Customer Reviews

MacGregor's Bride

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

When I just started reading this book I thought--Wow! What a great new author! The writing was excellent, full of detail and research, a wonderful throwback to a fantastic period, the war for independence.

The hero was a happy-go-lucky guy, a really nice guy, your all time American hero. Usually I like the dark tormented hero, but Bruce was so handsome and lovable that I fell in love with him instantly. The heroine, Lydia, was also great, at times a bit too fastidious for me, but she was supposed to be that way so I hung on.

I really can't rave enough about Barbara Dan's superb prose, which I put on a par with Sabrina Jeffries, but here is where the similarities end: SJ never drops the ball, she keeps you with the characters and develops their relationship. Not so in this book.

Half way through, the story takes a very weird twist and is never put back on track, from wonderful it deteriorates to exhausting-to-read.

The heroes were just married and the morning after their steamy wedding night, the hero decides to return to his ship to continue fighting the English. Okay, if he must he must, I thought, but then he does the most unappealing thing, he pounces on the heroine, uses her body for sex without taking care of her enjoyment and then says that he did that to get a son from her by the time he returns. And the heroine is left alone feeling uncared for and humiliated. So she plunges herself into nursing wounded soldiers and doing house work and becoming the sterling housewife, while her husband is off fighting the war.

This goes on forever (almost 100 pages.) She is at the home front and he is somewhere fighting. This long interval was a very boring chunk of story to read as nothing was happening between the main characters because they were separated.

Then the heroine learns that Bruce was captured and is in a British prison a few days' sail away. I was happy to believe the story was once again picking up. But I was wrong. Although the author really took me back to that time with her writing style and extensive research, her main characters get into a long period of unbelievable bickering that seemed contrived by the author to keep them from having sex.

Endless repetitions followed, the hero kept asking why his wife bothered rescuing him and she deliberately not telling him that she loves him. I think it was okay as a small step in their marriage but why drag it for another 60-80 pages?

Plus, the lovable hero becomes a really annoying jerk, while the sweetly fastidious heroine transforms into a lust-crazed biddy (at least that's how she came off IMHO.) By the time they made up, the sexual tension was dead. I would have been happy with them saying their I love yous and wrapping up the story. But what happened was that for another 100 pages, I was treated to long and very boring sex scenes between a couple that behaved like a very OLD married couple, with stupid bedroom talk of two lustful oldtimers. I have to say that in many ways it made me feel uncomfortable, like spying on my grandparents having sex. So weird for me. I love historical romance and I never felt like that toward any pair of characters.

If you think the book ends here you are wrong. While the lustful 25 year-old biddy and her "old-timer-like" Pluto husband are having unsexy sex and the author waxes purple prose, a villain is introduced. And of course the biddy decided to go after him alone in the dead of night...
This ending seemed so far-fetched that I almost gave up on the book, but I was close to the end and the reviews promised a "Surprise Ending" so I hung on. Well... THAT was the end. Disappointing.

So for me the first half was a 5 star, and the second a 2. I think this author has great talent in writing but I hope she puts more emphasis on structure in the future because the second part of the book was a mess.

To quote another reviewer, this book was "uneven" at best. I'm sorry to say that I didn't think it was very well written, the character motivation and interaction didn't make sense and the plot didn't make sense. In some places, it was downright goofy. I wanted to like it, but I just couldn't and it was with great effort that I made it through to the end.

Perhaps this author is still new to writing because it seemed that way from the prose. I think she has potential and once she has a few more books under her belt she may turn out some pretty good ones.

The story is uneven, in tempo and intensity. I still don't know why the characters liked each other, but they do, suddenly and without reason. And then the plot happens, with ridiculous plot points, and truly, halfway through I decided this was one of the most silly and idiotic books I'd ever read. If you must insist on reading it, please at least do so through the library. Do not pay to read this book.

The charge would be treason and the only way Lydia can avoid it is to marry Bruce MacGregor a sea captain. They have one stormy night together. In the morning he decides to return to his ship and the Revolutionary War continues. Lydia's attention is turned to caring for the wounded soldiers and her housework. She rescues him from prison but they cannot get past their life in the bedroom. The author has spent too much time on the bedroom scenes. She has a great plot that doesn't need all the sex. Leave something for the imagination. By the author of "The Bluegrass Dream" and "Natchez Above The River"

I absolutely adored Macgregor in this novel. He is not the typical "Dark, forboding, mysterious" type of hunk that many novelists chose to portray their male love interests. He is gorgeous yes, but he is also happy, upbeat and absolutely loveable!!! This story is very satisfying from beginning to end. If you like a story with a great ending, you will really like this one!!!

It was difficult to hold a desire to read what could have been an excellent novel. Physical abuse, controlling and ill tempered characters who are aroused by physical abuse and brawling. ~Affaire de Coeur

ONE KISS AND SHE LOST HER SENSES

The bride herself was hard pressed to recognize the woman who stood naked as the day she was born, reciting her wedding vows to a charming rogue of a sea captain who was her only chance to avoid charges of treason. Still, a prim, proper widow has her limits, even during wartime, and the day the towering black-haired Captain Bruce MacGregor tested the uncharted waters of passion churning below the surface of her well-ordered existence, Lydia Masters was lost.

ONE NIGHT AND HE LOST HIS HEART

He must have been at sea too long to agree to marry a woman just to save her pretty hide, but temptation was his undoing. But this daring privateer hadn't survived twenty skirmishes against the British navy to beaten by a prickly, hot-headed female. But Heaven help him, he was not prepared for a wife like Lydia-or the perilous adventure that lay ahead when war rips them apart.and she dares the unthinkable to prove the defiant glory of a woman's love.

LOVE IT, LOVE IT, LOVE IT!
This is one great book. I'd read it twice and I never do that. I couldn't put it down. It's must have for all romance story lovers.