Review: Bound to be a Bride
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 07 13, 2014
This saucy novella, by new-to-me author Megan Mulry, takes place in Napoleonic era Spain and features two kindred and independent spirits.Isabella has been raised in a convent, as many privileged women of her class, where she has been educated and groomed to be a bride to a wealthy and titled family’s son. But that’s not the life she wants for herself. So she intricately plans a journey, hiding her belongings along the way. She plans to escape and live independently, free of the constraints of any man."…they would live in a new world of freedom, where abusive, calculating men and complicit authoritative women would no longer control their destinies."“A husband wanted a beautiful, charming, delightful wife, the nuns had explained to Isabella on the day she departed the convent. All Isabella could think during the entire two-hour recitation of their womanly wisdom was, How would you know?! None of them had ever been a wife.”Unbeknownst to her, Isabella’s betrothed, Javier (Javi), also has no intention of being tied to a meek woman in marriage. He is on the road (to Mexico) with two of his best friends when they encounter Isabella. Javier and his friends are working in a covert group to help overthrow Napoleon. They fear she is going to try to rob them—a tiny wisp of a thing, right!—so Javier ties her, using the ancient martial arts technique of Japanese rope binding called Hojojutsu, an intricate series of knots that allows for simultaneous movement and constriction.One of the reasons I love historical romance is that I learn more about history and the history is rich in this little story. For example, I had no idea that the Japanese came to Spain in the seventeenth century and settled in a town called Coria del Rio. Also, Javier is based on a real historical figure, Francisco Javier de la Mina, a guerrilla fighter in Napoleonic Spain. Mulry says she was inspired to write a story about him after seeing “his dashing portrait.”I’ve read one other historical romance set in Spain around this time, Anne Gracie’s Bride by Mistake. In that story, as in many historical romances set during this time, women are at the mercy of men’s wishes and whims.The descriptions of landscape on their journey are vivid, as this one of the town of Aveiro:“Here, stretched out in front of her, was a teeming array of pale terra-cotta rooftops, glistening turquoise canals, and beyond, the beckoning infinite sapphire Atlantic with the city’s famous piles of blindingly white salt drying in the bright sun along the shoreline.”The writing and characters are likable and spirited. I like Isabella’s feistiness and independent nature and, even more important, that Javier  appreciates her this way. The fact that they are intended for each other makes it all the more humorous.There is a sequel novella recently released, Bound to Be a Groom, which tells the story Isabella’s friend, Anna, born on the wrong side of the blanket.I look forward to reading more from Mulry in future.