Review: A so-so story
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 09 1, 2013
Helen is a young woman who is disowned by her family.  She had never been accepted by them because she was a bastard.  She meets Alex, a man who says he is in shipping, a widower and that he needs to marry so his sons will have a mother.  All of that is true but he leaves out the little detail of his being a Duke -- and that he has an extremely weird situation going on with his family.  There is a rumor he killed his first wife too.Helen marries him and begins to try to win over his sons.  Of course there is the usual antagonism from the mother-in-law, as well as the usual male relative making inappropriate comments.  There is a host of other characters too -- some of them could have been omitted in my opinion.This wasn't a completely badly written story but some of the dialogue didn't seem to fit the period.  I got a little weary of the mother-in-law`s sniffs of disapproval.  Couldn't she have given an icy stare or just a simple look of disgust?  Maybe it was intended as a running joke but it got old.Once the mystery of the first wife`s murder is solved there is a sort of summary and an epilogue.I read this over the period of a few days.  It was interesting enough for me to keep going but certainly wasn't a story I couldn't have walked away from.  And it wasn't one I was sorry to finish either.  There are a few `they are going to have sex but don't` scenes.  When they do get around to the physical aspect of their marriage you may wish they hadn't.  At least once it got too graphic for me and I am far from being a prude.It was a so-so sort of story.  If you have nothing else and are in the mood to read you could do worse.