Parallel Universe

If you want real Historical Romantic stories, then don't read Christi Caldwell.
I read a comment that she produced so many books a year, that she didn't care about accuracy, this is a generous comment. I believe she doesn't think about it at all.
I have never worked out exactly why she chose a period of history that was quite so regimented in it's rules.
However, this doesn't deter her, there are Dukes galore, marrying person bred and bought up in the worse kind of slums, she can invent.
Goodness know what would have happened to the English Peerage, downing in so many Dukes, who bred with dregs of society. These dregs are somehow accepted and fit into the TON, (top one hundred of the English Peerage).
Slums enter most of her stories, maybe she has a soft spot for them Wishes to portray what it was like and writing a romance is her only way.
Again we enter the Parallel Universe, the master spy of the Brethren takes an inexperienced woman of the Peerage, into such a slum.
There she miraculously manages to sound and look like the denizens, she even saves the day.
As a young spy, he had met his true love, bedded her and continued with his job. He gets captured, when he returns (2 years later) she is married.
Conveniently forgetting that unprotected sex produces babies, he accuses her of betrayal and disappears for 24 years. Even being a so called spy/intelligent man, he can't work out her marriage and birth of first child all had a short time line.
She decides for the sake of her unborn child to marry a brute of a man she hates.
As I said Parallel Universe; why a brute, surely there were plenty of reprobates, if she was forced understandable.
He returns to solve a crime against the peerage; she has three children, is a grandmother, her husband is dead and her son is suspected of killing his father..
English Peers could be hanged by there own, but usually left the country, never thrown in a common gaol.
Naturally what he has suffered is more that what she has had to endure.
Though she hates him at first she can't fight the pull he has over her. Her husband had a bigamous marriage, I was worried for a minute that she was the second wife.
In English law, that would have made her children bastards and disinherited her son for the other son. Narrow escape.
If you wish to enter this Parallel Universe, then the book is predictable, easy to listen to, sprinkled with losers, reprobate and tough guys.

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1 person found this helpful

Loved this book

I really enjoyed listening to this book because for a change it was about an older couple in their early forties. And their love story was really lovely. Ive listened to most of the others that came before this and loved them all also. I skipped a couple but it's a bit confusing as the different series intertwine with each other so you don't really know which one comes next, as there are the same characters of one series in other series. I've listened to most of The Heart of the Duke series accept for the last 2, but this book is from The Brethren series and next I'll be going back to Heart of the Duke series to listen to the one before the last and then going back to the Brethren series again. It sounds very confusing but I'm trying to read them in order according to the year if nothing else.
The only thing that's missing in these books are the steamy sex scenes. Would have liked a bit more. Tim Campbell was great as usual. Love his narrating.

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