Tag: Michele Ann Young

Throwback Thursday Guest Review: The Lady Flees her Lord by Michele Ann Young

Posted October 8, 2020 by Ames in Reviews | 6 Comments

Throwback Thursday Guest Review: The Lady Flees her Lord by Michele Ann YoungReviewer: Ames
The Lady Flees Her Lord by Michele Ann Young
Publisher: Sourcebooks Casablanca
Publication Date: October 1, 2008
Genres: Historical Romance
Pages: 401
Add It: Goodreads
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four-stars


She's desperate for peace and safety...
Lucinda, Lady Denbigh, is running from a husband who physically and emotionally abuses her because she is unfashionably plump and has failed to produce an heir. Posing as a widow, she seeks refuge in the quiet countryside...

He's returned from the wars, wounded and tormented...
Lord Hugo Wanstead, with a wound that won't heal, and his mother's and Spanish wife's deaths on his conscience, finds his estate impoverished, his sleep torn by nightmares, and brandy his only solace. When he meets Lucinda, he finds her beautiful - body and soul - and thinks she just might give him something to live for ...

Together they can begin to heal, but not until she is free from her violent past...

This review was originally published on October 16, 2008

This is my very first Michele Ann Young book and it won’t be my last. (I have No Regrets in my TBR Pile). Michele writes a very satisfying book.

Lucinda Denbigh is an abused wife. She’s not a skinny English rose by any means, a fact which her husband holds against her. He only married her for her money, and he scorns the way she looks and the fact that she’s barren. As he puts it, she can’t even get being a woman right. Lucinda has had about as much as she can take, so when her husband’s good friend, the Duke of Vale, lets her know that he wants access to her luscious body, Lucinda bolts in the dead of the night.

She lands in Kent with a street urchin she picked up along the way. She adopts the young girl as her own and sets up her new life as a widow. Meanwhile, Lord Hugo Wanstead has returned from the war (the Napoleonic wars) injured and bitter (of course). He’s a great big hulk of a man and when he spots the curvy woman on his land, he’s immediately attracted to her. But he refrains from getting her to know her and locks himself away in his rotting estate (his father was a wastrel and left a mountain of debt).

But these two lock horns when Lucinda faces the bear in his cave – over the care of some of his tenants. Hugo is still fascinated by this woman, she by him (it’s hard for her to believe it, considering her history with men) and pretty soon Lucinda is drawing Hugo out of his shell and these two begin to fall in love.

Of course, Hugo doesn’t know that Lucinda isn’t a widow and Lucinda doesn’t know that Hugo has demon seed.

I’m being facetious with that comment there. 😛 Hugo is just a very large man and he’s worried about having another woman die giving birth to his baby (that’s what happened to his first wife). But not to fear dear readers, that fear doesn’t take up too much page time and this being romance, things have a way of working out in the end.

It’s getting to the end that’s the interesting part. I really liked Lucinda. She wasn’t a victim. She took her life into her own hands and made a successful go at it. She was smart, she used her brains to get her out of trouble and when an opportunity presented itself, even though she afraid, she didn’t want to make a decision she’d regret for the rest of her life. I gotta respect that!

And Hugo. I really liked him too. Lucinda does draw him out of his shell and gets him interacting with the people around him. And he so dearly wants Lucinda. Of course he doesn’t realize at first that he loves her, but oh my was he a sweet bear of a man. LOL What can I say? I have a weakness for big guys. 😛

As I said, The Lady Flees her Lord is a satisfying read. 4 out 5 (B)

four-stars


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Review: No Regrets by Michele Ann Young

Posted November 8, 2007 by Book Binge Guest Blogger in Reviews | 4 Comments

Review: No Regrets by Michele Ann YoungReviewer: Rowena
No Regrets by Michele Ann Young
Publisher: Sourcebooks, Sourcebooks Casablanca
Publication Date: October 1st 2007
Genres: Historical Romance
Pages: 384
Add It: Goodreads
Amazon | Barnes & Noble | The Ripped Bodice | Google Play Books
three-stars

Caroline Torrington is large, and she wears glasses. Beside the beauties of her day, she feels dowdy and unattractive. Since the death of her father the Vicar, she and her sisters have fallen on hard times.

Meanwhile, Lucas, Lord Foxhaven, a noted rake for his wild and reckless behavior, is once again in dispute with his father, who won't give him his grandmama's fortune unless he marries Caroline Torrington. Lucas and Caroline arrange a marriage of convenience and go off to London for the season.

Little does Caroline know that her voluptuous body is driving Lucas to distraction. Each time he pulls back, Caroline thinks that he is disgusted by her body.

In the midst of this deepening mutual attraction and misunderstanding, Caroline gets embroiled in a scandal and is kidnapped. Lucas comes to her rescue and in a dangerous escape they discover they are each other's true love.

Okay, I finished this book on Sunday and I just haven’t really figured out what to say about this book. Was it good? Yeah, it was. Would I recommend it to my friends? Maybe. You see, the reason it took me so long to write this review is that there were things I liked about the book but there were also things that drove me absolutely crazy about the book. Like, all of the misunderstandings. This book was frickin’ overflowing with misunderstandings and while I can appreciate a few misunderstandings to liven up the plot, dude…when all there is, is misunderstandings…well then it just gets so frickin’ old and so hot dang annoying.

I enjoyed the writing style, Michelle Young used while writing this book because it was easy to follow but I just couldn’t get over ALL of the misunderstandings. Let me see if I can explain how irritating these misunderstandings were.

In the beginning of the book, we have Lucas (the hero of the book) dragging his childhood friend and our heroine, Caroline Torrington into a room, locking them in there so that he can ruin her reputation. The way he did it, on horseback, riding his horse all the way into that man’s house drove me batty. I didn’t think it was cute or romantic, I thought it was stupid. So after a few minutes or however long they were in the room, Lucas persuades Caro to marry him and off they go with an agreement that they’ll be married in name only and Caro will get a season for her and her sisters and Lucas will get his Father off of his back.

They get married and go to London where Caro proceeds to make friends and plans to attend this ball and that ball and blah blah blah. She makes friends and she goes about her business getting to know the London folk. Lucas, on the other hand, has all of these “secret” business affairs to attend to and he proceeds to attend to those business affairs whether Caro wants him to or not. He doesn’t want to be married and he for dang sure doesn’t like his father, but he needed to get married to Caro in order for him to keep his allowance so that he can pay for his secret business affairs.

Caro thinks he’s keeping a mistress and even though they’re married in name only, she’s still hurt over it. Like it would matter anyway since, in her eyes, she’s a big girl who wouldn’t be able to catch the eye of someone as handsome and charming as Lucas. Lucas, on the other hand, loves Caro’s voluptuous curves and wants her so bad but the timing is never good and well, something is always popping off and he feels like a cur for trying to take advantage of Caro’s trust.

Oh please, she melted in your arms every time you touched her and it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know she was digging you just as much as you were digging her.

But I guess these two are dumber than rocks because they didn’t know a hot dang thing.

Lucas is off doing business when Caro causes a scandal and Lucas gets so pissed off at her that he sends her back to their hometown where her sisters are, I forget what the town was called but yeah, that place. But instead, she goes to Paris with her cousin, some dude that is trying to marry her so that he can get his hands on her inheritance, the inheritance that she didn’t even know belonged to her.

So many things pop off that made me roll my eyes but believe it or not, I still enjoyed the book. It wasn’t the best book that I’ve read in a long time but I still liked it. I wasn’t sorry I read it even though the misunderstandings kept coming even until the last chapter and by the end of the book I was ready to kill Caro and Lucas. But yeah, it was still alright.

Grade: 3 out of 5

three-stars


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