I started this book on Monday. I cannot recall the exact time--perhaps mid-morning. Yesterday I met with a visiting out-of-country friend for 3 hours. [Did you know that Noah's peppercorn potato bagels with onion and chive schmear are AMAZING? They are. I had 2. (I went back for another after I left your car with the pointsettia :-P)] Then I came home, took the dogs to the dog park, LOST MY KEYS AT THE DOG PARK, and was late getting back home where an out-of-state-most-of-the-year friend was waiting patiently on the stoop (porch steps...but we should bring back the word "stoop," no? XP). She stayed until late this morning. Then I presumed reading again--not that I hadn't snatched bits and pieces yesterday. I had! All that to say, I just finished An Uncommon Courtship, and it wasn't a novella, and I'm not as avid a reader as some, so this was like marathon reading.
And according to the Bethany House Publishers, when I sign up to do these honest reviews in exchange for a complimentary copy, I have a whole month before I have to deliver.
On the other hand, I went on a limb to try a book by an author I had never heard of before, because of this plot description:
After a night trapped together in an old stone keep, Lady Adelaide Bell and Lord Trent Hawthorne have no choice but to marry. Dismayed, Adelaide finds herself bound to a man who ignores her, as Trent has no desire to connect with the one who dashed his plans to marry for love. Can they set aside their first impressions before any chance of love is lost?
And then when I realized I had never let the publisher know I had reviewed the last book they sent me, I sent them the link submission and told them I really hoped the delay wouldn't keep me from being able to review An Uncommon Courtship.
It didn't.
I put down the other novel I was in the middle of and began reading this one.
I really enjoyed it. There were a few confusions--the main male character thought something earlier in the book and then was surprised by the same facts later; the main female character had portrayed her parents' marriage one way early in the book and then differently later (maybe she just came to understand the truth?). There were some proofreading blips--words left out.
Ok, enough with the negatives.
Kristi Ann Hunter has taken on an ambitious project: to attempt to explain the mystery of how two people go from beings strangers to married . . . while already being legally married. How does a man accept his wife as permanently his, court her, love her, and live as a fully married man? How does a woman who has never had a voice in her family and has never been taught how to be a woman step into the foreign role of wife? To a lord, nonetheless.
How do two people that are inexperienced figure out how to make this relationship work when those who should have been their advisors are unavailable in that role? Part of me is like this has some too PG-13 elements (mostly in content matter, not graphic-ness). Please be forewarned! I need to give that caveat. Another part of me realizes that, in the kingdom of the world, this novel is a model for God's way of doing relationships. Not the part about being thrown into marriage with a stranger! But in the characters themselves. I was skimming through books for sale at the library today and realized I mostly only look for Christian novels because you don't have to then sift through unchecked lust and fornication. Although An Uncommon Courtship starts with the marriage contract already signed, it still portrays an uncommonly high value for purity in the overt innocence of the characters. The story is about building a marriage relationship with depth--winning the heart--not just about kisses and romance.
Two people thrown together with absolutely no idea how to make a good marriage, relying on familiar community, their own feeble wits and good character, and an unfailing hope for more than what they have so far--An Uncommon Courtship was a riveting read for me. I'll have to try Kristi Ann Hunter again.
Oh! There are also several delightful humorous turns of phrases, and it's set in the Regency Era, so if you are a Jane Austen fan, you will definitely find yourself comparing one of the characters to Mrs. Bennett. ;)
"Back home they'd stood awkwardly in the hall, facing each other but staring at points on either side. Adelaide chose a strange still-life painting to inspect, noting that the bowl of fruit all appeared to have faces. Her humiliation was being witnessed by a painting of sentient fruit. She'd truly reached the bottom of her ladder."
"Mother smiled, that indulgent smile only women seem to be able to perfect--the one that told Trent he obviously didn't understand and that he was rather pitiful and adorable at the same time. He hated that smile."
"Her eyes looked somewhere in the vicinity of his left elbow. He'd thought they'd moved past her talking to various parts of his person instead of his face."
(P.S. I've really enjoyed Melissa Tagg's One Enchanted Eve and Sarah Sundin's With Every Letter recently too!)
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