Review: Enoyable
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 12 11, 2013
Colleen is a strong young woman despite everything that happened to her, and I understood that, afraid of being sent back to prison (where they would take her baby) she decides to have her new husband believe the child is his, and to hide the fact their employer was a client of the whorehouse where she was. As she has constant remorse, that make things much more believable. I was amused when she thinks the signs of desire she feels with her husband are dizzy spells due to her pregnancy, or when she asks Samuel shamelessly if he is a Molly when he refuses to consummate their union (after seven years in a brothel you must have lost lots of taboo about sexuality).Samuel is rather narrow-minded, he sees things in black or white, not many grays in his life, and he has ideas on a lot of things. I even found him cruel in some of his reactions, even if it was impulsiveness that made him talk. His difficulties to deal with his wife’s past when she begins to be important for him are quite well done. And at the same time on other points he can be kind and comprehensive, like when he learns about Colleen’s pregnancy and thinks immediately that even if the baby isn’t his it will be his child all the same.The beginning is really fast, and the synopsis occurs in the first three chapters. In fact all the beginning of the story, of which I dreaded the distressing side (and at the same time which would have brought so much depth) was quickly finished in three chapters and some sentences here and there. There is also a timeline problem, with details making me think a lot more time had passed than in reality. For example I had the impression there was several weeks between the moment the heroine is sent back to prison and the one where she seduces her husband when in reality there was only six days.I was waiting for a big saga a la Barbara Wood or Colleen McCullough, and we’re far from it. His convict wife is a story that may be not deepened enough but enjoyable, with convincing characters and an unusual and interesting setting.