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Dans Les Bras D'une Héritière (2000)

by Maggie Robinson(Favorite Author)

3.71 of 5 Votes: 1

ISBN

2290099910 (ISBN13: 9782290099919)

languge

English

genre

Romance

series

Ladies Unlaced

review 1: After a slow start in which Louisa's character is very annoying, the pace of ITAOTH picks up nicely once Charles/Max and Louisa travel to her home. Louisa also goes from irksome to sympathetic for me as a reader in the same way it does for Charles/Max. A clever skill that's smoothly executed by M.R.Their love story maintains the core elements of an atmospheric lady-in-danger historical with amusing moments and interesting spins on villains and motives. The continuous thread about women's self-sovereignty adds interesting social context. ITAOTH is an enjoyable romp.
review 2: First, I'll say right off that I enjoyed everything about this: the Edwardian age which was a time teetering before the great upheavals of the first world war; the heroine, who suffers doub... morets even as she forges on; and the hero, who is a Horatio Alger born in the wrong country. (His rise does not deliver him into a higher order of English society but leaves him neither fish nor fowl.)The story is about things and people not being what they seem. It's a breezy read to start that slowly reveals the true characters of the H/h, the challenges of their pasts and the daunting obstacles they must overcome. It begins as the madcap heiress, who's concocted an ideal husband in letters to her overbearing relatives, has to hire herself a temporary stand-in spouse when she decides to return home from abroad to sort out some financial skullduggery. This hired man is not much like the cultured man of her dreams and how she deals with the descrepancies from her fiction is funny and charming. How he tries to inhabit the character she's created is also v. funny, touching and revealing in turns. Most of all, it's those divergences from some supposed ideal that make him the ideal man for her.In increments, the story's onion-like layers are peeled away and I found myself sympathizing with her and really admiring her gumption, even as I fell for the hero, a broken man in body and soul, who accepts the well-paid position for his own heart-breaking reason. (Memories of the Boer War left him a cynical, self-loathing 'hero.') Nevertheless, their chemistry crackles from the first, unpromising meeting. (And his opinion of her 'ideal' man was v. funny and so right in defining their differences, I smiled for chapters beyond the scene.)Soon, they're thrown into the 'viper pit' of her ancestral home where his innate chivalry makes him her champion and places him in the crosshairs of dangerous intrigue.The jeopardy they face both individually and together is not stupid melodrama but comes organically from their circumstances and their characters. No trumped up hissy-fit misunderstandings or gulf-of-two-worlds false assumptions, though they are of two separate worlds socially and neither's a mind-reader. The more I learned the better I liked them both. But this author didn't just flop revelations out on the page as if we're too stupid to start putting two and two together for ourselves. No, she hinted at menace, fear, and despair and it packed more wallop for how well it's underplayed. So darker elements developed in increments, like their feelings did. And I was pulled into the story and very concerned for the hero and heroine -- not just for their HEA. And I loved them even more for the gallant way they cope (and did so with wonderful humor, too). While I hated the rotters and leeches in her extended family and the unchivalrous neighbor, I had no idea who the true villain was until it was time to unmask the turd.From here, I'll have to be vague rather than spoil plot twists...Overall, what I appreciated most in reading this was the way I learned more and more about each, saw how each grew and recovered their essential spirit with the other's help, and how they came to trust and love one another. It wasn't forced, or artificial, their attraction was immediate but their love developed along with deeper understanding as well as some really good mutual ravishing. But it wasn't a foregone conclusion either. Finally, throughout, the humor was genuinely funny and endearing.I'm going to read the next, about the employment agency owner who set the wheels in motion here. She's a lady with lots of layers and secrets, too. less

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