Marriage At A Distance Sara Craven
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, Cover observation: That shirt - just no. The title of this one is accurate.
H/h were married when the heroine was 18 and the hero 28. They are shirt tail relatives (their parents were cousins). Hero was sorta forced into it because his father was retiring and he wanted the hero to be married for the optics. The heroine was madly in love with the H, but he was reluctant to consummate their marriage. When they did have sex, it was not good for the virgin heroine.
AbeBooks.com: Marriage at a Distance: 1998. A well read copy. In good to very good condition......
Hero pulls away out of guilt. Hero Cover observation: That shirt - just no. The title of this one is accurate. H/h were married when the heroine was 18 and the hero 28. They are shirt tail relatives (their parents were cousins). Hero was sorta forced into it because his father was retiring and he wanted the hero to be married for the optics.
The heroine was madly in love with the H, but he was reluctant to consummate their marriage. When they did have sex, it was not good for the virgin heroine. Hero pulls away out of guilt. Heroine thinks he's rejecting her. The next few attempts at sex go badly because the heroine is too proud to show her real feelings and the hero is frustrated trying to break through her barriers.
Rinse and Repeat. The story opens two years later. The hero's father has died from being thrown from a horse. The H/h haven't seen each other for two years.
He's been off making business deals and squiring other women for the gossip columns. The heroine has been living at the family manor with her father-in-law and evil stepmother. The evil stepmother had tried to rope the father-in-law into marriage and has now stated her intentions to be the hero's second wife after he divorces the h. The hero had agreed to give her a divorce until the will is read. For the heroine to have anything, they have to live together for a year and a day.
The heroine truly believes the hero and her stepmother are having an affair. The hero keeps taking the OW out and making cryptic statements about his 'next wife.' So that doesn't help his case. The heroine is full of angst and finds some comfort in the attentions of sleezy wanna be OM.
By this point, both the H/h are ridiculous and this reaches its apex when the hero/stepmother and the heroine/OM are all dining at the same restaurant delighting the local grapevine. Finally, the OM causes the heroine to be unseated from the same horse that killed the hero's father. Hero is shaken by this.
He has decided to let her go and to stop the torture. Heroine doesn't want to go - but she finally makes the connection between the stepmother and the OM. They had joined together to get rid of the h. After the stepmother defiantly confessed, she leaves for London never to be heard from again.
Heroine thinks the hero is heartbroken because of the stepmother, but it's because he has lost the heroine. He explains that he was going to let her have her divorce so he could court her, but the will got in the way. There is an adequate grovel and a nice declaration by the hero. HEA This one was so convoluted and ridiculous in the middle. The angst was great until the heroine kept undermining herself by not speaking her mind. Hero had no clue about human nature - running around with other women is not how to make your child bride relax and trust you.
Still, I believed their HEA. Hero was ready to settle down and heroine had grown up enough to say words with her mouth instead of running away and pouting. This is classic vintage with only the heroine's pov and lots of undermining behavior by the H/h. Cynthia is this story’s resident evil woman, and she is beautiful, nasty and useless. See, Cynthia was married to Joanna’s father, and when Joanna’s father died, she turned up at Lionel’s big country house because Lionel knew Joanna’s mother and wouldn’t want her daughter (and by extension, her step mother?) to starve in a gutter. Two years ago, Joanna, 18, married Lionel’s son Gabriel, 30. Joanna was terrible at sex and not mature enough to handle a man’s needs, so Gabriel took off, leaving Jo Cynthia is this story’s resident evil woman, and she is beautiful, nasty and useless.
See, Cynthia was married to Joanna’s father, and when Joanna’s father died, she turned up at Lionel’s big country house because Lionel knew Joanna’s mother and wouldn’t want her daughter (and by extension, her step mother?) to starve in a gutter. Two years ago, Joanna, 18, married Lionel’s son Gabriel, 30. Joanna was terrible at sex and not mature enough to handle a man’s needs, so Gabriel took off, leaving Jo to keep house for Lionel. Cynthia stuck around to live the good life and ensure Jo was reminded that she was very plain and boring and no man would ever want her.
Lionel’s death changes all that, and Gabriel comes home. Jo’s been thinking that she’ll organise a no-fault divorce and take herself off to be a housekeeper in a National Trust property, because it sounds like quite a nice job and one she could probably do. Lionel’s legacy to Jo is a nice little cottage and an annuity of 50,000 pounds for life (1998 money, so, nice!) but only if she stays married to Gabriel for a further year and a day. Since Gabriel wants to make sure that Jo gets her inheritance, he insists that they stay married. Until he works out a way for her to have the cake both ways. Lionel’s legacy to Cynthia is this painting she once said she liked. Cynthia had been expecting the nice little cottage (she was fairly sure she’d mentioned she wanted it two or three times), and while this is a bad surprise for her, it’s a very mild ‘up yours,’ because if you’re rich and you don’t like someone, and they’re not family, you don’t have to wait until you’re dead to tell them you don’t like them with an ugly painting.
Fiction
You could have actually kicked them out of your house at any stage. Cynthia spends the whole book setting up house in Jo’s cottage and nicking off with as much as she can from the big house.
She’s definitely enthusiastic in evil schemes to keep the lovers apart. She tortures Jo by implying that she’s having an affair with Gabriel, and once the year is up, they’re going to get married.
Gabriel is no help about the affair, partly because for some reason he’s too scared of Cynthia not to let her have her way, and because he spends much of the book telling Jo about how his next wife is just going to be great – all about cuddling and togetherness and sex and having babies. I liked Cynthia because even though her plan was frankly terrible and doomed, she was energetically pursuing it to end. She had focus! I hope she made a killing selling all those portable antiques she nicked.
Jo had a really nice plan of looking after a National Trust property, it just wasn’t, as Gabriel pointed out to her, at all realistic. She gave it up after he told her so and maybe that was practical, but it certainly limited her interestingness. Gabriel’s plan was the worst of all – he kept hoping that if he dropped veiled hints that he was kind of sort of maybe into Jo, but he knew she was too young and needed her independence and he’d help her get it, that she’d respond ‘thanks Gabriel, you’re the best and I love you more than life itself.’ It’s all super contrived, and this book is just full of bad sex. There’s that first time on Jo and Gabriel’s honeymoon when Jo thought it went pretty well considering, but Gabriel was weird about it later. Then each time afterwards she got stage fright and just couldn’t perform. The real-time sex scene is nice for her, but also ends with snark and shame.
You really have to go for a good long yearning to like what’s going on with this book. Jo rides about on a difficult horse to demonstrate that although it’s not easy, she’s got the staying power to tame a sleek, thoroughbred male, and Gabriel is suitably nervous and impressed.
Romance
She’s also good at telling the housekeeper to bring in the coffee, and going out to do charitable works, so she’s clearly destined to be a good wife. She also likes dogs. She’s not really up to much else, but then Gabriel is also really problematic because of that ugly cover.
I can’t get over the teeth and the riding crop and those awful pants. Still, their ending was quite sweet.
Tedious, that's the word that comes to mind. The H and h are coerced into marriage, even though they care for each other but after a failure of a honeymoon, the marriage founders. The H takes himself off for a few years only coming back on his dad's death.
Much of this didn't make sense because he wants her back, but he only came back when his father died. What about being abandoned and being cheated on suggests he wants her back? The H is plainly an idiot, the h all pride and this is how it pre Tedious, that's the word that comes to mind.
The H and h are coerced into marriage, even though they care for each other but after a failure of a honeymoon, the marriage founders. The H takes himself off for a few years only coming back on his dad's death. Much of this didn't make sense because he wants her back, but he only came back when his father died. What about being abandoned and being cheated on suggests he wants her back?
The H is plainly an idiot, the h all pride and this is how it pretty much stays till the end. There's the step mom from hell and a little side plot that the book could have done without.
Of course we have the usual neat ending where all the loose ends and past hurts are swept under the carpet. So unsatisfying.