Review: Suggested by a Friend
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 02 6, 2012
I didn't know what to expect from this book a friend told me about it, as she knows that I like Regency Romances and spies, and after all it was a kindle freebie. I have never read anything by Blair Bancroft and so when I started The Sometime Bride, this afternoon I really didn't know what to expect. I really liked this book.The story takes place is Lisbon beginning in 1807. The pretty 14 year old daughter of an English ex-pat raised in her father's gambling hell. Catherine (Cat) is a beauty and mature for her age, her father's real purpose in Lisbon is English military intelligence and Cat even at her tender age has been recruited to this purpose. Enter Blas a roughly handsome, 21 year old cartographer and spy who has come to join Thomas Audley's spy network. The Portuguese Royal family is preparing to leave to go into exile in South America, ahead of Napoleon's Grand Army, so too are the English. But Audley cannot leave, and he has no where to send his daughter. To save his spy network and to save guard his daughter Thomas and Blas formulate a shocking plan. Blas is to marry Cat in name only and coordinate information gathering while Thomas will hide in the countryside and oversee operations from there.The novel spans 7 years of war the occupation of the French in Portugal, then liberation of Portugal the whole Peninsular War the guerilla war in Spain and finally the victorious March of Wellington into Paris. Cat and Blas' story is woven into the major events of this time and is truly worth reading, and I would give this 4 stars.