27 of 28 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
My favourite of the Rogues (so far!), August 9, 2000
This review is from: Christmas Angel (Paperback)
I know that most people think that _An_Unwilling_Bride_ is the best of Jo Beverley's Rogues books. I disagree. While _Bride_ is certainly an excellent book, this book is better. For one thing, this book does not have any desperate villains, just one bumbling (but dangerous) one and one set of phantom villains. This lack of an adventure plot means that the romance must stand (or fall) on its own terms. This is a terrific story.
Both characters are completely believable. Each brings baggage to their marriage, and each learns to shed it in the course of the book. Leander is amazing -- worldly, strong, powerful, and yet strangely alone and vulnerable. Judith is living with the consequences of her early marriage to a stunningly romantic poet who turned out to be a stunningly unsatisfactory husband. The preconceptions they bring to their marriage, about themselves and about each other, need to be untangled before this Cinderella story can be resolved.
The resolution is believable, because the changes in each character are motivated and plausible. This story has lots of funny scenes, and some heart-rending passages, as well. The writing is clean and fluent. All in all, a very good book.
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21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
One of the best historical romances I've ever read, September 1, 1999
By A Customer
This review is from: Christmas Angel (Paperback)
CHRISTMAS ANGEL is #3 in the Company of Rogues series--though like the other books, it stands on its own--and is almost as good as AN UNWILLING BRIDE, the jewel in the series' crown. It's a Cinderella story, but with several original twists. For one thing, the Cinderella heroine is a widow with two young children, not a virginal 18-year-old. For another, she rescues her Prince Charming just as much as he rescues her. The "Wicked Stepmother" is a real surprise, as well!
CHRISTMAS ANGEL also makes great Christmastime reading.
I read in the author's latest newsletter that the publisher will reissue the out-of-print Rogues novels (AN ARRANGED MARRIAGE, AN UNWILLING BRIDE, and CHRISTMAS ANGEL) over the next couple of years, and as Regency historicals. This is welcome news. These books were published as traditional Regencies--at that time, the concept of the Regency historical was only just coming into being--and the book descriptions give no hint of the stories' complexity and scope, which encompasses the entire spectrum of Regency society, even the more disorderly and uncivilised aspects.
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14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A great sequel to An Arranged Marriage and Unwilling Bride, December 12, 2001
If you've been reading Jo Beverley's Rogues series, which began with An Arranged Marriage and continued with Lucien's story in An Unwilling Bride, you'll want to get your hands on this book IMMEDIATELY.
Leander Knollis, Earl of Charrington, didn't appear in the two earlier books, but he was certainly mentioned as a Rogue absent at war. In this book, set a few months after Lucien and Beth's marriage, Leander comes home and, thanks to the war having brought him to a realisation of his own mortality, decides that he really needs to marry and start his own family. However, a few weeks in London shows him only too clearly that he can't choose a bride from the available young women there. For one thing, none of them interest him. For another, they keep falling in love with him! While he can feel nothing more than lukewarm liking for any of them.
Not that he understands why this is the case; as he says to Beth Arden, he's not particularly handsome. And, in fact, standing next to the very handsome Lucien, he's nothing much to look at. Though Beth admits - and this is a very clever device, Jo, using the lens of Beth's thoughts to show us what's attractive about Leander - that there is something compelling about him. And Beth also tells us that what is most likely to appeal to women is the impression Leander seems to give of being alone and emotionally in pain. Which he is - except that he doesn't recognise it.
Leander's problem is that his upbringing has led him to see romantic love as destructive and not worth the emotional investment. Added to this, he doesn't see himself as capable of falling in love. So, he tells his friends, he wants to marry someone suitable, someone he can like, but who won't fall in love with him.
Who better, Beth thinks, than the Weeping Widow? Judith Rossiter, widowed a little over a year since and with two children, who is well known to have been so in love with her husband that she's still grief-stricken. She still wears unrelieved black. So Leander proposes to Judith, secure in the knowledge that she's not going to fall in love with him.
Judith, we learn, ceased to love her husband not long after they were married. The only reason she still wears black is that she can't afford anything else! She's very puzzled by this proposal from a nobleman five years younger than her, and at first thinks he's mad. But events lead her to accept his proposal - and now all she has to do is prevent him from finding out that she does actually have strong feelings for him after all...
What stops me giving this book five stars, as I gave some of the other Rogue books, is that while I enjoyed it very much I felt that something was missing. The romance was very, very understated; while there are some lovely scenes in this book, such as some of the kissing scenes, I didn't actually feel that I *saw* Judith and Leander fall in love with each other. I almost felt that Leander wasn't so much falling in love with Judith as he was with the idea of a family. So that wasn't quite as fulfilling as the first two books in the series, or The Devil's Heiress.
However, one thing I loved about this book was the chance to get a glimpse - well, more than a glimpse - of my favourite heroes and their partners. The book begins with Beth and Lucien at Hartwell, just six weeks after the end of AUB; we see that the promise of a very happy marriage which we were left with in AUB is definitely coming true. And Lucien and Beth play major roles in the first part of the book. Then, towards the end of the book, we get lots of Nicholas and Eleanor (and Arabel), proving that the happy ending of An Arranged Marriage was a lasting one. I do love encountering characters from earlier books later in the series!
Definitely one to add to your Jo Beverley collection!
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