Holly‘s review of The Husband Hunt (Madison Sisters, Book 3) by Lynsay Sands

Let the hunt begin…

Lisa Madison wants a husband, and she has just the candidate in mind: Robert Langley. Trouble is, the infuriating man insists on seeing her as the impish girl she once was—even as every other gentleman in London has taken notice of her womanly…charms. When her beauty lands her in danger, it’s Robert who comes to the rescue…only to announce his affections are not of the romantic variety!

Robert saw enough sorrow in his parents’ union to know he wants nothing to do with marriage, which is exactly what he’ll be trapped into if he acts on his desire for the irksome siren. And then Lisa does what Robert least expects: gives up on him! As feigned indifference gives way, blistering passion burns at last. But just before the pair can give in to hard-won bliss, an enemy with unfinished business lurks threatening to destroy them both.

Sands can be hit it miss for me. Her humor can just hit the mark, or it can be a little too over the top. This one was a little too slapstick for me. While I enjoyed the romance itself, much of the plot had me rolling my eyes.

Lisa has been in love with Robert for years. Unfortunately he thinks of her as a little sister, despite her best efforts to get him to notice her as a woman. After throwing herself at him and being rejected again, Lisa decides to give up on him and find a man who will treat her like a woman.

Before she can start her husband hunt, she’s kidnapped by a woman she thought was a friend, but who turns out to be a courtesan who was paid to abduct Lisa for a “suitor” who wants her. Robert comes to her rescue and realizes – finally – that Lisa is all grown up. Even so, he knows he isn’t for her. He believes his family is cursed with faithless wives and doesn’t want to marry. Ever.

This novel starts out with something we’ve seen a hundred times. Matchmaking. Only Sands took a different approach here. It isn’t the women who are matchmaking, but the men. Lisa’s brothers-in-law decide to help her out by putting he and Robert together. They figure he just needs a slight push to realize Lisa is the one for him. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that at first. The idea is cute, but I felt it needed to be excited well to work. Unfortunately, it fell flat.

The problem started when Lisa was kidnapped. The men use that as an excuse to put her and Robert together. They make up excuses for why they can’t help protect Lisa, forcing Robert to move in to keep an eye on her. The issue I had was this: By doing so, they placed Lisa in danger. They knew there was someone after her. They knew she was in danger. She was attacked several times throughout the novel. Yet they avoided her so that Robert would be forced to spend time with her. I get why they did it in the beginning, but isn’t her personal safety more important than pushing them together?

I also struggled with a lot of the slapstick humor. As I said, Sands can be hit or miss for me when it comes to this. I wasn’t able to overlook a lot of the silliness here. I’m not sure if that’s because I was bothered by other things, or if it was just this book. In either case, I was put off by it.

While I think fans of light comedies and long-standing fans of Sands work will enjoy this, I don’t think it was for me.

2.75 out of 5

The series:

This book is available from Avon. You can buy it here or here in e-format.

Holly‘s review of The Countess (Madison Sisters, Book 1) by Lynsay Sands

The fairy tale courtship did not turn into a happily-ever-after . . .

Not until her husband dropped dead, that is. He had been horrible enough to Christiana during their short marriage, and she was not going to allow the traditional period of mourning to ruin her sisters’ debuts as well. So she decides to put him on ice and go on as if nothing’s happened . . .

Until the real earl appears. Richard Fairgrave had every intention of confronting his villainous twin who had robbed him of his name and title . . . only to discover that he had died. Quietly assuming his identity, Richard must now deal with a maddening desire for his ravishing inherited “wife”— certainly a gold digger and possibly a murderess. And Christiana must deal with an unwanted new “husband” . . . and they both must figure out what to do before the ice melts!

Though this is the first book in a new series for Sands, I read the second book first. They’re told in tandem, which means they were kind of redundant at times, but overall they were light and fun reads. Though The Countess started out rather serious, it wasn’t long before the humor emerged. I did skim and/or skip quite a bit of this book, however, because I felt like I’d already ready it.

Although I enjoyed much of the story, I really had to suspend disbelief to buy the basic premise. The blackmail angle didn’t work for me at all, since I thought the case behind it was rather flimsy (a he said/she said kind of thing that could easily be explained away, which made the threat of blackmail pretty much laughable). Younger twin, Harry, has his brother, Richard, killed (or so he thinks) in order to take his place in society and inherit. Then he tricks the father of an heiress into losing all his money, forcing the eldest daughter, Christiana, to marry him in order to save her family from ruin (though he does woo her first, making her fall in love with him). After the wedding, he turns into a cold, controlling man she comes to fear and hate.

Richard (who wasn’t really dead) finally returns to London after a long illness in the Americas and plans to confront his twin to ring a confession from him. Instead he finds his brother is dead (not that anyone knows it) and he’s taken a wife in Richard’s name, which means certain scandal for not only Richard himself, but also the innocent woman who was unlucky enough to be married to his brother. What transpires after is nothing short of a farce of epic proportions, with blackmail, passion, murder, intrigue and a corpse that turns up in all the wrong places.

All of that was fine, if a bit on the silly side. What I had trouble accepting was the need to keep the corpse around, just in case. The argument was made that he might be needed to prove the identity of the real earl. When someone tries to blackmail him in order to keep the secret of his twin’s death a secret (the real death, not the pretend death from a year earlier), it didn’t make sense. Everyone thought Harry was dead anyway. If Richard isn’t planning to reveal that Harry had tried to murder him, why would anyone suspect anything different? Who would have believed the blackmailer?

Aside from that this was a fun story. I like that Sands explored the issue of trust between a husband and wife and what happens after marriage. Because Christiana was so mentally abused by George (pretending to be Richard) she doesn’t know that she can ever trust Richard (the real one) to be a good husband. She keeps waiting for him to change, to turn into someone else the longer they’re together. She really had a lot of baggage to sort through and I’m glad it was dealt with in a believable way (well, believable considering the rest of the story).

Richard is horrified when he realizes how bad his brother treated Christiana. He’s always loved and respected women, and he hates seeing Christiana with so little self-confidence. Watching him bolster her self-esteem was sweet to watch. He didn’t do it simply to make Christiana feel better, either. He truly believed the things he told her (that she could wear what clothes she liked, or style her hair as she pleased, that she was intelligent and beautiful, etc).

The best part about the novel was the romance. I really enjoyed the love story. Richard and Christiana didn’t come together under the best circumstances. There was a lot of mistrust and anger between them in the beginning. Seeing them fall for each other was sweet and compelling.

I enjoyed this book less than The Heiress only because I found it redundant to read the same thing a second time (there is really very little that’s different, even most of the dialogue is the same). The characters are well written and the plot fun and engaging. Sands writes really light-hearted, funny romps, and The Countess is another example of why she’s a favorite.

4 out of 5

The series:

This book is available from Avon. You can buy it here or here in e-format.