Ravishing the Heiress (Berkley Sensation) [Mass Market Paperback]

Sherry Thomas (Author)

Book Description

Release date: July 3, 2012 | Series: Berkley Sensation

Millicent understands the terms of her arranged marriage all too well. She gets to be a Countess by marrying an impoverished Earl. And in return, the Earl Fitzhugh receives the benefit of her vast wealth, saving his family from bankruptcy. Because of her youth, they have agreed to wait eight years before consummating the marriage--and then, only to beget an heir. After which, they will lead separate lives.

It is a most sensible arrangement. Except for one little thing. Somehow Millie has fallen head over heels in love with her husband. Her husband, who has become her very best friend, but nothing more...Her husband, who plans to reunite with his childhood sweetheart, the beautiful and newly widowed Isabella, as soon as he has honored the pact with his wife...

As the hour they truly become husband-and-wife draws near, both Millie and Fitzhugh must face the truth in their hearts. Has their pact bred only a great friendship--or has it, without either of them quite noticing, given rise to a great love?

Editorial Reviews

Review

“Soul-searing, heartrending, and intensely romantic, this late Victorian historical takes the classic marriage-of-convenience theme to a refreshing new level, making effective use of alternating time periods, as the characters struggle to reconcile duty and loyalty with personal desire and to understand what love really is—and is not. Another exquisitely rendered, insightful romance from one of the genres stars.” –Library Journal

"Millie’s intellect and selflessness make her a standout among a cast of memorable characters in this expertly plotted and emotionally wrenching love story." --Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Thomas’s lyrical writing is really the star of the show.
There are writers who can tell a great story, and writers
who can tell a great story with beauty and artistry. Thomas
is in the latter category, and her writing is, quite simply, a
cut above.” —All About Romance

"Searing, tender, and filled with passion, her writing is nothing short of a revelation."—Lisa Kleypas

About the Author

Sherry Thomas is an award-winning author of six historical romances that have wowed reviewers and readers alike.  She lives in Austin, Texas with her husband and sons.

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: Berkley (July 3, 2012)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0425250873
• ISBN-13: 978-0425250877
• Product Dimensions: 4.1 x 1 x 6.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (59 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #324,486 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Sherry Thomas is one of the most acclaimed romance authors working today. Her books regularly receive starred reviews from trade publications and are frequently found on best-of-the-year lists. She is also a two-time winner of Romance Writers of America's prestigious RITA® Award.

English is Sherry's second language--she has come a long way from the days when she made her laborious way through Rosemary Roger's SWEET SAVAGE LOVE with an English-Chinese dictionary. She enjoys digging down to the emotional core of stories. And when she is not writing, she thinks about the zen and zaniness of her profession, plays computer games with her sons, and reads as many fabulous books as she can find.

Sherry's next book, THE BURNING SKY, volume one of her young adult fantasy trilogy, will be available September 2013.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 27 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Could Someone Call A Whaaambulance For the Hero? Spoilers! August 28, 2012

By Lola Jane

Format:Kindle Edition

Sherry Thomas is a really good author. She writes strangely enjoyable historical romances that are a little outlandish in their premise but they have a certain charm. This isn't really one of those books. It was just okay. It was very well-written and you really like the heroine though she could have used a little more gumption. On the down side, the hero was a whiny putz. He was a mostly nice guy who had an unfortunate tendency to frequently feel sorry for himself and ensure that just about everyone around him knew that the sky just fell in on him without regard for the feelings of everyone around him. On the neutral side, the narrative jumped back and forth between the Hero & Heroine's past and present as well as too many scenes involving secondary characters who get their own book, next.

Millie, the heroine, was a very nice character just as the author wrote her. She was poised, wise beyond her years, humble, modest, smart, sensible, reasonable, and loving. Now, I realize that I should just read the book as it is written and not wish for things that weren't there. But, I can't help it. I wanted Millie to throw things. Preferably at the head of the hero. As far as I could tell, she had no point of no return. The hero could not push her past the point of endurance. She was always capable of putting up a front that was calm, stoic, and accepting. She was a paragon that was mistreated. I wanted a little karmic payback in the form of her kicking him to the curb, figuratively. Or just kicking him. So, in the end, she just ended up being kind of a sad girl. She won in the end but she had to put up with so much.

The hero. Blech. Spoiler! The hero, due to deaths in the family, is forced to marry an heiress to repair the family fortunes and pay his inherited debts.... He has to abandon the GREAT LOVE OF HIS LIFE to marry Millie, the heiress. He is going to do the honorable thing and assume the title and repay the debts (yeah, right!) The hero loses his ever-loving mind and any courtesy towards his new wife. He spends way too much of the book mooning over his lost love and feeling sorry for himself. Oh, the Humanity! Millie is just sixteen years old and she is kindness and wisdom, personified, to the hero who doesn't deserve anything but to be left to drink himself into oblivion, alone. It isn't her fault that he has these debts but she is a convenient person for him to treat shabbily. She is the one who saves him, repeatedly- from financial ruin, from alcoholism, from possible suicide, from his own repeated stupidity, from a boring life. But, the author tries to write this as if the hero is an honorable guy. He isn't. He is just honorable and courteous to those he chooses to be- those whose opinions matter to him. And Millie doesn't really matter that much when it counts. He is either weak or a whiner and he refuses to really value Millie for all the contributions she has made to his life that he just takes for granted.

More Spoilers! When his abandoned love comes into the picture, the hero becomes a total punk. I particularly enjoyed the fact that she gave him her fortune, freedom from debt, freedom to pursue affairs, a life's ambition, worthy work, wealth, two comfortable homes, and her daily labor and in return he is willing to give her SIX MONTHS to gain an heir. SIX LOUSY MONTHS. The whole point of his deal with her parents was that, in exchange for their money, their grandchild would be titled. It does not matter that Millie was willing to wait, he still made that deal knowingly and he has happily lived off of the proceeds of that deal. And, he was willing to stingily part with SIX MONTHS of his time. And whose money does he use to pay for his prospective beloved mistress' home? Jerk. At this point, he and Millie are supposedly friends (hopefully, he finally recalled her birthday!) yet he is going to abandon her to be faithful to his returned GREAT LOVE (who is a bit of a whiny cow, herself.) And, in the abandoning he is going to use Millie's money to pay for his beloved's (and her children by another man) upkeep, let his lost love disrespect Millie, let her come into Millie's home and insult her, he and she undermine Millie's role in her husband's family, and generally he is a weakling where honor could easily lead him to behave with some class.

The happily ever after was too short. Millie never got her metaphorical slow-clap for being the most awesome wife a punk could ever hope to have. He chose her- whoop-dee-do. He isn't a prize! I kind of felt sorry for Millie. And, he is still paying for the whiny cow's upkeep!

A sidenote- the back of the book said where you can find the whiny cow's story in an anthology. If she isn't being stoned and chased out of town for being a jerk, I don't want to read it. Read more ›

24 of 26 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars So good I was suffering along with the heroine. July 4, 2012

By Old Latin teacher TOP 500 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Mass Market Paperback

Usually when I read a romance I'm observing the couple from afar, recognizing when it's a well- or badly-written HR and just enjoying it rather objectively. But with this one my stomach was often in knots in sympathy with the heroine, even though I knew the book would have the requisite HEA.

As a teenager I read Georgette Heyer's A Civil Contract, which is pretty much the same theme as this one and remember I did not like it because of the poor heroine's agonies, but a re-read as a mature (Read "old" here, I guess) woman left me with a much more favorable impression of the book.

In Heyer's book, Viscount Lynton, Adam Deveril, is madly in love with beautiful, vivacious Julia Oversley, but financial straits force him to marry Jenny Chawleigh, the quiet and plain daughter of a very wealthy "cit". Adam learns to appreciate Jenny's hidden depths and finally sees that his beautiful Julia is not as perfect as his younger self had remembered and learns to be content. (Jenny, of course, had fallen deeply in love with Adam, but she's "quiet", you know.)

Well, Sherry Thomas has gone Heyer one better, IMO. Here hero Earl Fitzhugh is in the same financial straits and must marry wealth, which appears in the form of our heroine Millicent (Millie) Graves, daughter of a very wealthy middle-class businessman. You meet the already-married couple in Fitz's sister Venetia's story (Beguiling the Beauty (Berkley Sensation), but now we get the whole back story in flashbacks alternating with the present....

We see how very madly in love a much younger Fitz was with Isabelle, his first and, so the book might have us believe, only love. It was a very deep attachment and when he is forced by circumstances to marry Millie, his suffering is great. (The first year of their marriage is quite a stressor, BTW, for them and for the reader.)

Millie, on the other hand, falls in love with Fitz almost at first sight, but she's quiet (like Heyer's Jenny) and doesn't let it show. When they marry Millie is only 16, so they agree to wait 8 years to consummate the marriage. Now, during this time Fitz is free to seduce whatever woman strikes his fancy (not Isabelle, of course. She's his Perfect Love on a Pedestal and anyway she married and moved to India).

I didn't like this "open marriage" aspect of the situation, but then again a "man has needs" and he's not to bed Millie for 8 long years. So he's getting sex outside the marriage, but he and Millie are developing a great friendship and partnership inside the marriage.

IMO, this book is beautifully written and I very much enjoyed the agony of the read. This may be the first time I was happy that a good HR was relatively short (only 283 pages). I don't think I could have taken many more pages of Millie's heartbreak without looking for a Xanax.

And how does Thomas do Heyer one better? By having Fitz realize that Millie is actually The One for him. It's not just the mild contentment Heyer's Adam feels with his Jenny. Heyer's take may be more realistic, but I do prefer Thomas's more romantic ending. Read more ›

26 of 31 people found the following review helpful

1.0 out of 5 stars Not worth paying for July 21, 2012

By VP Reader

Format:Mass Market Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

More time setting up the story for next couple in the series, and not enough on main couple. The story kept jumping back and forth from present to past and this would have been ok if the Author had spent more time with the couple in the present.The only good thing was I did feel for the heroines agony over loving the hero, and I was looking forward to the hero finding out he loved the heroine, I wanted to see the guilt he would feel about all the pain and wasted years he made her put up with, But nothing like that happened. The ending was rushed with heroine just knowing somehow that the hero loved her without any clue from the hero. He felt very little sorrow for what the heroine had to deal with. And showed more regret that he could not be with the other woman. Would not reccomend this book to others.

27 of 34 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars Pretty writing here and there, but pure misery to read July 10, 2012

By Karla Bushway

Format:Kindle Edition

**MINOR SPOILERS**
I've got a longer review elsewhere online with pictures and snark (**cough**Goodreads**cough**), but I thought I'd put the jist of my gripes here as well.

This was the first time I'd read Sherry Thomas, and she came recommended as an author who wrote prettily and didn't adhere to standard formula. Both of those are true (though I found the writing more cliched than I'd expected), but I still didn't like it overall.

The alternating timelines between chapters was highly annoying. I already know how Millie and Fitz are in the present, why do I want to see them just as miserable/masochistic/doormatty in the past? Plus, when I had to set the book down multiple times to do things, picking it back up was a pain because both past and present were limp and colorless with little to distinguish the eras (and spending time on relaying details of the hero's sisters' love lives in each time period was confusing and pointless). So reading it in one sitting is recommended (though I have NO experience with that and I envy folks who can).

This book is short. Very short. As short as a Harlequin Historical. And too much -- WAY TOO MUCH -- time is spent on the unrelated and shoehorned set-up of the next book's romance. To charge $8 for a book that is short to begin with and THEN stuff with sequel bait filler is highway robbery. Oh, and dishonest and lazy. Strip this book of the adds-nothing-to-the-plot scenes between Helena and Hastings, and you have something that barely rates as a paperweight.

Millie is a heroine who had me yearning for a feisty TSTL heroine of old. At least they try to DO SOMETHING, even if it's stupid and doomed to failure. Millie suffers, endures, waits, and....gets her man.... She abuses herself by asking her husband for details of his affairs, all the while crying and dying inside. What a doormat. An absolutely contemptible doormat.

Fitz is no prize, a whingeing emo teenager who never grows up and channels all his passion into his jilted lover Isabelle's dormouse and the heroine's inherited business (the profits of which he uses to tend his mistresses). He's a self-absorbed, uncharismatic dbag who seems to come around to loving his wife only because it turns out Isabelle is an insufferable snob & the dormouse dies (severing an emotional tie) and Millie is actually hot in the sack and knows how to advertise chocolate bars. (He treasures her mind, doncha know!)

The ending...omg, the ending. What a hacky rush job, and prompted by the lamest of devices. After being so slowly-paced to the point of inertness, the last several pages seemed slapped on as if the author ran out of ideas and/or patience.

As for the writing, yeah, there were pretty phrases here and there, but in all honesty there are only so many times I can enjoy reading about a couple wangsting over the darkness and shadows crushing their spirit and souls, with trite phrases like "Her heart broke for him, into a thousand pieces." If you like angst, you'll probably be a happy camper. I even like some dark and miserable stuff, but the hero and heroine have to be more interesting than smelly ol' dishrags. Read more ›