Review: Fool for Love
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 12 10, 2013
Amelia Elphick was a fallen woman. A marquess's daughter, she was left in an unexpected situation after her father depleting his own fortunes through drunk and gambling. Her mother had already turned her sisters into whores to provide for their lavish lifestyle, yet Amelia chose to become a governess. Her naive heart believed that her fiancé, Nicholas Hayworth, since childhood would marry her, except he was a cad who abandoned her pregnant. In a last ditch effort to prevent her ruination, Amelia disrupted a party hosted by her employer which her fiancé was in attendance, but it didn't turn out as she hoped, except that her savior had come in the form of a rugged, American stranger...Eric Quinlan.Erin was simply an incredibly nice man. When he knows that Amelia would be cast off after the party debacle, he offered to take her with him to Montana, a land where no one knows her and she can start over. On the passage across the seas, they pretended to by wife and husband, and he began to admire and respect Amelia's spirit and intelligence, as well as come to want her. But Eric is plagued with a huge problem: his ranch has been incurring losses over the past few years, and his cousin Curtis is urging him to sell it before he goes bankrupt. Between dealing with his ranch problems, and trying to ascertain his own feelings for Amelia, might he give her the happily-ever-after she deserves? Or might he believe that Amelia was as as depraved as her own mother stated?In a romance novel, the driving point is the complexity of characterization and the ways in which characters respond and react with regards to conflicts. This is much the case here. Amelia was plagued with internal conflicts; her mother was literally a famous whore, and she lived her life trying to convince herself that she wasn't her mother, that her passionate nature was not a vice or a sign of depravity. Her downfall was the starting point of this book, and she had to somehow convince herself that she deserves Eric's love and affections, and valiantly fights for it, before she loses him forever. Amelia's inner conflicts, such as they are, are immense enough to interfere with Eric's external conflicts. It is clear to the readers that Eric's ranch has been the victim of sabotage, and who the culprit likely is, but it takes Eric a long time to figure out. As a result of that, his heart is rooted in mistrust and Amelia's on-off behavior with him confounds him. She wants him at night, yet refuses to become his wife in truth. And precisely because the two are such independent and resolute characters, they had to overcome barriers of communication before they could come together to confront a common enemy. And when that happens, their story lights up.On the surface, this story is one of randomness (A total nice stranger offering a fallen woman a chance to start over without any strings attached?). Below the surface, it is a tale of sacrifice and salvation, of second-chances and overcoming not only the prejudices of society, but of oneself. This was an especially difficult journey for Amelia to undertake, but she emerged all the better for it. For Eric, his end reward was a good sense to hold on to what he holds dear, whether that's his beloved ranch, or Amelia, and fight for it with tooth and nail. Merry Farmer's writing has, once again, taken me on a journey from England (as brief as that stay was) to the still developing town of Cold Springs, Montana, an absolutely captivating journey that was both literal and figurative, and through the hearts of two fantastic characters. As with previous books of hers that I've read, this one charmed me immensely and I look forward to reading more from her.*Review copy courtesy of ABG Reads; review of my honest opinion