Customer Reviews

No Marriage of Convenience

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

 

 

No matter how hard he tries to make ends meet, Mason St. Clair can't see any way out of his financial difficulties that doesn't involve marrying an heiress. His father and older brother before him devastated the estate with their mistresses and frivolities; now it was up to Mason--the Oxford college professor--to sacrifice himself to save the family honor. But it isn't until he meets Riley Fontaine, an actress of questionable reputation, that he realizes just how much a sacrifice it will be.

Riley's theatre troupe owes the earl a large sum of money, and she's prepared to pay part of it back by working with his three out-of-control nieces in order to prepare them for marriage. (The idea of hiring an actress to train young women is an unlikely scenario in this period, but I'm willing to suspend belief because this book is just SO MUCH FUN!)

Mason's courtship of the heiress goes rather slowly, because he finds himself constantly distracted by the beautiful, seductive, and talented Madame Fontaine. He discovers that not only is she not what she seems, but it appears that someone is trying to kill her. At this point, the heiress thing gets put on the back burner as Mason determinedly installs her in his home for protection while he sets about trying to discover the killer.

Riley never thought she would fall for a college professor, but after the fact, she can't bear the thought of losing him to the heiress. She herself went through some very tough times after being abandoned by her mother and sold on the streets of Paris, but somehow she always found a way to survive without selling herself or her integrity. But Mason has to put the family honor first...or does he?

A truly riveting read for any fan of historical romance...especially if you like a touch of humor applied liberally to the sexual tension. The final scene had me choking with laughter. If only every book were as entertaining as this one!

I'm a big fan of romance novels that contain humor.So it was a real treat to discover Elizabeth Boyle.I can't say enough about this novel, it made me laugh out loud (more than once)and even brought a tear to my eye.The characters are wonderful,I absolutely loved the hero's cousin Felicity,she's a riot!!!As a matter of fact I liked all the secondary characters.Mason and Riley's story will warm your heart as well as tickle your funny bone.I hated to see the end.Well now i'm just going to have to buy all of Elizabeth Boyle's previous books and wait patiently for her next.

I picked up Ms. Boyle's newest book, NO MARRIAGE OF CONVENIENCE, when I had a little time, thinking I would just read a chapter. One chapter became two. Two became four. Soon I was halfway through and so engrossed I couldn't put it down. Mason and Riley were a dynamic duo and I found myself laughing out loud as I read their adventures. Don't miss this wonderful love story. Or believe me, you'll regret it.

I would have given this 5 stars except that the beginning was slow, and I almost put the book aside and stop reading it. But since I read Ms. Boyle's latest book and loved it, I figured I would try to read at least 100 pages before tossing it aside, and the next thing I knew I was so caught up in the story, I couldn't put it down! Give the book a chance, it is a charming read!

In 1798 Mason St. Clair, the new Earl of Ashlin knows he should not speak unkindly of the dead. However, the amount and types of debt his predecessor, his older brother Freddie, managed to accumulate simply stuns Mason. Adding to his discomfit, is his three ungainly nieces who he needs to find mates for without giving them dowries.

Actress Madame Riley Fontaine arrives to allegedly pay off a debt that Mason never heard of in his life. To Riley's chagrin and shock, the studious Mason reads the contract instead of ogling her body as she expected. The debt owed the estate by Riley would pay for the three nieces' debut. Instead, his Cousin Felicity works a deal in which Riley trains the nieces into becoming the diamonds of the season. As Riley and Mason work together and begin considering a marriage of convenience, they fall in love. However, she remains a financially strapped actress with a mysterious past and he is an aristocrat facing bankruptcy.

NO MARRIAGE OF CONVENIENCE is an entertaining Regency romance filled with an assortment of odd, but endearing characters (and a villain). The brazen story line is amusing yet filled with tender feelings that touch the audience. Elizabeth Boyle's witty tale will provide much delight to sub-genre readers.

Harriet Klausner

Elizabeth Boyle has penned a terrific story with NO MARRIAGE OF CONVENIENCE. Her compelling plot and interesting characters will have the reader turning pages at a nearly frentic pace trying to find out if Mason ever discovers the truth about the mysterious Mistress Fontaine. Highly recommended!

I loved this book! I hated to see it end. I loved all the characters, and I can see why the author intentionally did not want to write sequels, and accomplished the task by being sure that every character in the book who was eligible (not to mention 'straight') for marriage got married in this book. The result: 3 marriages at Gretna Green. This may not appeal to some readers, but it was so well done and a perfect ending to the book. Usually, I tend to find at least 3 or 4 favorite characters in a book, but in this one, I liked nearly all of them equally. I do wish we had seen just a bit more of Captain Hardy, but I wasn't unhappy with the way he was written in for Maggie. I loved how everyone got married off, especially the nieces.

This book had humor on nearly every page. It was not what I would call rib-breaking funny, although there were occassional laugh-out-loud moments throught the book. Mostly, I sat reading it with a grin/smirk on my face and chuckles throught. I am not sure who to compare the humor to, possibly Sabrina Jeffries? I'm not really sure.

As far as the 'playing' goes, they didn't till the last 100 pages of the book, and then, only twice. If you want a spicy read, you do not want this book. It was more about friendship & love than about the physical aspects. In fact, I would put the physical aspects on par with the Suzanne Enoch books I've read. In other words, pretty basic stuff, no graphic details. You won't find this to be like a Nicole Jordan book.

Now, the matter other reviewers were complaining about, the use of modern day language between the young ladies in the book. I did see a couple of short, blink & you'll miss them, lines on this order. I do agree that "Oh, Great!" and "As if!!!" don't belong in historical romance, but I do not let this stop me from giving the book a rating of 10 on the 1-10 rating scale.

Will most definitely look forward to reading more of Elizabeth Boyle's works in the future.

Mason St. Clair, Earl of Ashlin, had a title, very little money, and three nieces who were eligible for marriage but needed to be made "suitable" for potential husbands. The woman he finds for this training is Riley Fontaine, an actress and woman of questionable reputation. Though she has little money herself, what she does have is personality and quite a temper. Although this book has its amusing moments, perhaps the story would have been better served if it stuck closer to its chilling prologue. The characters here were rather superficial, and Riley seemed to be the only person of any substance here. We hope Ms. Boyle's next book will be truer to its introduction.

This isn't quite the worst book I've read this year, but it comes close. I don't read many books where I'm tempted to skim by about the second chapter, but this was one.

The plot was straightfroward fare: new Earl inherits title, a pile of debt and three unmarried daughters from his profligate brother. How can he make ends meet and find husbands for his nieces, who are not exactly the most marriageable young women around? Then, in the first plot development requiring suspension of disblief, a woman - Riley Fontaine - who runs her own theatre company (in the 1790s?!?) visits the Earl and actually lets him know that her company owes him money - now, once she'd realised that he knew nothing about it, why on earth didn't she make her escape immediately?

Anyway, be that as it may, through a convoluted process Riley is then employed to teach the Earl's nieces how to behave on the Marriage Mart. As if! A ridiculous idea in the circumstances. And the Earl and Riley are attracted to each other, but he needs to marry for money. Oh, and at the same time, through some dastardly plot by a cousin who wants the money Riley never knew she had, someone's trying to kill her. Because, as the prologue tells us - now, wouldn't it have been more interesting to keep this information hidden, Ms Boyle? - Riley is actually the granddaughter of a countess and the heir to the title and lands herself.

I don't know where the comedy was. All I saw was ludicrous farce, in scene after scene which made me cringe. Cousin Felicity - how irritating was she?! And her nosey friend. And Mason, the Earl's, friends too! As for the nieces, I can't really comment, because they were so poorly drawn I didn't find out anything at all about them. They could have been interesting characters, but instead they were shadowy, caricatured sketches.

And then Ms Boyle is another writer who doesn't appear to consider that it's important to make her characters *sound* authentic. I don't mean that she should pepper dialogue with eighteenth-century slang; but at the very least her characters should *not* use contemporary American phrasing! I lost count of the number of times I winced when a character said something which was completely wrong either for the country or the period.

I definitely made a mistake buying this book.

This is a fun book with a delightfully frothy plot. I would have given it another star, but egads! -- or as the heroine persists in putting it, "eh, gads!" -- the grammar and vocabulary are atrocious.

One would wish the author or her editor knew the difference between "may" and "might"...or "flaunt" and "flout"...or "nosing about" and "noising about." But truly mind-boggling are the references to "ramparts" shooting through Riley's veins...or the villain sitting down with "the dredges" of humanity...or finding something behind a pile of "refuge."

I felt like I should be reading with a blue pencil in my hand. Did anyone with a basic grounding in high-school English bother to look over this manuscript before it was publishes?