Kiss the Bride

Witty, touching, engaging characters and neat storyline. I always enjoy her work and this was no exception. In fact I have reread it several times.

What do you do when the girl you love is going to marry another and move out of the country? This is the predicament James finds himself in at the beginning of the story, when Emma Van Court comes to ask him to help tell Stuart and her guardians that they plan to marry. Instead of taking the information rationally James ends up attacking Stuart. Stuart and Emma elope and run off to the Hebrides, where Stuart meets his death six months later. When James recieves the message a year after the pair married, he goes down to receive Stuart's body. There he finds Emma living in the cottage Stuart and she shared, alone and with suitors chasing after her. Emma is less than happy to see James and tries to get him to take the ferry back home. Instead James stays and finds out about O'Malley's will and part of the truth about Stuart's death. James does what he thinks is the best way to keep Emma safe and to get her to fall in love with him, and proposes for them to temporarily marry.

All his life James Marbury, the Earl of Denham, has been treated with the care and dignity due the scion of a noble family. In other words, he's had everything handed to him on a silver platter. His one soft spot has been his childhood friend, lovely Emma Van Court. When Emma asks for his help in securing her guardians' permission to marry his cousin Stuart and move to an isolated island in Scotland where Stuart has accepted a curacy, James flies into a rage and reveals the pair's plans to their respective families. The pair responds by eloping and nothing else is heard of them for a year. When word comes that Stuart has died, James goes to Scotland to arrange for his remains to be returned to England. Assuming that Emma had returned to the bosom of her family, he is taken aback to find her still living on the island, working as a schoolteacher and acting highly secretive. To make matters worse, James finds out that Stuart was killed by an angry parishioner, and to make amends before he was hanged, the man left Emma his fortune. A fortune she can only inherit if and when she remarries. Now, James must uncover Emma's secrets even as he protects her from her motley assortment of suitors. All Emma Van Court wanted out of life was a husband and a family of her own. She thought all her dreams would come true when she married Stuart Chesterton. Now, Stuart is dead, she's hounded by the island's bachelors both young and old, and the Earl of Denham is back in her life asking all sorts of questions. Until the day she asked him for his help in marrying Stuart, James had been her hero. When his actions had led to her being cut off by her family, Emma had sworn never to forgive him. But now James is back, wanting to make amends and certainly acting differently. Emma is soon looking at James in a totally new light and when a debacle forces them into a marriage of convenience, James knows this is finally his chance to win the woman he's always wanted. Patricia Cabot's KISS THE BRIDE is a romantic confection filled with charm and humor. Not only is the interaction between Emma and James a delight to read, the secondary characters are interesting and certainly varied, from the lovestruck Cletus MacEwan to the strangely Yoda-like youngster Fergus MacPherson. The scene where young Fergus doles out love advice to a clueless James is a classic. An especially interesting twist is the fact that readers get a full sense of one of the characters, Stuart Chesterton, even though he never once makes an appearance in person. The true star of this tale, however, is the clever, quirky narrative that will keep readers entertained to the very end. TheSchemer

I read this book because I was a fan of the author's books for teens, and I was not disappointed. Emma Van Court is an orphan raised by her wealthy aunt and uncle. At eighteen, she elopes with Stuart Chesterton, a well-meaning but impractical man who takes his new wife to live with him on a small Scottish island village, much to the anger of Stuart's cousin, James Marbury, the Earl of Denham. Within a year, Stuart is dead, and Emma is struggling to survive on her meager salary as a schoolteacher. Without marrying, she cannot claim her inheritance. So when James comes to the island, he proposes a marriage of convenience. Having always loved Emma, he hopes she will come to love him, and wish to stay married. This book was written in the same clever, funny style as the author's other books. I highly recommend it to anyone looking for a romantic and funny historical read.

From the author who brought us the wickedly funny Princess Diaries comes a new historical romance with charm and humor. Though shorter than Ms. Cabot's previous, meatier adult romances, the reader still gets her money's worth in this amusing tale of star-crossed lovers. James loves Emma, but doesn't admit it soon enough. After being left widowed by his cousin, Emma slowly comes to return James's ardor through the course of the novel. It is refreshing to read about characters who aren't perfect for change. I found Kiss the Bride to be just the thing for an engrossing bath tub read.