Review: The Bride’s Baby by Liz Fielding

Posted March 27, 2009 by Holly in Reviews | 7 Comments

The wedding of the season!

Events manager Sylvie Smith is organizing a glittering fund-raising event: a wedding show in a stately home. She has even been roped into pretending to be a bride…a bride who’s five months pregnant!

The bride everyone is talking about!

It should be every girl’s dream to design a wedding with no expense spared, but it’s not Sylvie’s. Longbourne Court was her ancestral home, and she’s just discovered that the new owner is Tom McFarlane—her baby’s secret father. Now Tom’s standing in front of her, looking at her bump.…

One of the most hated plot devices for me is the big misunderstanding. I just can’t stand it when two reasonably intelligent adults jump to conclusions about each other and aren’t mature enough to discuss the issues and resolve them in a reasonable way. So it came as a big surprise to me when I realized this book featured a Big Misunderstanding (several of them, actually) that worked for me.

Sylvie was planning the wedding of one of her girlhood friends to Tom McFarlane. At the last minute the bride runs off with one of Sylvie’s employees, leaving Tom McFarlane jilted and not too happy about the number of bills that were racked up. Sylvie can’t keep her doors open if Tom doesn’t settle up, but he’s rather reluctant about paying. While meeting for the last time things really heat up between them and they end up sleeping together. Sylvie gets called away for an emergencies almost directly after and then Tom disappears.

When she realizes she’s pregnant she tries to get in touch with him, but after several months of not hearing from him writes him off. Then she gets sucked into planning her dream wedding for a magazine layout with all proceeds going to charity. Since the charity is one her mother founded she really can’t say no. Which is too bad, because it’s being held at her childhood home – the one she lost years before when her grandfather died suddenly after gambling the family fortune way. The one Tom McFane just happens to now own.

Due to a misunderstanding, Tom doesn’t know Sylvie is pregnant with his child. He thinks she’s at the estate planning a real wedding to her ex-fiance, the man he assumes is the father of her child. Shortly after their night together he sees a magazine article about Sylvie and her fiance and thinks they’re together. He spends the next several months traveling, trying to avoid her. He realized Sylvie was special and wanted to be with her for longer than one night.

First – I love secret baby plots. I know many other readers claim to hate them, but I actually enjoy them if they’re done right (of course that’s the key, but I’ll save that post for another day). This one was believably done. As I mentioned above there were several misunderstandings, but they really worked in the context of the story. I actually kind of laughed a bit each time one assumed the wrong thing about the other, because it was more funny than anything. Kind of like a farce, only not quite that silly.

I really liked that Tom was understanding and supportive of Sylvie, even not knowing she was pregnant with his children. I also really liked that Sylvie was willing to accept Tom’s decision to not be with her. It was refreshing to see two mature adults trying to work past their hurt feelings and attraction to do the right thing.

This was a sweet story with two well-drawn characters. I liked the natural progression of the relationship and the way the the two connected.

4.25 out of 5

This book is available from Harlequin. You can download it here for free.


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7 responses to “Review: The Bride’s Baby by Liz Fielding

  1. I tend to steer clear of any sort of baby plots in my romance novels, so despite your good review, I’m still not going to pick this one up. Not even the enticement of well-drawn characters can win me over.

  2. Lori

    I liked the characters, but I thought the book was all over the place. I had no idea where the heck I was. Maybe it was reading it electronically, but I thought there was no cohesiveness in this book at all until the last 100 pages or so.

    Having said that, I can agree with much of your assessment of the characters themselves, although the writing was not my cuppa, obviously.

  3. @Number One Novels – Not even if it’s free?

    @Orannia – I think it depends on the baby plot. This one worked well. Many others? Not so much.

    @Lori and Cynde – I’m not sure what you mean about it being all over the place/confusing. Can you give me an example?

    To be fair it was quite some time ago that I read the book so I’m a bit fuzzy on some of the more minor details.

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