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A review by thenovelbook
Mischief, Mayhem, and Marriage by Rebecca Connolly
4.0
Super sweet and swoony Regency love story. If you like a good marriage of convenience story, this one's for you.
Except it's not exactly a marriage of convenience, it's a marriage to stave off a potential scandal. I usually feel a bit cynical about the flimsiness of the "scandals" that force people into getting married in these plots, and I wasn't sold on the circumstances of this one. But the characters and the remainder of the story were really enjoyable.
Plot summary: Alexandrina is a widow and still recovering emotionally from the disaster that was her first marriage. When she is at the center of an odd-looking episode outside a party one night, she resigns herself to marrying Taft, an acquaintance that she has never had much respect for, as she sees him as all surface and no substance. But it's the best chance she has of staying respectable so she can keep fighting to get her 5-year-old son out of the clutches of her former in-laws. Fortunately, Taft is much more dependable, kind, and loyal than she ever realized and he makes an ideal partner for the wounded and reserved Alix.
There were a few choices in the writing that distracted me, like the frequent use of the words "hummed" and "hissed" to describe sounds the characters make. They hummed and hissed an awful lot, and I don't find those words very evocative of how a normal human would communicate. But that's just a little nitpicky thing. The characters were lovely and that's really all that matters.
There are quite a few references to another book, which I started but didn't finish because the main characters in that one sniped at each other too much. Taft and Alexandrina were side characters in that book, and it would probably have given me a little more context for why they are the way they are if I had finished it. But essentially this one can be read as a standalone novel.
Except it's not exactly a marriage of convenience, it's a marriage to stave off a potential scandal. I usually feel a bit cynical about the flimsiness of the "scandals" that force people into getting married in these plots, and I wasn't sold on the circumstances of this one. But the characters and the remainder of the story were really enjoyable.
Plot summary: Alexandrina is a widow and still recovering emotionally from the disaster that was her first marriage. When she is at the center of an odd-looking episode outside a party one night, she resigns herself to marrying Taft, an acquaintance that she has never had much respect for, as she sees him as all surface and no substance. But it's the best chance she has of staying respectable so she can keep fighting to get her 5-year-old son out of the clutches of her former in-laws. Fortunately, Taft is much more dependable, kind, and loyal than she ever realized and he makes an ideal partner for the wounded and reserved Alix.
There were a few choices in the writing that distracted me, like the frequent use of the words "hummed" and "hissed" to describe sounds the characters make. They hummed and hissed an awful lot, and I don't find those words very evocative of how a normal human would communicate. But that's just a little nitpicky thing. The characters were lovely and that's really all that matters.
There are quite a few references to another book, which I started but didn't finish because the main characters in that one sniped at each other too much. Taft and Alexandrina were side characters in that book, and it would probably have given me a little more context for why they are the way they are if I had finished it. But essentially this one can be read as a standalone novel.