The Countess Bride

Another sequel to the outstanding THE DUMONT BRIDE by Terri Brisbin, THE COUNTESS BRIDE picks up with Catherine de Severin, the sister of William Royce de Severin and the pawn used to control him. Now, Catherine resides with Christian Dumont and his wife Emalie. These wonderful characters from THE DUMONT BRIDE appear again in this 3rd book in the series and revisiting them in this story is a nice tie-in. Catherine de Severin sees no future for herself. Her memory is muddled and her shadowed past haunts her. Her childhood love, Geoffrey Dumont, and young brother to Christian stands to inherit a powerful title and land. Now he seeks a bride and unfortunately Catherine is unfit. As his bride selections are brought before them his heart and mind turn again and again to his true love, Catherine. As she heads to the nunnery to commit herself to God, Geoffrey has other plans, as he sees her life is in danger and throws caution to the wind to save her. Against the wishes of his family he marries her. Still, their troubles are not over. Catherine again finds herself a pawn of high powers that have controlled her life. In many ways, this characters loss of innocence at the hands of others brings more than a touch of sadness to this story. As a reader who read each book in this series with a lot of time in between the next, I highly recommend reading these books in succession. THE COUNTESS BRIDE had me referring to THE DUMONT BRIDE, which I hadn't read in well over two years ago time and time again. To thoroughly enjoy these books they definitely should be read together and would not do well as stand alone stories. THE COUNTESS BRIDE continues in the style of Terri Brisbin's other stories, which are consistently well delivered, sensual with a strong enough dose of historical backdrop to satisfy most discriminating historical romance readers. Tara Green