An early work of Garwood's that I picked up for .99 on Amazon. I'm a little torn about this one. I enjoy her writing style, and the characters she creates feel real. The story arc is good, including the mystery that's part of the plot. The only thing I really disliked are the hero and heroine.

Caroline starts the book as a self confident and assertive woman, who in the opening scene, single-handedly foils a carriage robbery with a combination of daring, quick thinking, and fine shooting. Then she meets the Duke of Bradford. The duke is an arrogant, bullying ape who declares that he will "have" Caroline, and proceeds to spend the better part of the book yelling at her and emotionally abusing her. Caroline transforms before our eyes into a shadow of her former self, willing to trade her independence and self respect for the slightest indication of love from Bradford.

Of course Bradford eventually has his big epiphany, in order to enable the Happily Ever After. But I found myself constantly revising my expectations downward as the book went on. First, I thought it would be "Gee, women are people too!", then I thought it would be "Hm, I guess it wouldn't kill me to be nice to my wife". Finally we ended up with "Hey, I can do whatever I want as long as I tell her I love her!"

Sadly, I think this is fairly typical of romance from the 80s. Very well written book, with unfortunate lead characters.

It's hard to believe that I've found a Julie Garwood HR that I didn't abso-freaking-lutely love. I liked it okay, but...it all boils down to Bradford. He was a giant douche. The end.

This was pretty much the only Julie Garwood book that escaped my devouring her backlog when I was a teenager. It's the first Garwood I'd read in awhile, and the thing that struck me is how Bradford pretty much uses borderline rape tactics to woo Caroline. I understand it was written in a different time (1986) when that sort of thing was more popular, but reading it now made me extremely uncomfortable. Caroline's action and body language were all screaming at her not wanting Bradford's kisses at first, and he overpowered her. He even forced her mouth open with his hand at one point. If a guy did that to me, I'd bite his hand, knee him in the balls and run.

The main reason I finished it was that I wanted to figure out the mystery. The characters were all OK, but it was like barely scraping the surface. Caroline magically falls back into good terms with her dad, which seemed too sudden. I don't think this is a Garwood I'll be reading again.

https://readwithme2018.com/2018/08/16/throwback-thursday-august-16th-2018/

This book was complicated. It started off promising enough with the characters somewhat interesting and just enough mystery going on in the background, but it seemed like every page was just dripping with weird toxic masculinity. Every single time the male lead has a thought, it’s to comment that of course he wouldn’t trust, respect, or value the main woman’s feelings. I cringed a lot. And the mystery ended up being an extremely anti climatic reveal, and then wrapped up in only two pages. NOT TO MENTION the last line of the book is one of the worst and least memorable I’ve ever read.