ARC Review: The Reluctant Bride by Beverley Eikli

It was a struggle for me to decide how to rate The Reluctant Bride. I felt that there were both strong pluses and strong minuses. Weighing both sides, I arrived at 3 stars. I loved the beginning of the book. The hero and heroine were placed in a difficult situation and I was totally intrigued to see how things would work out. But in the second half of the book the story became very complicated and the flow of the book became bogged down. Author Beverly Eikli paints very descriptive pictures with words, but she allows the hero and heroine to do a lot of ruminating. Too much thinking and too little action. When the action did occur it seemed weighted down by an overabundance of words. In spite of these difficulties, I truly enjoyed the book.

Angus McCartney is a military man with a sad past. Emily Micklen is beautiful, happy bride-to-be. When Emily’s fiancé, Jack, is killed Angus brings the news to Emily. Several months later he decides to check on her (because he is very attracted to her and feels somewhat responsible for Jack’s death). He discovers that she is pregnant and offers to marry her. Emily agrees because she feels that she doesn’t have any other choice, but she is resentful of the situation. Will she be able to put aside her love for Jack and accept her new husband? The later parts of the book involve Angus’s espionage work against Napoleon and a connection to Emily that no one knew existed.

You have to love a hero like Angus McCartney. He was a deep-down good guy, loyal, giving, and reliable. Emily was extremely ungracious and pouty throughout the first half of the book. At times it was hard to imagine why Angus loved her. Oh, I do understand why he was attracted to her, but love needs some positive back-and-forth to survive. He would have been justified in giving up on her during their early weeks together. Emily had a long road to learn to love her husband and then to convince him that her feelings were real. She gradually became more likeable, but it was a slow trip. The espionage story was fairly complex and slowed down the flow of the book, in my opinion. There were some steamy scenes, but they didn’t fill me with a rush of emotion or excitement. I was never deeply engaged with the characters. Some of Emily’s actions at the end did not seem well thought out and there were some gigantic coincidences that were hard to believe. Still, I enjoyed the book and do not regret reading it.

**ARC provided by Publisher**

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