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The Santangeli Marriage (2009)

by Sara Craven(Favorite Author)

3.09 of 5 Votes: 2

ISBN

026386989X (ISBN13: 9780263869897)

languge

English

genre

Romance

publisher

Mills & Boon

review 1: Marisa is coerced into marrying Lorenzo Santangeli to provide him with an heir. Although he is pressured by his family into the marriage, he enters it quite willingly. She on the other hand, is bitter, angry and resentful. After a disastrous honeymoon, they separate for 8 months, living in different countries. Now Lorenzo is determined to bring Marisa home and make their marriage work.During their separation, Lorenzo has an affair with a married woman. Normally this would totally ruin the story for me, but in this case is was somehow made palatable. I think it was a combination of things - the reader finds out about the infidelity early in the story, so it's not a sudden shock at the end. Perhaps more importantly, Lorenzo admits to himself that it was wrong and he should n... moreever have had the affair. Unfortunately he never really apologises to Marisa for it, and doesn't give her space to deal with it. He gets her straight into bed immediately after she finds out, and is angry when she doesn't give him immediate forgiveness (which he didn't actually ask for). He expects her to implicitly trust his assurance that the affair is over without giving her any reason to. Putting that aside, I like the fact that his infidelity is acknowledged as being wrong, and not just blamed on his wife's neglect, as is done in so many other novels.I liked this book, and I didn't expect to. It left me feeling good. The ending was pretty cheese-free. No miraculous pregnancy. We don't even find out that Lorenzo purchased the Casa Adriana for Marisa, which I kept expecting from the moment we hear about it being sold. Just a nice happy ending without a whole heap of Deus Ex machina. It's books like these which keep me coming back to Sara Craven even after the horrible stuff she often produces. I'll be reading this one again.
review 2: I adore Sara Craven. There's something about reading her books which takes me back to the older style HPs that I loved growing up. This story may not be for all -- the heroine is a bit passive sometimes, but I think it's extremely well done. I understand why Marisa pushes Renzo away. And the ending -- oh, choke! I had a huge lump in my throat. Sara doesn't pull any punches. She's brilliant. And, having met her in person, I can say she's also a pretty amazing lady. So my adoration isn't just of the book, but of the woman too. This story has it all, complete with the kind of nuances that you don't always find in more modern HPs -- including mine. So now I have to work harder, sigh. less

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