Rowena’s review of The Bride Says No (Brides of Wishmore #1) by Cathy Maxwell.
Lady Aileen never thought she’d be in this position—falling in love with her sister’s betrothed! Of course, her sister did run away rather than marry him, and he doesn’t seem to be all that interested in her sister either, but even so, such a match is impossible…isn’t it?
Aileen is certain she must turn away from the man she loves in order to protect her sister’s reputation. However, he’s not one to give up without a fight, and now that he’s met a woman he wants to marry, nothing on earth could convince him to let Aileen go.
This is the first book in the Brides of Wishmore series by Cathy Maxwell. I’ve enjoyed Maxwell’s books in the past so I was pretty stoked to get this book for review.
The story starts off with Lady Aileen leaving home to get married. She’s naive in the way that she is adamant that her life is going to be full of hearts and roses, and love. She’s going to have a fairy tale ending and when that doesn’t seem to be the case, she comes back home as a divorced woman. She left behind her younger sister, Lady Tara who grows up to be quite the beauty.
Now that’s back at home, she’s got time to reflect on her life and she’s a whole lot of regretful for a lot of things. One of those regrets is becoming a virtual stranger to her sister. Now, her sister is engaged to be married to the bastard son of a Duke and she wasn’t invited to the wedding. While she’s trying to come to terms with her new life (the scandal of being a divorced woman), her sister returns home dressed as a boy with no intention of marrying her fiance.
The fiance’ shows up and things really pick up.
There was a lot going on in this book and thought it was an enjoyable story but there were some things that disappointed me. One of my main gripes was that there was far too much page time dedicated to Aileen’s sister, Tara. She was not a likable person and the more page time she got, the more I wanted to punch her freaking throat in. I wasn’t a fan of hers at all, so much so that I’m not sure I can pick up the next book, considering it’s her story. I felt like Aileen and Blake’s story (which this story was supposed to be) took a back seat (in the third row of the SUV, back seat) to freaking Tara.
Their story was an interesting one though. Aileen left home once before, with thoughts of rainbows and butterflies and instead got a mean husband who put his hands on her. After escaping his clutches, she now has to live with the fact that she’ll probably never marry again with the scandal from her divorce on the tongue of everyone in town. But none of that matters because she’s free. She’s free from the abuse and when Blake comes storming into her life, he brings on a whole new set of drama into her life. He’s engaged to her sister. But the heart wants what it wants and hers wants Blake.
What I liked about this book was that the romance between Blake and Aileen wasn’t this drawn out affair. It happens and it blossoms into something so completely out of what either of them were expecting and I ate that part up. I just wished we got more for them. A part of me feels a bit cheated from all the page time that Tara got.
Overall, the set up for this series was pretty solid. Despite the things that I wasn’t too much a fan of, the story itself was still good. Though, I’m up in the air about reading the next book, I’m not mad that I read this one.
Grade: 3 out of 5
This book is available from Sourcebooks Fire. You can purchase it here or here in e-format. This book was provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.