4.5 stars

Very well done Regency romance. More in depth than many out there. Not a comedy of manners and the characters were not just modern people dressed up in fancy clothes. It was reminescent of early Balogh's style. The hero Ian is an honorable man who falls in love with his ward who is the daughter of a cowardly man who almost got him killed in Portugal. Both the hero and the heroine are very well developed and you care about both of them. The only reason I don't give it that last half star is because I was disappointed in the brevity of the ending. I didn't get the full effect of a happy ever after because the scene was not fully developed enough. I don't want to say why and spoil it for others but I think you'll see what I mean if you read it. Even so it was worth reading. ( )

Good book, except for the ending. 3.5 stars rounded up ( )

It was decent and I enjoyed it, but I probably wont keep it.

I found Anne's Perfect Husband damned depressing. Ian is such a tortured hero - yes, they populate the romance genre like a plague of locusts, but really, he's one of the saddest, scarred heroes I've come across - and he pulls it off with without appearing self indulgent or pathetic. He’s a unique, fully fleshed out character who suffers – a lot. But I never really see any healing going on, let alone a happily ever after. The story is sad, the outcome is sad, and the ending truncated - I never thought before that I read romances for the happy ending, but I guess maybe, in this case, when it's denied me, I do.

The supposed happily ever after is so unconvincing because of the heroine - Anne Darlington, whose character isn't nearly as well developed as Ian Sinclair's. She's sickeningly saccharine in her good deeds, her compulsion to heal and love everyone around her. She’s too naive and can't match Ian at all in terms of maturity or emotional depth. He's a scarred war hero with a Big Secret, (well, actually a couple of them,) and she's the recently orphaned girl raised at a boarding school and bestowed upon Ian as his ward - per the dictates of her father's will. Ian takes her to live with him, to give her a season and find her a husband. It's heartbreaking to watch him push away everyone he loves because of his Big Secret (which, for once, provides a credible reason for his actions,) to watch him struggle with his feelings for Anne and his wounds from the war. He's flawed and very human and deserves a better heroine.

There's also a villain and the external plot of dastardly deeds he precipitates, the outcome of which (even if the plot itself was well constructed) is also really depressing for me – particularly since it happens so late in the game and doesn’t afford any satisfactory resolution to the story or the romance. Maybe I'm just not tough enough to take all the angst and gloom that Wilson dishes out – and, in the case of Ian, at least, she dishes it out so well, even if I didn’t like the story she chose to tell here. ( )

Ian Sinclair, badly wounded fighting Napolean but mostly recovered now, discovers that he has been named the guardian of the young daughter of the man who was the cause of his war injury. He plans to have nothing to do with the child since she is safely tucked away at school up north until he has an attack of conscience thinking of an abandoned waif spending Christmas alone at school. Imagine his surprise when he discovers that his ward is not a child and that he has somehow given his word to take her off and try to give her the life that her father's peripatetic military career and non-military inspired neglect never granted her. Anne Darlington, for her part, isn't sure she wants to have a London season unless she can convince Ian that the only man for her is him. As Ian is trying to keep Anne's father's cowardice and callousness from his child, he is trying to keep her at arm's length as well. An interesting take on the concept of "the sins of the father" and "the child of mine enemy," this is, of course, a romance and so such old chestnuts will be overcome by true love. Anne's attachment to Ian seems fairly sudden and without enough evidence while Ian's love for Anne is shown growing over the course of the story. Perhaps this is because the reader can see him struggle with his feelings, but it made for more interesting reading than Anne just declaring to herself out of the blue that if she can't have Ian, she'd go back to school and take up the teaching post offered to her. So half satisfying, this could have used a bit more fleshing out. ( )