The Forced Marriage features an outstanding romance between Flora and Marco plus some funny lines, lots of emotion, a wonderful grovel and good side characters. The downside is that this is a revenge romance although neither we nor Flora realize it until about two-thirds through the story.
Marco is rich and drop dead sexy gorgeous and he just rescued Flora from a mugger. Things proceed from here…
Flora is engaged to nice, safe Christopher but she’s starting to wonder whether this is a good idea. You see, Flora is not particularly attracted to Chris and manages to avoid sleeping with him despite him pressing her. Flora’s best friend Hester chides her and challenges her to think this through: Should she marry a man she’s lukewarm about? A man whose main attraction is safety and security? Plus Chris hasn’t been quite the same since he returned from a Caribbean holiday.
On the other hand Flora’s mom likes Chris and Flora’s sister wants her obnoxious son to wear a page boy suit and be a ring bearer at the wedding. And Chris claims to want to marry her. What’s a girl to do?
Answer: Sleep with the warm and loving guy who beat off a mugger. Then run off to Italy with him and live in his spiffy country home, send Chris back his ring, tell Mom and sis to tough it out. Things proceed some more. Now Flora and – apparently Marco – are deeply in love and Flora is sexually entranced by him and thanking her stars she didn’t marry Chris.
Dum-da-dum-dum. Marco goes away for business, leaving Flora behind, ripe for his godmother’s nephew to wreck nasty mischief. Godmom’s evil nephew drags Flora off to see the godmother – who is the evil fairy, not the good one – and godmother informs Flora the whole thing was a set up. Marco was taking revenge on Chris and incidentally on Flora because Chris had a fling with godmother’s niece Ottavia with whom Marco had been engaged and left the niece miserable, high and dry. Marco didn’t give a rip about losing Ottavia but his godmother nagged him and nagged him to seek revenge.
Here’s where this great romance leaves me cold. I can dimly see why someone – preferably Ottavia herself or possibly her brother – might want payback from Chris for leading her on, promising marriage then disappearing – but at what point does this affect Marco? Instead of telling Ottavia to grow up, that holiday flings are notoriously short of permanence, to be responsible for her own behavior, Marco agrees to go along with the scheme.
It gets even sicker. Flora had been engaged to Chris when Chris was flinging with Ottavia, and that makes Flora the injured party, not Ottavia. But no! Ottavia is injured because Chris preferred Flora. Cockeyed logic to me. Dopey.
GRRR! At this point I’d seriously consider taking Marco and tossing him over the villa wall! Flora comes close. Evil godmother has a nice plane ticket for Flora – after all she doesn’t really want to stick around and talk to Marco before decamping in high dungeon, does she? – and Flora goes back to London, to fatigue and yep, morning sickness.
Flora truly loves Marco and even after discovering his rat-ness longs to be with him, misses him, would happily go back, but she believed Bad Godmother’s unsaid story too, that Marco never loved her. In fact Marco did and does still love her and comes for Flora, to ask her to marry him. In fact he says he was coming back to his villa to fess up and offer marriage the afternoon evil godmom spilled the beans. Flora tells him off and kicks him out, but not to fear, the proverbial phone call plot twist intervenes and Marco learns he’s a daddy-to-be. Now he insists on marriage, thus the title, The Forced Marriage.
Flora goes along with it, heart broken by Marco’s deception and miserable. She adopts a stray mutt, leading to more lighthearted moments that lift our spirits (and Flora’s) during this time of sadness and mourning for lost love.
Since this is a Harlequin our happy-ever-after is guaranteed – good! – and eventually both spouses learn to trust each other and in their love.
What I liked:
- Flora is strong-willed, perfectly happy to ignore Chris and her family, (even sister with the pageboy suit) and willing to cope with single parenthood if need be.
- Flora truly loves Marco, Marco truly loves Flora; the romance is real.
- Sara Craven includes lovely descriptions of the Italian setting along with the grittier London flats.
- Marco grovel is sincere and heartfelt.
- Evil Godmother doesn’t come to a sticky end but she does get turned out of Marco’s island and life
- The emotions are strong and feel real and Sara Craven builds a sense of immediacy, it is as though we are there, participating, not watching.
- There are some funny moments. I love how Flora’s stuck up sister whines about who will pay for the pageboy suit that Flora never wanted to see anyone wear, much less her obnoxious nephew.
- Flora’s best friend Hester is great. Sara Craven uses dialogue between the two to explain some events and thoughts but Hester is a character all her own, not a plot device.
What I don’t like:
- Did I mention this is partly a revenge plot? OK, it is a revenge-that-backfired plot, but still. I detest this revenge stuff and I don’t see how it can motivate such behavior.
- Flora never points out to Marco or anyone else that she is the injured party – twice in fact – not Ottavia.
- Flora flees Italy without talking to Marco because she believes the nasty stuff from evil godmom.
4 Stars. Would be close to 5 stars if not for the ridiculous revenge motivation.
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Amazon has The Forced Marriage in print version as does Thriftbooks and Archive.org has the pdf of the book.
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