Customer Reviews

The Wife Trap: A Novel

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

Jeannette Brantford caused a huge scandal with her twin sister Violet in England when they traded places after Jeannette refused to marry Adrian Winter. Violet and Adrian are now very happily married but Jeannette has been sent to Ireland to wait out the scandal. Along the way her coach becomes stuck in the mud and Darragh O'Brien comes to the rescue.

Jeannette thinks Darragh is very handsome, but he is rude and certainly no gentleman. Jeannette has no intention of fraternizing with any one she believes to be below her station. Also, she fled her engagement to Adrian because she thought herself in love with another man, but she was crushed when he dumped her. Jeannette now intends to marry for money and title.

Darragh finds the beautiful Jeannette intriguing. Although they continually spar with each other, they are also secretly very attracted to each other. Nothing can come of their affections though, because they are from two very different worlds. Even a few stolen kisses can't change who they are and what they want. After being caught in a compromising position, Darragh and Jeannette are forced to marry. Darragh is really a titled Earl but he keeps his status a secret from Jeannette because he wants her to love him, not his money. As time goes by Darragh worries though, that asking Jeannette to love him without giving her the possessions she desires may be too much to ask of his wife.

The Wife Trap left me with mixed feelings. Although I think the storyline is clever, try as I might, I cannot understand what Darragh sees in Jeannette. Darragh is roguishly handsome, charming and witty but Jeannette is rude, snobbish and nasty. I adored Darragh but I whole-heartedly disliked Jeannette. She has no redeeming qualities whatsoever and she does not deserve a man as good as Darragh. In my opinion, Darragh is truly trapped with Jeannette as his wife. With the exception of Jeannette, The Wife Trap has all the makings of a wonderful romance. Unfortunately though, Jeannette is with Darragh and therefore the book lost its appeal for me.

Nannette
Reviewed for Joyfully Reviewed

This book was a real page turner. I read the entire trilogy in 3 days. 1 each day! I love the way that Tracy Warren describest the settings and the characters. Great Book!!!!!

Jeanette Brantford did not want to get married and talked her twin sister, Violet, into taking her place as the bride for what should have been her own wedding. Once the deception was discovered, as punishment, Jeanette's parents banished her from England to stay with her elderly cousins in Ireland. She's just sure that she'll wither away to nothing. Even her maid has abandoned Jeanette in her time of need. Rather than accompany her into exile in the wilderness of Ireland, Jacobs sought employment elsewhere.

Irishman Darragh O'Brien is no commoner. He's the eleventh Earl of Mulholland. Instead of marrying for money he chose to labor as an architect in order to restore his family estate and support his mother and siblings. Of course, Jeanette isn't aware of his gentry status, and he fully intends to use that fact to learn is she has true feelings for him.

Jeanette thought that being exiled to Ireland was the worst thing that had ever happened to her - until she met Darragh. This baseborn man insults her, has the audacity to laugh at her, and horror of all horrors, he has absolutely no respect for her station in life. He also intrigues and excites her like no other man. Of course, her being the highborn lady that she is, Jeanette could never marry such a commoner. Indulging in a little harmless flirting, heated looks, and stolen kisses should satisfy her fascination with him. It is Darragh's own fault that her every waking thought is consumed with either him or returning to England. After all, it is his workmen that awaken her every morning at the unholy hour of six with their work on Jeanette's cousins' home. It may be perfectly acceptable to these uncouth people but Jeanette is a lady of refinement and must both maintain her normal schedule and get the proper amount of sleep. Politely asking Darragh to have his crew start work a little later in the day was just as politely refused. Darragh sees Jeanette for the selfish, self-indulgent woman she's always accepted as her right and he's having none of it. It's a battle of wills that will have him alternately wanting to strangle or kiss her.

THE WIFE TRAP is the second book in Tracy Anne Warren's back-to back trilogy which also consists of THE HUSBAND TRAP and THE WEDDING TRAP. In a nutshell, these books are simply delightful. Each one can be read separately but they do have interconnecting characters so reading all three books really does make it more fun. I couldn't help but smile my way through the pages of THE WIFE TRAP, Jeanette's self indulgent pity party is just too funny to resist. She's so convinced everything important in life is in England and revolves around her place in society that it's simply delightful to imagine Darragh not cave into her demands and not allow her to get away with her childish stunts.

Chrissy Dionne (courtesy of Romance Junkies)

I have to say, I was a little wary of reading The Wife Trap after learning that it centered around the selfish Jeannette, who had abandoned her fiance in the previous novel. While I don't enjoy books with the perfect heroine, I also don't like reading stories with flaky main characters like Jeannette.

The problem is that we are meant to believe that Jeannette, a woman given to throwing temper tantrums, is actually a quiet soul with a penchant for painting and long walks. Highly doubtful. Ms. Warren is a very good writer, and delivers a well-written and humorous novel. However, without a likable heroine, the story is not nearly as good as it could have been.

The main problem i had with this book was the heroine, Jeannette. She didn't appeal to me in "the Husband Trap" but I was hoping she would show some redeeming qualities in this book. She didn't. She was annoying, spoilt, bratty, selfish right up until the end of the book. I kept reading hoping that at some point the author would provide Jeannette with an epiphany that would change her behaviour towards the man she supposedly loves, Darragh, but it never happened. Darragh on the other hand was a wonderful, romantic character. sincere in his effort to win the affections of his wife, and to make her happy, but I just couldn't see why he would keep persisting when Jeannette never gave much in return. It was an unbalanced relationship.
the ending of the book was also quite abrupt. The only time that Jeannette apologises and professes her love to Darragh comes in the last few pages of the book. it felt like a crash landing, very sudden and with relief but not fullfilling of the promise one hopes for in a love story.
Having said that, i still think the book is a good read. Well written and in the prose of the time period. it hasn't put me off reading Tracy Warren's other novels.

The writing style is great but i just could not get over the heroine's spoiled brat attitude and she had no other redeeming qualities to recommend her. It's a wonder that the hero would even fall in love with someone so obnoxious. It was the heroine that made this story unpalatable.

I tried. Really, I did. Without quite knowing why, I slogged my way through the first half of this book, at times wondering why I continued. Granted, the author is not terrible. She writes clearly and well, with great descriptions. The plot wasn't half bad, either -- sort of a take off on the Taming of the Shrew, maybe. As if it took place in Ireland rather than Italy. I hadn't been overly thrilled with the selfish character of Lady Jeannette from the first book (The Husband Trap) and thought the Duke well out of the match with her, even if he didn't know it for a very long time.

I had hopes that perhaps being exiled to Ireland might somehow straighten out the wilful young woman who had, after all, been raised to think the sun climbed high into the sky and beamed just for her. But no, it was not to be. She hadn't even reached her destination yet when she ran afoul of Darragh O'Brien, the architect working at the home she was to visit for the next several months. He seemed a reasonable hero type, and could maybe help Lady Jeannette see the error of her ways.

Of course, that didn't happen. In fact, the results were exactly opposite! Together, they managed to get themselves thoroughly compromised, and politely forced into marriage. To each other. And then, for me, the book fell apart. Darragh turned into a nasty, brutish sort of person, determined to prove to Jeannette that she loved him as the man he presented to her, rather than who he really was -- the Earl of Mulholland. I found him over-bearing and boorish, and then he went beyond that, even. I closed the book at page 268, with 124 pages yet to go. I know it will end happily, or it couldn't be a romance novel. I just have no urge, no curiosity whatever to see how these two get to that point without one of them killing the other. I don't think I'll try the next book in the series, either. Sorry.

While I enjoyed the plot of the book immensely it just didn't captivate me. I love a plot that takes a snotty princess type and turns her into a real person and, in that, the plot did not disappoint. The were just some areas of the book that seemed to lag for me.

While I enjoyed the plot of the book immensely it just didn't captivate me. I love a plot that takes a snotty princess type and turns her into a real person and, in that, the plot did not disappoint. The were just some areas of the book that seemed to lag for me.

In the second book of new author Tracy Anne Warren's "Trap Trilogy", beautiful Lady Jeannette Brantford is banished from her home to the godforsaken wilderness of Ireland! Embroiled in a scandal that she herself had instigated, her parents had consigned her to this insufferable island to stay with elderly cousins she'd never even met. Without the social whirl of London she would simply die of boredom. Before she would even arrive at her destination, she would [...]heads with her cousin's architect, Darragh O'Brien, a sexy and brash Irishman who would set her head in a tail spin and arouse a battle of wills and a passion that neither had ever experienced before. Darragh O'Brien, wasn't just a simple working class architect but the eleventh Earl of Mulholland with estates, a castle and enough wealth to satisfy even the very brash, self-centered and spoiled Lady Jeannette, IF she'd ever let him get a word in edgewise to tell her.

First off, this reviewer found this book to be a delightful read and found myself laughing out loud several times and usually at the expense of the heroine Lady Jeannette, whose snobbery and high and mighty ways begged that she be cut down a peg or two. Thank the lord, Darragh O'Brien was on hand to do just that! Obviously, you will surmise and correctly so, that this is not a heroine that you are going to like very much - if only in the beginning. Lady Jeannette certainly needed to be taught a lesson after the prank she had played with other peoples lives and Darragh was the perfect person to teach it to her. Granted she does have her better moments, but these are few and far between. In my humble opinion, an author takes a big gamble when they create a heroine that is so top lofty they need to be cut down to size. I've noticed that if a reader gets to the point that they don't like the heroine, they automatically close off their minds as well as the book itself rather than read on. What should be recognized is the talent of the author in creating a character that arouses such emotion in the reader's mind - even if that emotion is hate. Darragh O'Brien, on the other hand, was a dream come true whose faith in himself and in teaching Jeannette to love unselfishly was an inspiration.

Having not read the first book in this trilogy, I can attest to the fact that is a singularly stand-alone read. I was delighted to discover that I liked this new authors writing style showing that she has a devilishly fine sense of humor with cleverly executed dialogs that employ excellent witticism and timing.

Lady Jeannette's constant whining over not getting the proper amount of rest did get old after awhile and this did tend to focus more attention on the fact that she was not a very nice person and enforced this reviewers dislike of our heroine. Even when Jeannette finally admits to herself that she does love Darragh, she continues to try and manipulate him into giving in to her selfish needs of wanting to be in the limelight of the London social whirl. For me this story was saved entirely by the lovely romantic overtures of our hero, Darragh that gave the reader a lovely romance element and the ruses he used in trying to get her to admit to her feelings for him were priceless. The cooking lessons were a joy! Bottom line is that yes, even though I was in no way very fond of the heroine, I did enjoy the story and would recommend it.

Marilyn Rondeau, RIO - Reviewers International Organization

I have to admit I enjoyed this book much more than I expected. Jeanette is a very spoiled young woman who I originally thought had nothing to redeem her. But the story of how she falls in love with a common Irish man is funny but heartfelt. Highly recommended.