Location: United States
Member Since:
Sep. 30, 2010
Christina Bethea
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Smashwords book reviews by Christina Bethea
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A Husband for Margaret
on April 15, 2011
This was a light, sweet enough read, but I think I would have enjoyed something a bit more substantial and angst-ridden given the characters and their situations. After his brother’s untimely death, a widower with four children offers to marry his brother’s fiancée, a woman his brother met through an ad in the newspaper. This, to me, opens the door to all sorts of possibilities. The story could deal with the hero’s loss of his brother and that of his first wife, of his marrying a total stranger and having to learn to live with and love another woman. It could deal with the heroine and her choice to marry a man she’s never met (something that she accepts all too readily, in my opinion), her struggle to get to know her new husband, etc. All sorts of possibilities are there in that situation – but the author chose instead to focus a little too simply on the two marrying, a comically jealous woman, and a group of busy-body woman who don’t see the heroine as a woman mature enough to care for four rowdy boys. It deals with appearances more than anything, I think. How the townsfolk see the heroine, how she deals with the boys and the jealous woman, the silly plan she concocts to get rid of said woman. The romance between hero and heroine doesn’t develop so much as appears. It wasn’t the focus of the story when it should have been. The husband is barely in the story, and he has little, if any, character development. He seems more a prop than anything. The four boys have more dialogue and interaction with the heroine than he does. In all, it’s a so-so read, convenient, contrived, and a little too inaccurate when it come to historical details. You may enjoy it if you’re looking for a light diversion, but it really wasn’t to my taste.