Most of the reviews posted here are partial ones, usually just the first few paragraphs. If you want to read the whole review, click on the link at the bottom of the review.
Occasionally I'll write an independent review and those reviews will be published in full on this site. All of the reviews are written by me, Dabney Grinnan, and are just my opinion. It's easier to be a critic than a writer and I am grateful to all those authors who put their words on so many wondrous pages!
A Bride Unveiled by Jillian Hunter
Grade: C-
passion rating: warm
The first two chapters of Ms. Hunter’s A Bride Unveiled are terrific. Violet Knowlton is thirteen and growing up in the sleepy English town of Monk’s Huntley. She has three friends: her awkwardly engaging neighbor Eldie, pompous local heir Ambrose, and dashing pauper Kit. The four, under the non-watchful eye of Violet’s young governess — she’s being led astray by the bricklayer’s feckless son — bond despite their social differences. Violet, an orphan being raised by an overprotective aunt and uncle, is especially drawn to Kit. He is smart, athletic, and literally desperate to escape the future the workhouse he lives in promises. As their childhoods come to a close, I yearned to learn of the fates of the four friends.
Sadly the next twenty-eight chapters and odious epilogue are a disappointment.
As the third chapter begins, ten years have passed and Violet is recently affianced to a dreary merchant named Godfrey. She hasn’t the slightest love for him, but her now widowed aunt, whom Violet longs to make happy, feels dull mercenary Godfrey is a safe choice for Violet given her background. (Violet’s secret past isn’t revealed until the last chapters of the book and is so unstartling it’s exasperating.) At a house party hosted by the notorious Jane and Grayson Boscastle — the lovers from Ms. Hunter’s guilty pleasure The Seduction of an English Scoundrel - Violet again encounters Kit.
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