The Wrong Bride

by Cameron May

Lance has had enough of Miranda's teasing. She loves him, he's sure, only her family is keeping them apart. Once he kidnaps her, takes her across the border to Scotland, and marries her, they'll have to accept him. But, oops, she takes the wrong girl. It's the skinny, gangly, younger sister,Winifred he marries instead. Fate steps in, however, and Lance himself is gone the next day, tricked and conscripted into the army to fight Napoleon. Winnie asks her family to take her back, but they refuse, and thus begins Winnie's struggle to make it on Lance's modest estate by herself. Years later, the war ended, a troubled and changed Lance returns home, searching for peace. Instead he finds himself in another battle with a very attractive wife who wants no part of him. Instead, she wants a divorce and her small dowry returned. Lance is unable to accommodate her at present, and they settle into an uneasy truce until he can, perhaps next year. Meanwhile, life goes on in unexpected ways. Will Lance break through the barrier Winnie has built around herself? Will the unbending Winnie soften enough to see and appreciate the new Lance? Or will they forever be at odds?

166 pages, Kindle Edition

Published February 2, 2019

Reviews

[Claire S · Rating 1 out of 5]

I picked up this book as I thought it would be a fun read. Perhaps it was the "Oops" in the description that made me think it might be a bit of a romp. Well, it is not, and it's a pretty uncomfortable read so stop here if you don't even want the images in your head. The description is pretty accurate in terms of skimming through the events of the book. What it doesn't tell you is that drunk Lance and his drunk friend kidnaps Winifred, mistreat her terribly to the point that she's battered and bruised and, when they return to Lance's house, he rapes her and leaves her. At that point, I should have stopped since I had no desire to read about violence against women, much less by the supposedly hero of the story. Some morbid curiosity made me want to see how the author would handle this. Winnie makes the best out of a bad situation as the blurb describes (she's pretty awesome). When Lance comes back, he has only vague recollections of what happened. When Winnie tells him he raped her, he dismisses her saying a husband can't rape his wife. He resents her coldness towards him and thinks of her as frigid. Instead of thanking her for saving his land, he starts taking over the running of it and the finances without a thought for what she went through. Actually, that's not accurate, he tells her that he was also forced to do something he didn't want to do (soldier) and, therefore, he had a much worse time than she did. I tried skimming some more after this and just couldn't do it anymore as it seemed that Winnie was starting to develop feelings towards him. I probably got close to the halfway mark and wished I hadn't. I wish someone had written a review mentioning the rape so I would have never even started the book. It's the only reason I'm writing this one, since I'd like to distance myself from this book as much as possible.