The Abducted Bride
Grade : C-

Enjoying The Abducted Bride requires a huge suspension of disbelief. Was I able to do so? Not entirely.

Amy Cole has spent her life immured in the country. Her mother died birthing her and she has spent her life taking care of her alcoholic father. Now that her father is dead and her brother Robert has come home from fighting in the Peninsula, life is getting better for Amy. However, Robert leaves on a mysterious mission for the Foreign Office, counseling her against going anywhere alone or talking about him to strangers. A week after he leaves, Amy gets anxious and, dressed in her brother's clothes, she sneaks out to neighboring coastal town of Rye to snoop around the docks in search of information about her brother. Oh no, I thought, I have an overly feisty/TSTL girl on my hands here.

Sir Jason Archer is also in Rye having followed the trail his runaway wife, Désirée, and her lover have left. Jason sees Amy, who has the same unusual green colored eyes of his wife, and thinking the "boy" is his wife's brother, sets off in pursuit, but loses him.

Regardless of Amy's close call, she goes back to Rye again the next day, only this time as herself and is abducted outside a dress shop by Sir Jason, convinced she is his wife - and deaf to all of Amy's protests that she is not. He takes her back to his country estate, tells his staff that his wife has a head injury, she's confused, pay no attention to her ramblings that she is not Lady Archer.

Okay, here's where the suspension of disbelief is so crucial. I can see where he might have thought that Amy was his wife on a cursory look. And they drove through the night so he didn't really get a good look at her until they arrived at his home. But then? Yes, Jason and Désirée had a whirlwind courtship and had only been married a month, but I didn't buy that he couldn't tell Amy wasn't his wife. No one is an exact double - what about their voices, their mannerisms, their freckles, for goodness sake. No, I didn't believe it. I could really sympathize with Amy's frustration in trying to convince him that she wasn't Désirée, and with her household who was frantic with worry.

Finally, after an aborted escape attempt on Amy's part, Jason promises to take her "home" if she will first go with him to his great-aunt's, who is not well, as his wife. She agrees, and as she plays the role of his wife, begins to wish that she really were. And Jason is finding his wife more agreeable and pleasanter to be with than ever before.

It was these scenes, where Amy and Jason were getting to know each other and to share experiences that the novel began to work for me. Amy settled and matured and turned out not to be TSTL after all, and Jason, who had very quickly figured out that his marriage to Désirée was a mistake, is endearing in his hope that maybe he can have a happy marriage after all.

But it took too long to reach this point in the novel. Until then, it was a frustrating and eye-rolling read. And the ending resolution to the Désirée question is a fantastical, if predictable, plot device. If you can set aside the absurdity of the Amy/Désirée look-alike plot, the middle half of this book is really very sweet. I could not completely do so.

Reviewed by Cheryl Sneed
Grade : C-
Book Type: Regency Romance

Sensuality: Kisses

Review Date : September 21, 2005

Publication Date: 2005

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Cheryl Sneed

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