The Devil Takes a Bride

Starred review from June 23, 2014
Propriety, perfection, and order must yield both to practicality and chaos in the face of the Cabot sisters (introduced in The Trouble with Honor), London’s free-spirited, well-intentioned, and irrepressibly exuberant bad girls of high society. Second sister Grace, hoping to arrange her own marriage before her mother’s madness becomes common knowledge, tries to lure the attractive Lord Amherst into a compromising situation, but mistakenly catches his taciturn brother, Jeffrey Donovan, Lord of Merryton. Isolated at a sparse, regimented estate with a husband who barely speaks to her, faces away from her when they are intimate, and has a strange obsession with the number eight, Grace puts her energies toward flowers, unruly puppies, and figuring out Jeffrey’s secrets while earning his trust. London’s writing bubbles with high emotion as she describes sexual enthusiasm, personal grief, and familial warmth. Her blend of playful humor and sincerity imbues her heroines with incredible appeal, and readers will delight as their unconventional tactics create rambling paths to happiness.

December 1, 2014
A desperate young woman tries to trap a charming rogue into marriage but accidentally traps his severe and proper older brother instead. London (Return to Homecoming Ranch, 2014, etc.) returns with the second installment of her Cabot Sisters series. Grace Cabot and her sister Honor are desperate to marry now that their stepfather has died and their stepbrother is approaching his own marriage. If they don't, their mother's madness will become common knowledge and there will be no hope of a husband for either sister-or for their two younger sisters still in the schoolroom. Grace decides her best bet is Lord Amherst, who has been one of her favorite flirts for two years and will make a tolerably amusing husband. But when Grace orchestrates a scene where she will be caught kissing Lord Amherst by the local vicar, she accidentally lures his older brother Jeffrey, the Earl of Merryton, instead. While Jeffrey and Grace both struggle in a new marriage to a stranger, Grace becomes increasingly aware that Jeffrey suffers from some torment. He finally reveals that he is ashamed of his own vivid erotic fantasies. He has learned to control his base desires by maintaining perfect symmetry and order and by an obsession with the number eight. Grace naturally helps him overcome the worst of his mental health problems, even as she herself grows to love his austere and quiet country home. The book's premise is courageous. It's not easy to make a hero like Jeffrey with obsessive-compulsive tendencies into a sympathetic character. The heroine is less successful, beginning the book as a self-centered flibbertigibbet and ending as a boringly dutiful wife. Strong prose and adventurous sex scenes make the book worth reading.

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Starred review from January 1, 2015
Grace Cabot has caught the wrong man. Her plan was to trap Lord Amherst into marrying her by arranging for them to be caught in a compromising situation. Unfortunately for Grace, the man who walks into the deserted tea room and kisses her isn't the rakish and fun-loving Lord John Donovan but is, instead, his brother, Jeffrey Donovan, the forbidding and stern Earl of Merryton. The only way Jeffrey is able to get through the day is by carefully controlling the world around him. The last thing on earth he wants is a wife, especially someone as impetuous as Grace, upsetting his rigid routine. But Jeffrey knows he now has no choice but to propose to Grace. What he doesn't expect is that marrying Grace may ultimately prove to be his salvation. The second book in London's Cabot Sisters series, following The Trouble with Honor (2014), is a brilliantly executed and boldly sensual Regency historical that beautifully showcases the author's gift for writing romances with superbly nuanced characters and great emotional depth. Readers who relish tortured heroes la Laura Kinsale's Flowers from the Storm (1992) will especially enjoy this stunning book.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)