Most Helpful Customer Reviews
31 of 32 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Another unforgettable Balogh!, April 2, 2002
This review is from: The Temporary Wife (Paperback)
Anthony Earhart, Marquess of Staunton, desperately wants to spite the father he hates. Summoned home after eight years' absence, he knows that he is expected to marry a chit straight from the schoolroom because she is his father's choice of bride for him; a suitable match for a future duke. Well, he has no intention of conforming. He decides to marry the most unsuitable woman he can find: a mousy nobody. So - as he is determined not to stoop lower than a gentlewoman fallen on hard times - he advertises for a governess, intending to marry the most submissive and plain of the applicants. Charity Duncan seems to meet Anthony's requirements. Little does he know that her submissive manner is assumed, due to her having lost previous employment because she stood up for the rights of a chambermaid. Dressed in dull brown, she stares at the floor and seems so perfect for Anthony's purpose that he proposes to her. Charity accepts, because her family is very poor and her brother is struggling to pay off debts so that he can marry his sweetheart. After all, the marquess promises that she will only have to play the part of his wife for a matter of weeks. Then he will give her a home and a pension - six thousand pounds a year! - and she can have her freedom, except for the wedding ring. Anthony himself, he declares, never wants to marry for real, never wants to have children of his own. So they marry, and Charity accompanies Anthony to Enfield, the Duke of Withingsby's home. There, she finds an apparently cold, unloving family, and realises that her husband wasn't joking when he said he wanted to spite the father he loathed. However, Anthony has seriously underestimated Charity... Gradually, she breaks down the ice which surrounds her husband's heart and, bit by bit, she becomes his confidant. She, on the other hand, learns that passion doesn't have to have anything to do with love. While she seems to be making progress in helping Anthony to reconcile with his family, isn't she only hastening the time when he'll inform her that he doesn't need her any more, and thus of her own departure? After all, he did marry a temporary wife... In Balogh's inimitable style, she gives us a poignant story which examines relationships in all their manifestations, and shows us that love and hate are often closer than we think. And typically in a Balogh novel, the apparent villain is not so evil as he might have initially appeared. This is a wonderful romantic tearjerker, well worth the secondhand price you might have to pay!
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
This is Balogh's Masterpiece, July 21, 2004
This review is from: The Temporary Wife (Paperback)
This novel was, I believe, one of Balogh's last Signet Regencies. It's just a gem. A bit darker in theme than her usual work of this period, the novel contains a familiar Regency plot device (warm country lass marries into cold, repressed aristocratic dynasty) but is rewoven by Balogh to make an intriguing, thoughtful, and impossible-to-put-down read.
What I liked most about this book was how Balogh believably makes her heroine an amateur psychologist. That might sound off putting but Balogh makes it work. The impoverished heroine takes on more than she knows when she agrees, for money, to enter into a sham marriage with a nobleman for the sole purpose of shocking and hurting the nobleman's haughty father. As the heroine comes to understand the history and unhealed wounds of her husband's dysfunctional family, she can't help trying to "open up the windows" in the hearts and minds of those she's living with. How she does so, and how her efforts are received by her husband and his family, is the core of the drama.
In the course of the story some disturbing family issues come to the surface: the devastating effects to children who are made their parents' confidants, the corrosive nature of unrequited love, and the terrible price of misplaced pride. The novel even skirts around children's awareness of their parents' sexuality, a rather unusual topic in a romance novel.
Once again, Balogh, has created a complex and thought provoking story and tells it with style and grace. When Mary Balogh was at the top of her game (during the 1990s,) no one--and I mean no one--wrote better Regencies. This is an example of her best and not to be missed by anyone who is looking for an intelligent, moving and extremely well written Regency romance.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The best of the best!, November 18, 2004
This review is from: The Temporary Wife (Paperback)
This book has been so well reviewed previously, that it seems almost superfluous to add my own thoughts, but I will say it anyway: Read "The Temporary Wife" (if you can get it) to see why Mary Balogh has become the best in this genre. This book is simply one of the best that she has written, simply one of the best books that there is.
This is a great book on every level; her writing style is beautiful and flows easily, *pulling* you in to the story. From the minute I picked up this book, I simply couldn't put it down until I had finished the entire book. Her characters are very likeable and very complex (unusual for a Regency novel), and she introduces so many *heavy* topics that you can almost get dizzy trying to keep track of them all. Being Mary Balogh, she tackles these topics with exceptional understanding and sensitivity, and I was left with a lot of food for thought. In The Temporary Wife, Mary Balogh explores the complex relationship of father and son (why do parents treat their children badly if they really do love them so?), the complexities of an arranged marriage (is it the parties responsibility to *make* their own happiness, or not?), and the dangers of confiding too much to your children (as we see the pitfalls in this story). She shows us an unhappy family, and as we get to understand the complexities of the relationship of any family, especially this family, she also shows us that their is more than two sides to every issue, more than two sides to a coin. I have never seen any of these issues *ever* explored in any other Regency novel, and particularly not in this way, where each side is presented in its entirety. She shows us why everyone does act the way they do, until at the end, you find yourself without a villian to blame for this very messy tangle of an unhappy family.
Since this a shorter Regency novel, these topics are only very lightly skimmed, however, as she quickly steers us towards the ending for the happily-ever-after. While in many Regency novels, I get the feeling that the author is scrounging around for something to fill up the pages, in this novel, the feeling I get is just the opposite - Mary Balogh has so much to say, and so many topics to explore, that in order to cram them all in there is a somewhat superficial discussion of these issues (not to say that in this book she is superficial, rather, compared to what I have seen Mary Balogh do in some of her other books, I know that she has more to say). Wouldn't I like to see this book reprinted and expanded!!! (Publishers, are you listening????)
Mary Balogh does not need my praise. This book speaks for itself as one of the very best of its kind. An enjoyable and thought-provoking read - if you can get hold of it.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
|
