A Stolen Bride by Avery Maitland

3 Stars

This novel was well written and edited, with few if any typos that I found in the ARC version of this manuscript. The world building of this time period was quite vibrant in this novel. It was quite atmospheric. The characterization of the heroine was very vibrant, but the hero of this novel was a bit of a cipher, since the whole novel takes place exclusively in the heroine's point of view. The development of the romantic relationship between these two characters was not awesome, since the heroine seemed to hate the hero quite late into this novel. This novel had SO MUCH angst, and high stakes. I am usually able to somewhat enjoy high angst novels so long as the stakes are equally high, but in this case, the angst was too high for me to really enjoy this novel as much as I wanted to. This novel uses the Enemies to Lovers trope, and the Surprise Pregnancy trope. The plot and pacing in this novel was five stars, the characterization of the heroine and the world building was four stars, the development of the romantic relationship was two stars, and the angst of the heroine and the cliffhanger ending were both one star. This novel ended on a cliffhanger, which massively detracted from my enjoyment of a novel that I thought was pretty good up until that point. I recommend this novel to readers who enjoy historical romances that read like adventure novels, and who don't mind cliffhanger endings with all the plot points left dangling. I will not be buying a keeper copy of this novel for myself.

I received a free copy of this book via Booksprout and am voluntarily leaving a review.

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