looking like a rag bag, always having rats nest hair, always having dirt on her face, always being defiant, always, always, always. As another reviewer said, why couldn't she get a little back bone and stop her relentless pursuit of Cato. Did she only feel humiliation for mere seconds? Any normal woman wouldn't have spoken to him (or allowed him to touch her) for a week.

Cato did change. But, wow, did he ever inflict verbal punishment every chance he had. It took so long for his attitude to change toward Phoebe that I had almost given up hope. And then he changed completely. Almost too much too late. At least for me.

I would not recommend this book to a friend. If you decide to read it, you will do so with lots of information given through the review system and know what you are letting yourself in for. I will NOT be reading the other two books!!!

First there was Portia. Now it is Phoebe's turn in this the second of the "Brides" series. Jane Feather is at her best with these three unconventional young women who have vowed not to wed.

Lady Phoebe Carleton has no desire to be wed, least of all to her deceased sister's husband to be a substitute to a dynastic marriage between two houses. She decided to run away. She didn't get too far when she was stopped by Cato, Marquis of Granville.

Cato is amused by his eccentric bride-to-be. He soon comes to realize this awkward young woman with rumpled clothes, untidy hair, and fingers stained with ink from writing poetry is going to be a handful.

Set during Cromwell's rise to power, with an interesting combination of real and fictional characters, this is delightful.

This book was an excellent follow up to "The Hostage Bride" The relationship between Cato and the dowdy Phoebe was one that keeps the reader enthralled because it isn't the steriotypical love story, Phoebe isn't perfect-far from it actually- but her warm heart and determination allow her to enter Cato's heart. At first it seems as if there is no way that Cato could truly care for the "ragged robin" but this story shows how feelings can be changed when met with fate. Phoebe's refuses to be the submissive bride to the overpowering Cato, she follows her heart no matter how it may defy her husband, and nobody has challenged him before, especially not a woman. Not only is the romance captivating but the historical aspect of the civil war in the 1600's thickens the plot: war, love, lust, with the struggle to defeat or not be taken down by manipulating evil Brian Morse...all intertwined into a literary masterpiece, I can't wait to read about Olivia in the third book of Jane Feather's Brides trilogy!

This was the first book I ever read by Jane Feather and it hooked me from the word go. I loved watching the relationship between the strong-willed Cato and the always ragged Phoebe grow as the story progressed. It was great seeing Phoebe try to shake free of the stereotypical mold of a what a wife should be, and try to make her marriage to Cato an equal partnership.

I enjoyed seeing Phoebe deciding that she wanted a proper marriage to Cato, with all the intimacies that included, and so the love scenes were brilliant.

Poor Cato didn't quite know how to take the fact that Phoebe was supposedly barren, and some of the little conversations he has with himself about it are rather funny.

I would reccommend this book to any romance reader, or anyone wanting to venture into the world of romance.

"The Accidental Bride" is a book that had fantastic potential, but I'm sorry to say it didnt quite live up to it. I absolutely loved the character of Phoebe..she was someone that I would love to have as a friend. I enjoyed Cato as well, however, I found myself wanting to shake him due to his sometimes maddening unresponsiveness. This book could have easily earned 4 stars from me, but I felt that there needed to be more emphasis on their relationship and not so much on the surrounding storyline...I also found it somewhat disturbing that Cato was Olivia's father....that would make Phoebe her stepmother... Anyways...not a bad book, but I wouldnt necessarily recommend it.

This book was...typical. Phoebe always lived in the shadow of her older sister, Diana, who was beautiful, graceful, refined and everything that Phoebe isn't.

Then, Diana dies and Phoebe is made to marry Cato, Diana's widower. This whole situation is weird because Phoebe is seventeen years old and bestfriends with Cato's daughter.

But, apparently, no one in the book found the marriage all that strange.

Cato, though, is uptight, rigid and completely by-the-book. Understandably, he's more than a little put out to suddenly be saddled with a wife like Phoebe who's unkempt, clumsy and not well-versed in the social graces--in short, she does what she wants, when she wants.

For some reason, free-spirited Phoebe is in love with stuffy Cato and decides to make him fall in love with her, too--so she starts by making love to him when he'd been seeing their bedsport as simply an obligation to secure an heir (because he thought women, and Phoebe, were bred not to enjoy sex).

Througout the book, Phoebe angers Cato at every turn but he starts to fall for her anyway...mostly during the sex scenes, really.

And, even while it was nice to see Cato loosen up a bit (while family intrigue threatened to destroy Cato and the marriage), I don't know why or how this relationship works.

I guess it's study in opposites attracting, but in reality, it really only works because Feather makes it.

THE ACCIDENTAL BRIDE is the second in the "Bride" trilogy by Jane Feather, following THE HOSTAGE BRIDE and before THE LEAST LIKELY BRIDE.

This is the story of Phoebe, one of three friends who vow together to always remain friends, and to never get married. Phoebe is the poetic and honorable, yet disheveled sister to Diana, wife of Cato, Marquis of Granville. When Diana dies, after several months, Phoebe's father and Cato decide that Phoebe and Cato should marry so she can provide the much-needed heirs, and so that loyalties will stay within the family.

Against Phoebe's objections, she is forced into a passionless marriage. But somewhere along the line, she falls in love with her huband's good side, and decides to make the marriage work. All of her methods are unorthodox; but finally, Cato starts to see that she can be much more than just a seed receptable.

THE ACCIDENTAL BRIDE is a story of the human spirit, its determination, devotion and acceptance.