The Bride's Baby (Harlequin Romance) [Kindle Edition]

Liz Fielding (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

The wedding of the season!

Events manager Sylvie Smith is organizing a glittering fund-raising event: a wedding show in a stately home. She has even been roped into pretending to be a bride... a bride who's five months pregnant!

The bride everyone is talking about!

It should be every girl's dream to design a wedding with no expense spared, but it's not Sylvie's. Longbourne Court was her ancestral home, and she's just discovered that the new owner is Tom McFarlane--her baby's secret father. Now Tom's standing in front of her, looking at her bump....

Product Details

• Format: Kindle Edition
• File Size: 534 KB
• Print Length: 192 pages
• Publisher: Harlequin Romance (March 1, 2008)
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services
• Language: English
• ASIN: B001R4GNUO
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• Average Customer Review: 2.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (105 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #228 Free in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Free in Kindle Store)
  • #30 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Fiction > Genre Fiction > Romance > Contemporary

More About the Author

Reading is, and always has been, the first love of my life. Except writing.
Success came early -- I was twelve when I won an Easter egg in a hymn writing competition at school - but life intervened with my plans to become a hot shot author. The day job. Not that this was dull. I travelled to Zambia at the age of twenty where I worked as a secretary, before following my personal hero to the Middle East, Kenya, Botswana and ambition became buried in the joyful business of raising a family.

I never forgot that I was a "writer", however. I wrote children's stories for Listen With Mother. Magazines articles. Ghost stories. I was at a point where I wanted to move onto something bigger when I read a magazine piece about Charlotte Lamb and Anne Hampson and discovered, rather late in life, romantic fiction. I read everything I could lay my hands on, then, feeling certain I had a grasp of the genre, began writing. I had three rejections - I still have those letters! -- but my fourth submission became An Image of You and was published in 1992.

Since then seven of my books have been shortlisted for RWA's RITA award - two of them, THE BEST MAN & THE BRIDESMAID and THE MARRIAGE MIRACLE winning in 2001 and 2006, respectively. A FAMILY OF HIS OWN always won the RNA's Romance Prize in 2005.

My best-beloved and I are empty-nesters these days, living out in the country where excitement means a visit from the mobile shop, the travelling library, the fish man. But I'm a writer, I invent my own worlds. Once the door to the my cabin in the woods is closed I can be anywhere my imagination takes me; the desert kingdom of Ramal Hamrah, the villages of Upper Haughton, Little Hinton and Longbourne where romance is always just around the corner, or I can jet off to New York, the Mediterranean, even the Himalayas. Come and see where I'm headed next - http://www.lizfielding.com

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

104 of 111 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Disappointing read!, July 22, 2009

By 

Dina "Dina" (Brazil) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Bride's Baby (Harlequin Romance) (Mass Market Paperback)

The book blurb made me think this was a Secret Baby story... Well, it was but, at the same time, it really wasn't considering the fact that the baby wasn't a secret. Confusing? Yes, that's the feeling I had throughout most of the book.

Tom and Sylvie had a brief meeting when she was introduced as the wedding planner for his upcoming nuptials to her friend Candy. An unexpected attraction sparked on both sides but, considering that he was about to get married, Tom and Sylvie shoved that feeling aside and never let anyone - including themselves - realize it. But after 6 months of heavy planning and preparation, Candy ditched everything to elope with one of Sylvie's employees 3 days before the wedding. Naturally, Tom felt it was his due to unload all his "annoyance" on Sylvie - after all, she had plagued his dreams since he had met her - and, before they knew it, their mutual suppressed attraction took over and they were having unprotected sex on his bed... Since this is Romancelandia, the "worst" thing you can get from unprotected sex is a pregnancy, so that's what Sylvie got. Unfortunately, Tom was no longer in the picture when Sylvie found herself pregnant, since he had left the country the day after their one-night stand. Unable to reach him by telephone, she had no choice but to deliver him the news by letter. Obviously, he never got to receive that letter and so this Failure to Communicate story took off...

This was one of those stories that wouldn't make past the 1st chapters if the hero and the heroine sat together and spoke CLEARLY with each other. Regardless, Tom and Sylvie were very likable characters, and that kind of "saved" the book for me and prevented me from throwing it against the wall - figuratively speaking, since this was an e-book. I rooted for their HEA and was glad when the darn Big Misunderstanding was finally resolved.

As for the writing, Ms. Fielding had the distracting habit of inserting the word "then" between the lines of the characters' speech. For example:

"Is that a fact?" Then, "So? Where are they?"

"I'd come and give you a hand but I have to take delivery of a cake." Then, "Do you need a hand up?"

I have to ask, what was the purpose of the word "then" in there? To gave us pause? To help her reach the necessary word count to meet the publisher's requirements? I know I'm nitpicking but that word was used over and over again in the story, and it was annoying.

All in all, I'm glad this was a freebie because I would have been "mad" if I had paid anything for this book.

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Cute, Quick read, August 31, 2009

By 

Happy Parents "Adrenaline18" (Boulder, CO) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Bride's Baby (Harlequin Romance) (Kindle Edition)

I read this in one day. It was a cute story. I'm glad it was free though since it went so quickly. I was a little annoyed with communication between the two main characters. No one I know has this much trouble getting to the point. How they can spend 50 pages avoiding direct conversations about the elephant in the room is beyond me.

69 of 85 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars 5+ Stars: A romance that sparkles right off the pages into the heart!, April 7, 2008

By 

D. Merrimon Crawford (Colorado) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Bride's Baby (Harlequin Romance) (Mass Market Paperback)

Liz Fielding's THE BRIDE'S BABY is a short romance that moves the heart with smiles, laughter, tenderness and emotion. Events manager Sylvie Smith's friend Candy left her friend with one huge mess! First she roped Sylvie into doing the planning for her wedding to the rich, powerful and handsome Tom McFarlane and then she walks out on the groom, the same groom who is now going over each event detail cost, line by line, with eyes glaring. Glares turn into sparks, an electric chemistry that neither Sylvie nor Tom can resist.

Now months later, Celebrity magazine comes to her with a proposition to profile her company, as company that has planned some of the most talked about weddings. Design the wedding of dreams and let readers catch a glimpse of what she herself would choose. With a chance to promote all the local Wedding Fayre exhibitors with the benefits going to charity, Sylvie has others counting on her. Just when Sylvie thought she had put the past behind her, her worst nightmare comes true! Standing in her ancestral home, in walks the new owner --- Tom McFarlane to overlook the events.... no way will he not notice that Sylvie is pregnant! Sylvie might be able to design a perfect wedding for Celebrity magazine but what is a wedding without a groom? Can true love and serendipity provide what the best wedding planning cannot? Can broken hearts find love beyond even their wildest dreams?

THE BRIDE'S BABY hooks the reader in from the first paragraph and never lets go. Liz Fielding's characterization and dynamic descriptions place the reader right there, next to Sylvie as she goes down the failed wedding receipt check list. Sylvie is a spunky, intelligent heroine with a heart of gold. The hero Tom is a powerful successful businessman, an Alpha male with a delightful wounded soul mix. From the beginning, the reader has empathy for him. This man knows how to really move a woman, body, heart and soul.

THE BRIDE'S BABY writing sparkles with emotion and romance. Liz Fielding writes descriptions with beauty and precision. The reader easily visualizes the scenes and the emotions through the imagery itself. The decisive action of an article of clothing or a certain color reappearing make the story vibrant and alive. Liz Fielding writes memorable moments and action scenes packed with the perfect mix of concrete description and imagery that stay in the memory long after the reader places the book on a bookshelf.

The plot of THE BRIDE'S BABY moves smoothly from energetic romantic conflict to moments of powerful chemistry between the hero and heroine, from conflict to heartwarming tenderness, with several wonderful surprises along the way. Heart-warming scenes in this romance reach out beyond the hero and heroine's story to the reader's heart. THE BRIDE'S BABY is a romance that a reader will want to share with friend's and family. THE BRIDE'S BABY is a wonderful short romance that awakens both the tender heart of the young girl and the deep emotions of the woman in a reader. A keeper!