The Bridal Quest
Ratings2
Average rating4
15
Ratings2
Average rating4
Lady Irene Wyngate has sworn she'll never marry, keeping suitors at bay with her caustic tongue. But there is one man she can't scare: Gideon, long-lost heir to the Earl of Radbourne. He was kidnapped as a child and grew up tough on the London streets. And though he's been restored to his family, he is still more at home in gambling dens than stately ballrooms.Irene isn't attracted to Gideon, or so she says when matchmaker Francesca Haughston asks for her help to civilize him for marriage. After all, he is a true rogue with a dubious past--a handsome rogue, she has to admit. But as she reluctantly begins to yield to love, wicked family secrets come to light...with devastating consequences for the reluctant lovers.
Series
4 primary booksThe Matchmaker is a 5-book series with 5 primary works first released in 2007 with contributions by Lori Brighton and Candace Camp.
Reviews with the most likes.
Once again, another fun read from Candace Camp. I love her stories because her heroines aren't helpless; they tend to be a little older, a little caustic, with lots of spunk. Irene is no exception: she won't get married because she doesn't want to “belong” to a man the way her mother belonged to her abusive father.
The hero in this book is great, too. Gideon doesn't really want to get married, he's doing it because he's expected to. The twist on the familiar trope is that he's marrying so his children, should he have any, will have more legitimacy, being that he has been the lost heir for the last, oh, twenty years. When Gideon meets Irene, of course they argue. He's rich because he worked his way up from being an abandoned child in London. She's rich because she was born to it. Their sensibilities, however, are very similar, even if their modes of expressing them are different.
Read this book for a hero who looks bad but isn't, a heroine who tells herself she won't ever marry, and a little mystery about how the hero came to be the lost heir returned.
