My Darling Caroline [Paperback]

Adele Ashworth (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1, 1998

Lady Caroline Grayson had always wanted to study botany--until an arranged marriage threatened her dream. But she never expected her new husband to support her--and she never expected to fall in love.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Caroline Grayson is a brilliant, independent nineteenth-century woman whose true passion is botany. Denied her dreams of studying at Oxford University because of her gender, she is also prevented from putting her auxiliary plan of attending New York University into action when her father compels her to marry the mysterious and sullen earl of Weymerth, Brent Ravenscroft. They both enter into the marriage with visions of personal gain. Brent wants to get his horses back from Caroline's father, who bought his estate while he was away at war. Caroline wants to annul the marriage, thus gaining the freedom to sail to the U.S. and achieve her dream of becoming a world-class botanist. But their hearts have other ideas. Caroline gradually realizes that her husband means as much to her as her flowers and that his unconventional respect for her intelligence represents a form of freedom her peers can only vaguely imagine. Ashworth's smart dialogue, complex characters, and complicated plot twists make this debut novel a joy to read. Alexandra Baker

About the Author

I've always loved to write, but after my first attempt at a novel (nine chapters of Plastic City, the story of underwater-dwelling orphans in the twenty-third century that I wrote in the sixth grade), I took some time to get my bachelor's degree and to try my hand at other careers before I returned to my first passion: creative writing. After lots and lots of perseverance, hard work, and a bit of very good luck, My Darling Caroline went on to win the Romance Writers of America's RITA^® Award for Best First Book of 1998.

I live in Texas with my family, exploring history as I delve into the hearts of my characters.

--This text refers to the Mass Market Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Jove; Regular Print/Single Titl edition (October 1, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0515123692
• ISBN-13: 978-0515123692
• Product Dimensions: 6.7 x 4.1 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (37 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,673,877 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Adele Ashworth is the RITA Award-winning and USA Today bestselling author of ten historical romances. She is currently writing her eleventh book for Avon/HarperCollins.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I would give this book ten stars, August 24, 2000

By 

Maria R. Varecka "Maria" (New York, NY United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: My Darling Caroline (Paperback)

When I read "Winter Garden" by Adele Ashworth, I thought it was the best book I had read in a long time and wrote her to tell her so and she was kind enough to write back to thank me. But, I was wrong, her book "My Darling Caroline" is ranked right up there with "Winter Garden."

The book is about Caroline, a brilliant botonist, who is denied admission to study at Oxford university because of her gender. She is admitted to Columbia University in America only because she told them she was a man, but her father had different ideas. He has arranged a marriage for Caroline to the Lord of Weymerth, a man who has just returned from war.

To say the least, Brent and Caroline are both opposed to this marriage. Caroline has all intentions of having the marriage annuled so that she can travel to America to attend Columbia and Brent, the Lord of Weymerth, is marrying only to get back some of his property and horses, which he breeds. But fate has other plans for them.

The story takes off from there. Adele Ashworth delves into their minds and we get to know Caroline and Brent and come to care for them as dearly as they come to care for each other. I have never read dialogue between the hero and heroine that was so moving and so mezmerizing that it brought tears to my eyes more than once. The scene where they consumate their marriage is so sweet, I had to read it more than once. The book takes hold of you from the very first page and only gets better.

I'm an avid romance reader and go through about three books per week, which I think is good considering I have a full time job. I have to say that I read "My Darling Caroline" in two days. I just couldn't let go. I felt the same about "Winter Garden."

As far as I'm concerned, Adele Ashworth is some kind of writer and my hat is off to her. She can't write fast enough for me.

Please do yourself a favor and read her books - you surely won't be sorry.

19 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Simply Magic, March 29, 2001

By 

Tate (New Jersey) - See all my reviews

This review is from: My Darling Caroline (Paperback)

Have you ever finished a romance novel and thought, this is how it is supposed to be done, this is how I am supposed to feel? I am supposed to feel that I know the main characters intimately, I am supposed to feel their pain, and rejoice at their happiness. That is how I felt when I read the last page of this book and I realized that, unless something truly strange happened and Adele Ashworth starts writing very differently, I will always buy her books, because this is how romance is supposed to be written.

Caroline Grayson is not simply intelligent, she is brillant and wonderfully talented with plants. Ever since she discovered her affinity for flowers, she has wanted to study botany with her idol who is a professor at Oxford University. However, when she is cruely dismissed because she is female, she disguises her gender and applies, and is accepted, to study in New York.

However, things don't go as planned when her father announces that she must marry Brent Ravenscroft, an impoverished lord who has come to her father to demand the return of property which was improperly sold to him when Brent went off to war. Caroline's father tells Brent that he must marry Caroline in order to get back what was sold, throwing both of them into a relationship that neither desired. Caroline believes, since Brent doesn't want to marry her anyway, that she can simply get an annulment and fulfill her dream by going to New York. Of course, things don't work out quite that way...

What follows is a truly touching story about what it means to love and be loved. The pain, excitement, and healing that often goes with falling in love with a person who truly is meant for you.

The most amazing thing about this book, and other Ashworth titles like Winter Garden, are the characters. The reader has the joy of watching two people who had planned different futures for themselves, ultimately find happiness and love. Both have emotional scars, Caroline from growing up brillant, but limited by her gender, and Brent from dealing with his family. I was touched when Ashworth described the pain Caroline felt when she had to stand outside classrooms in order to learn more about the science she so loved, enduring comments about her feminity. So often authors tell us that a heroine is intelligent, but so few show it as well as Ashworth. Thank you Adele Ashworth for giving us romance readers such a wonderful and moving story. For those of you who find yourself without something to read, and have not all ready devoured this book like I and so many other have, or for those of you who simply wonder what all the fuss is about, read this book. It's magic.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Actually, I would give this book three and a half stars, May 22, 2003

By 

L. G. Schilling "gigibookworm" (SPRING HILL, FL United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: My Darling Caroline (Paperback)

because it was entertaining although I thought the pacing was a little off at times and the dialogue a bit stilted and quite modern in some instances. However, I am always willing to overlook modern dialogue and an over-used plot as long as the author manages to keep me interested for 338 pages and Ms. Ashworth certainly accomplished that.

Caroline Grayson is a gifted botanist with the unladylike dream of traveling to America to study botany at Columbia University. However, her dream is shattered when her father announces that she's to be wed to the Earl of Weymerth. The Earl is also being forced to wed in order to obtain back his estate that was sold from under him while he was in the continent battling Napoleon.Caroline sees this a brilliant opportunity to put her plan into motion. She plans to wed the handsome earl and then ask him for an anullment (sp?). To her mind this should be a simple thing to do since she does not care for him and he certainly doesn't care for her. What Caroline never considered was that the Earl might want a wife and that she might end up wanting to be a wife to him thereby giving up the dream of a lifetime.

This arranged marriage plot is certainly overused in historicals but in this book the author makes it work. As I understand this was the author's first book so that might explain the sometimes ackward pacing of the story. I disliked the extraneous plot involving an assassin from the hero's past. It seemed that it was inserted into the story as an after thought and did not really mesh with the love story being told. Also, there were many characters like Davis the horse trainer and Caroline's sisters that appeared in one or two scenes and were never to be seen or heard from again with no explanation. Another quibble was having two characters named Charlotte (one was the hero's sister and the other the heroines!) which made it very confusing. Also, the dialogue at times sounded much too modern for a novel set in the Regency period, this is a minor problem but it did jolt me out of the story a few times. Having said that, I have to admit that this was quite a love story and it does not really suffer all that much from the things I have listed above. The romance and the way the author turned overused plot devices and made them unique to her story was able to make up for those shortcomings very well.For example, the hero and heroine recognize their love early on which I found very unusual and the requisite big-misunderstanding is not dragged on interminably.Overall, this was a very satisfying read and I will be looking foward to reading this author's other works. :-)