Rowena’s review of Royal Weddings by Stephanie Laurens, Gaelen Foley and Loretta Chase.
You are cordially invited To help celebrate the Royal Wedding of Prince William to Catherine Middleton As we present a 77 page original anthology Written by three utterly wonderful authors!
Stephanie Laurens’ The Wedding Planner: Lady Margaret is proud plan the ton’s most important nuptuals—including that of a prince. But it’s Lady Margaret who falls in love . . . with dashing Gaston Devilliers!
Gaelen Foley’s Ever After: How scandalous! Eleanor Monford, Countess of Archer, is in love with her own husband. And as Princess Charlotte of England weds Prince Leopold, Eleanor’s “secret” is about to come out.
Loretta Chase’s The Jilting of Lord Rothwick: On the eve of Queen Victoria’s wedding to Prince Albert, the Marquess of Rothwick learns his fiancÉe, Barbara Findley, has broken their engagement! So he desperately rides out of London to seek her out . . . and to win her back.
This is one of the shortest anthologies that I’ve read and while I did enjoy it, each story was far too short for me to love. I was left with each story, wanting so much more than I got.
In the first story, Stephanie Lauren tells a quick story of Lady Margaret and Gaston. They know each other from their past and while Lady Margaret is mourning her fiance (even after all this time) and planning a wedding, she can’t help but be attracted and distracted by Gaston Devilliers. Gaston has his own plans and he’s going to see them through. This story zipped right on by and was enjoyable. It’s not my favorite of the bunch but I think that Laurens did a great job of making me want more. I enjoyed both Margaret and Gaston but at the end, I didn’t feel like I got to know them as much as I would have liked. I also pictured Gaston as Gaston from Disney’s Beauty and the Beast but that was okay. He was still likeable.
Grade: 3 out of 5
In the second story, Gaelen Foley tells the story of Lord and Lady Archer. This was my favorite story of the bunch because in this story, the couple is already married. They’re just not happily married and by the end of the book, they are. I love these kinds of stories. In historical times, it wasn’t unheard of to marry for duty, instead of for love so to watch Eleanor and Archer fall in love with each other was much more believable in such a short story.
Lady Archer has done the unthinkable and has fallen in love with her husband. She’s not at all happy with how busy he is with his political career and she’s heard whispers about him having a mistress and even though she knows that it’s the thing to do between husbands in the ton, she’s pissed. She’s livid about it all and she’s turned ice queen on him.
Archer has no idea what has gotten into his wife. He’s confused because their marriage had been going along swimmingly and so he’s not sure why his wife is being so cold to him. She understands that he’s got his eye into getting into politics and she’s helped him out before so he doesn’t know what flew up her bonnet.
It is at the royal wedding of Princess Charlotte of England and Prince Leopold that husband and wife finally make peace with each other and fall in love out loud. I thought this story was cute and if it had been longer, I would have loved the hell out of it. It’s hard to love these short stories but Foley did a wonderful job of engaging me in the Archer’s story and I appreciated her efforts.
Grade: 3.25 out of 5
In the last story, Loretta Chase tells the shortest story of them all. The Marquess of Rothwick needs to get married to some lady who is super rich so that he could restore his crumbling estate. He goes after Barbara Findley, who has the kind of money that he needs and he pursues her like no other. Barbara falls madly in love with him but isn’t sure if he returns the feeling and she wants to marry for love instead of for her money so she breaks their betrothal and that’s when things get interesting.
Rothwick is down in the dumps after having been dumped by Barbara and he’s more than a little pissed off that he now has to start all over again so he does what any other man would do…he gets rip roaring drunk. He gets so drunk that he doesn’t really remember Barbara coming to his door to explain why she couldn’t marry him.
As all romance stories end, it ends happily but it ends most abruptly. This story was like ten pages long and the whole story was crammed in and I think I would have enjoyed it more if I didn’t feel like their entire story was being jammed down my throat. It would have been more enjoyable had the story been drawn on a bit longer and the relationship between Rothwick and Barbara would have been more real if I got more from them but this story felt rushed and it ended too soon.
Grade: 2.5 out of 5
Overall, the stories showed lots of promise and while I enjoyed them, I was left wanting so much more. I know that it’s hard to cram an entire story with feelings and believable storylines into such a short amount of pages but these stories would have been so much better if they had more to them.
Overall grade: 3 out of 5
This book is available from Avon Impulse. You can buy it here in e-format.
I agree with your review. As far as the Chase, I was very disappointed, couldn’t believe how short it was, felt like I read the beginning and wondering where’s the rest of the story, this must be the excerpt.
I have been reading a lot of spec fic short stories lately and a lot of them have been awesome, but the romance short stories I have read (including these) just haven’t worked as well. I think it is something to do with not being able to develop the relationships in such a short period of time