Only Enchanting
The Survivor’s Club, Book #4
By Mary Balogh
IBSN# 9780451469663
Author’s Website: http://www.marybalogh.com/
Brought to you by OBS reviewer Una
Synopsis:
The Survivors’ Club: Six men and one woman, all wounded in the Napoleonic Wars, their friendship forged during their recovery at Penderris Hall in Cornwall. Now, in the fourth novel of the Survivors’ Club series, Flavian, Viscount Ponsonby, has left this refuge to find his own salvation—in the love of a most unsuspecting woman.…
Flavian, Viscount Ponsonby, was devastated by his fiancée’s desertion after his return home. Now the woman who broke his heart is back—and everyone is eager to revive their engagement. Except Flavian, who, in a panic, runs straight into the arms of a most sensible yet enchanting young woman.
Agnes Keeping has never been in love—and never wishes to be. But then she meets the charismatic Flavian, and suddenly Agnes falls so foolishly and so deeply that she agrees to his impetuous proposal of marriage.
When Agnes discovers that the proposal is only to avenge his former love, she’s determined to flee. But Flavian has no intention of letting his new bride go, especially now that he too has fallen so passionately and so unexpectedly in love.
Review:
This book when I read it, confirmed for me why I enjoy historical romances. Both main characters are complex and this complexity weaves throughout the story and draws the reader in.
Flavian comes back from the war brain damaged, at times violent, and must learn to speak and function again. He is left with memory lapses that are part of his everyday life and he feels he will have to live with them forever. The brain damage makes him impulsive and when he chooses to marry Agnes, because, along with passion he feels “safe” with her, his family find it completely out of character and object strenuously. After all he is a Viscount and Agnes is not of his class. His mother especially knows who she wants him to marry. As his memory returns, deceit and the malicious social climbing of the classes becomes evident. But is feeling “safe” with Agnes equivalent to love? He only knows that he can’t live without her and will do anything to keep her with him. Maybe “fate” brought them together.
Agnes is a widow at 26 and knows from her first dance with Flavian that he is someone who she is passionately drawn to. Passion with other family members has been a problem in her past so she is hesitant to let herself feel. She agrees to the marriage to Flavian with passion being their only knowledge of each other, only to find that she is enveloped in gossip and dislike once she meets “the family and friends”. Her past comes back to haunt her. She shows strength of character as she decides to meet the gossip head on with facts (provided by Flavian) and soon finds the gossip turns into “old news” and dissipates. Agnes decides that she will be “double dammed “if they will take away her marriage: quite an attitude for a woman of that time. She is determined that she will be Flavian’s’ wife with or without his love.
I love the flow of the book. It keeps you reading from beginning to end. The story is well written and I look forward to reading more from Mary Balogh.
