Review: Went from great to blah.....
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 01 15, 2013
Spoiler Alert!  This review is going to have spoilers....As soon as I started reading this book, the story intrigued me.  Elara is a sweet girl who is a serf, is loved by her brother and father.  She is disliked by her mother and practically the whole village.  All because she cannot cook or do any wifely duties well??...I could not understand why Elara's mother did not like her or try to teach her to cook or even belittel her and made Elara devalue herself?  You can read the whole book and not come to the conclusion as to why her Mother disliked her or why her brother and father never stood up for her.  This was never explained in the story.Elara is traveling with the daughter of the Lord of her village as a Lady's maid, when they are attacked and she is saved as prisoner-bride to Corden; however due to circumstances that occur she is released from that vow.  She and Corden form a friendship and, although Corden asks her several times to marry him, she refuses.  She is very head strong, stubborn, and willful.  I enjoyed that about her.  She eventually agrees to marry Corden and as they travel back to his home, they are attacked and Elara is taken captive.  (I also do not understand how that happened when Corden took on Princess Viora and her guard on his own, but he couldn't take on some bandits with his guard?? I'm just saying..)She escapes; however at this point, this story stopped holding my intrest and became a bedtime story.  Elara's character changed.  Gone was the girl who was so headstrong and willful.  It's like she became depressed and gave up.  I could not believe what I was reading.  That it took so long for her and Corden to reunite, was astonishing to me. She lost her spunk, her spark and the ending and story became some boring oatmeal.The story is clean, nothing more than kissing is mentioned.  It does have grammer errors and some additional editing is required.  No foul language is utilzed.  Which I really liked; however at 75% of the book read, it lost it's gumptiom and disappointed.