Janice Preston

I probably should have read the series, as the family is the center of the story, but I really only read HRs that cater to my favorite tropes. There was some delicious angst, not about the heroine’s supposed plainness like I prefer - in fact, there is only one offhand reference to that, and the number her stepmother supposedly did on her self-esteem seems to disappear too - but there is plenty of drama about the hero not confiding in the heroine while putting his trust in someone else instead. I had this on the plain heroine shelf but it’s coming off of it. I was hoping for a good grovel, and there is a nice one, if brief, but I felt like the angst kinda evaporated due to Alex’s near death, so I was a bit disappointed there. I felt like Alex was kind of an idiot and I kept urging Jane to stand up for herself, but they weren’t bad characters overall. I probably would have liked them more if I had read the previous books. Jane is going on the traumatized heroine shelf because an attempted rape is what leads to their marriage, and she has a couple of trauma reactions in the beginning, but this book is all about the hero’s healing.… (meer)