Customer Reviews

The Major's Mistake (Signet Regency Romance)

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

 

 

One of the Major's major mistakes is that he left for the war in 1801 and returned from fighting in the Peninsula in 1808. The second mistake is getting a bill of divorce passed through Parliament even when the wife doesn't contest it. Julian Grosvener, Marquis of Sterling, found his adoring wife in a dishevelled condition. She had been mauled by a friend of her husband's. After being spurned, Averill takes his revenge by slyly reporting to Julian that he saw her in the library with a man. Julian assumes she is faithless, sues for divorce, joins the Army and leaves for the Peninsular War. Young Lady Miranda Ransford adores her husband and despises his friends. Then she is accosted by Lord Averill and rejects him. His revenge is swift, and her youthful husband believes the worst. She runs away and finds shelter with Julian's aunt. Back from the Peninsular War and invalided out due to wounds Julian is ready to make a new life for himself. He returns home to find his former wife residing on a neighboring property with his aunt. Then there is the child. Whose? And there is his secret mission for the war office. The lack of research in this book is astonishing as well as distracting. I also despise young Julian's lack of faith and his assumptions. Andrea Pickens knows how to write, and she has some feel for the period. If you are a lover of Regencies but aren't that much of a stickler for accuracy, you will enjoy.

heroine, not to mention the historical gaffes and plot holes.

It took me a long time to like the Major; what he did to his wife was reprehensible. She had every right to be as angry as she was at the beginning of the book.

As to historical errors, locate the review that mentions them but gives the book 3 stars. My biggest complaint was: how the heroine was supposed to recover socially even though the hero remarries her? Divorce in that day was the end for a woman; polite society would never again welcome her.

The "crippled" war veteran is a nice character touch when so many heroes are physical perfection. Some of the servants are interesting characters. The book's early villain never reappears, and the secondary plot is very weak, serving only to get the hero to the heroine's location and to bring about the climactic scene.

Pickens' skill as a writer still allows the reader to enjoy the book despite its flaws (and her tendency to make the names confusing), but it's not one of her best.

This story line is a pet peeve of mine, and somehow seems to be
popular with romance writers!

The very married "hero" of
the piece seemingly finds his wife in a compromising position; and in
spite of the fact that she has not given him any reason to doubt her
integrity, he ups and divorces her, leaving her to somehow survive in
a society which does not condone divorce at all. Now, years later he
returns, finds that he has a son and demands that he have access to the
boy. (One wonders if the desire to know the child would be there if he
had fathered a daughter). Along the way, nice for our
"hero", he discovers that he still has feelings for his
"errant" wife, and that he has wronged her terribly. And lo
and behold, some 200 odd pages later, the wife has overcome her better
instincts, remembered her love, and takes him back.

Come on, real
women demand ... alot more. And contrary to popular belief, the
women of the regency period were alot more feisty and demanding than
everyone seems to believe!

I have enjoyed all of Andera Pickens'
previous novels, and this one is well written. However I wish she had
allowed for more time to have lapsed before things resolved so happily
at the end-- like perhaps 2 to 3 years!

This is one of my all time favorite books. It is realistic how things were handled in Regency England.

When I moved back to CA from TN, this book ended up in storage. I purchased another copy for myself as it has stuck in my mind as one of the best regencies I have read and as soon as the ebook came out I got it again.

It touches my heart as two damaged people find their way back to each other and makes me cry for the emotions expressed in the story.

October 1801: Newlyweds Miranda and Julian Grosvenor are set up and driven apart by an unscrupulous older "friend" of the young and inexperienced Julian. Angry and hurt, Julian shuts the door on his wife, and within 15 minutes has put orders in motion to buy himself an army commission, and to divorce his wife for her apparent adultery.

April 1808: Major Lord Julian Grosvenor, now Marquess of Sterling, has sold his commission due to a serious leg wound, and returned to London but finds it boring and empty. He decides to ruralize for a time and along his batman/valet retires to a minor estate which he hasn't visited in years. Almost immediately he encounters his former wife and makes a number of discoveries which rock his world and his concept of himself. Lady Miranda, too, has truths she must face, as the two of them put the past to rest, live in the present, and determine the course of their futures.

It takes a lot of storytelling to make Julian's early rejection of Miranda sympathetic enough for us to like him, but Pickens is up to the task, and she even brings us along to the point where we can see that Miranda shares some fault in the rupture of their marriage. My greatest objection to this work is in regard to the military end of the backstory. If Julian Grosvenor had bought a commission it would not have been a majority. I think the highest commission that could be initially purchased was a captaincy, or perhaps a lieutenancy. The Peninsular War did not begin until 1807, nor was Wellington on the Peninsula until the summer of 1808, therefore those details are colorful but impossible. I found it distracting. All the same, I enjoyed the tale.

What an awful book. I have read a few of Ms. Pickens story's and generally like them. This, however, was really bad. I almost did not get past page 10! Julian, the Marquis of Sterling, was married to Lady Miranda when they were quite young. Through the manipulation of a trusted friend, Julian, accompanied by this trusted friend, finds Miranda looking like she just came from a tryst. In fact, this "tryst" was with this friend, and Miranda was not willing. Julian, shocked, flees and runs off to fight the war, but not before telling his lawyer to file for divorce. Besides the obvious difficulties of getting a divorce in the early 1800's, and he was not even there to testify, the story falls apart when he comes home 7 years later. Older, more mature (finally), he goes to visit a supposedly fond Aunt, who, for the past 7 years, Miranda and her son have been living with. Yes, a son who Julian knows nothing about. Now I know some regency writers try to develop fiesty girls as their lead romantic characters. But this defies logic. This was not fiesty but stupid and trite behavior. This aunt, who supposedly loved Julian, kept from him all those years the fact that not only did he have a son, but an heir? Hello, Ms. Pickens, this was a time when titles and nobility were the end all. Then, when Julian finds the boy, and he says he wants his son to raise his heir, the aunt threatens him? Says she will pack up Miranda and the boy and flee to Scotland, where English laws do not apply? Hah? She would deny the boy his heriatage? The mother, who had no money herself, would deny her son his rightful place and money to feed him? Not in those times. It would have been far more realistic to have Julian agree to have Miranda live with them than to act as if, as a peer, he had no means to gain his son. All he had to do was walk to town and the local magistrate would have gotten his boy back. That is how things were done back then.

Though I don't normally read Regency romances, I tried this one and enjoyed it. I wish though, that there was more detail and information provided. Its hard to do justice to a nice story in 216 pages. I liked all the characters, but again they could have been better developed. I agree with the observations of the previous reviewers, but I still seem to have enjoyed the book much more than they did.