Author: Margo Maguire

Throwback Thursday Review: Seducing the Governess by Margo Maguire

Posted February 25, 2021 by Tracy in Reviews | 4 Comments

Throwback Thursday Review: Seducing the Governess by Margo MaguireReviewer: Tracy
Seducing the Governess by Margo Maguire
Series: Regency Flings #4
Publisher: Avon
Publication Date: February 22, 2011
Format: Paperback
Source: Publisher
Point-of-View: Third Person
Cliffhanger: View Spoiler »
Genres: Historical Romance
Pages: 370
Add It: Goodreads
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four-stars
Series Rating: four-stars

A Proper Governess Should Never...

Assist a handsome stranger, alone on an unfamiliar road...unless the rake happens to be her new employer.

Take a position in a crumbling manor...especially if the household staff has been replaced by unruly former soldiers.

Allow her young charge entrée to her heart...for once done, it will be impossible to maintain proper distance.

Permit her charge's uncle a breathtaking kiss under a star-lit sky...henceforth she will most certainly lose composure whenever he is near.

And above all, she should never, ever fall completely, irreversibly in love with her employer...for nothing good can possibly come of it.

This review was originally posted on February 19, 2011.

Mercy Franklin was desperate after the death of her mother and decided to advertise as a governess. She only had one reply and so she took off for the Lake District. She’s not exactly sure she can do the job since she’s just a vicar’s daughter and hasn’t done anything like this before but she’s determined to do her best.

Mercy is a bit surprised when she sees the hall for the first time. It’s falling down around their heads, dusty and dirty. Emmaline, her charge and the current earl’s niece is a quiet and reserved 8-year old who hardly speaks. On top of that, the earl himself isn’t a thing like she would imagine an Earl would be like – but Mercy finds him extremely handsome despite the scars on his face. Mercy knows that she needs to stay far away from the man but she keeps finding herself in his presence. The earl is a bit harsh but Mercy finds that she enjoys verbally sparring with him and the tension between the two of them is extremely high. Mercy finds herself falling for the earl while the earl can’t seem to stay away from her either.

There are other issues going on with all of Ashby Hall’s’ residents. The earl is trying to deal with the deaths of his two older brothers, the fact that he’s now an earl and must try to marry to beget an heir, the demise of Ashby Hall and its lands, and the lack of coin to get the whole place back to its shining glory (and a dowry, if he does marry, would come in quite handy). Emmaline despite her young age is dealing with the deaths of her parents as well as the deaths of her uncle and aunt after that. I believe she finds it hard to trust anyone as she feels that they might leave her – just as the earl feels. Then there’s Mercy who is dealing with the death of her mother too soon after the death of her father – but her mother told Mercy, just before she died, that she was indeed not her daughter and they had taken her in when she was three years of age. Even though she eventually reads her “mother’s” journal and is understandably upset by the insensitivity of it she feels adrift not knowing who she really is or where she came from.

Throughout the book there’s also another story going on at the same time. This one is of a dying duke who has decided that he needs to find his two granddaughters who he so callously sent off to be placed with other families as he wanted nothing to do with them after the death of their parents. Now he wants to make amends, find the girls and bequeath to them the monies and lands of his that are unentailed. We follow Captain Gavin Briggs as he seeks to follow a 20-year-old trail and find the girls. But there’s someone else who is looking for them as well and the other person doesn’t want the girls found at all – they’ll stop at nothing to keep them hidden.

This book is really the first part of a two-part story and frankly, I’m very interested to read the second part of the book. Now, because of the two-part issue, I think that there were some things that I would have liked to have seen accomplished in this book…like Mercy (who you know from minute 1 is one of the dying duke’s granddaughters) meeting her grandfather and dealing with that mess as well as coming to terms with the family that raised her, that wasn’t and I can only assume…and hope, that those things will be dealt with in the next book.

That being said I really enjoyed this story. I thought that the tension between Mercy and Nash was wonderful and compelling and I kept turning pages to see what was going to happen next. Once the pair started the sexual part of their relationship – even though they weren’t married (scandalous, I know!) the story moved pretty quickly and things were wrapped up in about 30 pages but that was ok – it worked!

A quick, easy read that was quite enjoyable. Hopefully, we won’t have to wait too long for the second part!

Rating: 4 out of 5

Regency Flings

four-stars


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Review: Temptation of the Warrior by Margo Maguire

Posted April 16, 2008 by Rowena in Reviews | 3 Comments

Review: Temptation of the Warrior by Margo MaguireReviewer: Rowena
Temptation of the Warrior by Margo Maguire
Publisher: Harper Collins, Avon
Publication Date: March 17th 2009
Genres: Fiction, Time Travel
Pages: 384
Add It: Goodreads
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four-stars

A new land, a new time . . .

To protect his people from a great evil, Merrick Mac Lochlainn, newly crowned high chieftain of his clan, must travel forward in time nearly 1,000 years. But when he awakens in nineteenth-century England, he has no memory of his mission to save his race, nor can he recognize Jenny Keating, the spirited young beauty who calls herself his wife.

A new love . . .

Orphaned and on the run from a cruel headmaster, vulnerable and alone, Jenny never dreamed of being rescued by any man, much less a chivalrous and handsome warrior like Merrick. Drawn to his powerful physique and mysterious ways, she begins a dangerous deception and poses as his beloved. But her feelings of desire are all too real. Together they will battle a dark threat that jeopardizes their very lives, all the while tempting each other with a passion too powerful to resist.

There’s something to learn from picking up a book and pressing forward in reading it even though you don’t want to because even though this book was riddled with one cliche after the other, I still rather enjoyed this book. I still enjoyed the relationship formed between Merrick and Jenny. I enjoyed this story even though it is one of my most hated storylines….the amnesia story. One thing that I wasn’t too happy to find out AFTER I finished the book was that it was the second book in the series by Margo Maguire, but I guess it doesn’t really matter since I didn’t feel as if I was reading out of order or anything, this book could pass as a stand alone so I guess my annoyance with it being the second book stems from I wish I had known it was the second book so that I could have gotten the first book first and read it but meh, whatever…its over and done with and I enjoyed the story so all is well that ends well.

This story is about Merrick Mac Lochlainn’s quest to try to save his people from the evil Eilinora who killed his father and is trying to take over the world. He must find and take possession of the blood stones and bring them back so that they have a fighting chance at destroying the evil Eilinora, who killed his father and stole the ruling sceptor. Merrick must find those blood stones and he must travel forward in time to retrieve them. Only thing is he doesn’t know where they are so he has to go and find them. His clue? Find Keating, Ana, his cousin who has some sort of special powers that enables her to detect the future or whatever says she doesn’t know why Keating, or what it is, just find Keating and he should find the blood stones.

Oh and another thing is Merrick’s brother, Brogan has already went in search of one of the magic stones but hasn’t returned yet so they’re sending Merrick in to the future so that he can give finding the other dang stone a go. Once he gets to the future, he comes across a woman who is being attacked by highway robbers and being the gentleman that he is, he gives her a hand…he’s shot for his troubles and he goes down. When he wakes up, he doesn’t know who he is or where he’s at and that just brings a lot of trouble to him because Jenny has taken it upon herself to save him and claim him as her husband so that they would both be safe from the Gypsies and the men that tried to get her.

Jenny’s story is she’s left her position as a teacher at the Bresland School where she’s been living ever since her parents died and she hates it over there. She can’t wait to be rid of that dumb place and when she gets a job offer to become a governess, she jumps on the chance to leave. Now, leaving was supposed to be easy but it most certainly is not in her case because the evil headmaster hates her guts and her stupid ass roommate has stolen the only object of value she ever had, her mother’s locket. I swear, Jenny’s got the worst luck. She’s hated by the headmaster, her locket got stolen and the guy who was courting her for marriage dropped her like a ton of bricks because he believed everything the headmaster said about her and so she really has nothing worth sticking around for, so at the first chance she gets, she’s off to find that stupid ass Harriet (her roommate) and get her locket back.

On the way there is when she gets accosted by those highway robbers and that’s when Merrick comes to save her. She ends up saving him too because she stuck around to make sure that he was taken care of after getting shot. He doesn’t remember who he is or where he came from or where he was going so she feels she has to keep up her little lies so that he doesn’t get confused all the more. The more she lies, the closer they get and the harder it is for them to part ways. The thing that made this amnesia story good for me was that Jenny didn’t wait until the worst possible time to come out about her lies to Merrick. She doesn’t wait until someone else tells Merrick what a lying sack of shit she is. She tells him at the beginning and tries to get out of being Merrick’s “wife” even though it’s totally obvious that she seriously wants to be.

The way these two were brought together was sweet. I enjoyed the story and I felt for the characters and I enjoyed seeing each of them struggle with the depth of their feelings for each other and I enjoyed the background story of the evil witch and the good guys coming out on top. I know that with romances, the happy ending is always a given but getting there is never easy and it wasn’t easy with these two. I thought this book was an entertaining story that was easy to follow for the most part.

One thing that kind of took me out of the story is from time to time, MM would refer to Merrick as Merrick and then a paragraph or two down, she’ll refer to him as Matthew, which is the name that Jenny gave him when he didn’t know who he was. That struck me a few times, confused me but it didn’t take me too much out of the story, the story was a solid B read so I’m giving it a 4 out of 5.

Good read.

4 out of 5

four-stars


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