Book Review: Bride Required by Alison Fraser
Just to round out a couple of months devoted to romance novels, I’m going to review some Mills & Boon books that were a formative part of my young adult reading experience. That sounds a little weird but I am talking about the latter end of my teenage years. I don’t read romance anymore but I have reread these books for the purpose of these reviews. Enjoy!
*****
As soon as you begin reading this book and discover that the main female character is just seventeen years old, the seed is planted in the back of your mind that there is going to be yet another inappropriate age gap between her and her male love interest. But the further you read, the less bothersome it is because she’s feisty and mature beyond her years and the physical contact is pretty PG right up until the last third of the book, by which time she has turned eighteen.
Dee is homeless, busking for money on London’s streets while she struggles to feed both herself and her dog, and living in a boarded up building without water or electricity scheduled for demolition. Baxter is a doctor, recently returned from a lengthy stint working for a charity in Africa and close to burned out. When he spots Dee playing her flute in a corridor of the London Underground, she’s exactly what he’s looking for. Which isn’t a girlfriend but someone prepared to enter into a marriage of convenience in exchange for payment.
Dee isn’t naïve – she’s been exposed to enough bad things in her short life to be wary. But when she hurts her knee and Baxter takes care of her, she realises he’s exactly what he says he is. The only problem is that despite abandoning his plan to use her in a marriage of convenience, he won’t just let her go back to her life on the streets. He gives her an ultimatum: come to Scotland with him where he can continue looking after her (and her badly damaged leg) and maybe get her back into school or return home and sort out her problems with her family.
She chooses to return to her family, planning to see Baxter off and then do nothing of the sort, but he insists on driving her right to the front door. She fumes as he goes through her bag to find her birth certificate, telling her he’s going to drive to the address on it and see if that gets them anywhere close. Dee finally gives in and gives him the correct address but when they get there, Baxter sees her dysfunctional family is something worse than living on the streets. And so they go to Scotland.
The dialogue in this book is pitch perfect. Instead of the usual waffle that permeates so many romance novels, their discussions are interesting and not always about themselves and their burgeoning love. There’s an actual plot, genuine drama and life difficulties, and terrific writing. I’ve read quite a few of Alison Fraser’s books and her efforts are always significantly better than most of the other writers writing in the same genre.
This book is a little unusual in that it is written from both the main characters’ perspectives, not just one. Usually, romance writers only show the thoughts of one main character in order to maintain the drama that comes from the misunderstandings that dominate romance as opposed to genuine reasons keeping them apart.
The only thing that detracts is Dee’s age but it’s a necessary component of the plot and Baxter is written so well that he doesn’t come off as a creepy old man – always a good thing in romance fiction.
If you’re looking for a good romance read, you’ll find it in this book. If you’re looking for a good example of how to write romance, you’ll find that as well. If you’re not a romance fan, then don’t bother because it doesn’t pretend to be anything else but if you are, it should tick every box.
5 stars
*First published on Goodreads 17 January 2017
