Stealing the Bride

June 9, 2003
Tired of waiting for the Marquis of Templeton to come to his senses and marry her, Lady Diana Fordham, the brassy heroine of this cookie-cutter Regency-era romance, devises a plot to ensnare him. Her plan: to run away with a man of ill-repute and wait for Temple, who acts like a typical London fop but is really a fearless undercover agent, to rescue her. A spirited spinster, Diana is one of the few people who knows Temple's true profession, and she has been pining after him ever since she learned the truth. Though Temple is reluctant to fall in line with her plan, he has little choice in the matter when his boss, a good friend of Diana's father, orders him to save her. His mission turns deadly, however, when a fanatical Frenchman, who wants Diana for his own mysterious purposes, enters the picture. Boyle crowds her tale with stock characters—a hero who is brave except when it comes to matters of the heart; a heroine who defies convention at every turn; and a villain who exudes evil from every pore. Add to the mix a pair of bumbling ancillary characters known as "pins and needles," who long to marry Diana, and you have a frothy confection buoyed by witty dialogue but weighed down with predictable plot turns and unremarkable characters.

Starred review from June 1, 2003
Lady Diana Fordham spent 10 years waiting for the marquis of Templeton ("Temple") to express an interest in her. Now in an attempt to get him to finally drop the fashionable, foppish charade he has presented to society for years and become the hero she knows he truly is, Diana allows herself to be abducted by the notorious Viscount Cordell. Both personal and professional reasons send Temple in pursuit of Diana, who has also become the target of several penniless noblemen with hopes of catching the spinster heiress themselves. With orders to steal the bride to-be and see that she is wed for her own safety to any suitable man, Temple never expected he would wind up wanting to marry the exasperating yet all too tempting Diana himself! Humor and passion were never more expertly entwined. Boyle cleverly matches up a tart-tongued, brilliantly resourceful heroine with an honorable, sinfully seductive hero, and then deftly sifts a dash of dangerous intrigue, wonderfully unique secondary characters, and a generous measure of wicked wit into this sweetly romantic, deliciously sensual love story.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2003, American Library Association.)