Second Thoughts

by Sandra Heath

After taking the position of governess for the little daughter of the widowed Lord Carismont, Kate Kingsley, a charming widow with her own young son, accepts her employer's unexpected proposal of a marriage of convenience, but she soon discovers that someone--or something--will do anything to keep them apart. Original.

Genres: Regency

224 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published July 1, 2002

About the author

Sandra Heath is the ever-popular author of numerous Regencies, historical romances, novellas, and short stories. Among other honors, she has won the Romantic Times Reviewers’ Choice Awards for Best Regency Author and for Best Regency Romance. She lives in Gloucester, England, and can be contacted at sandraheath@bluey onder.co.uk.

Reviews

[Aneca]

A young widow seeks a position as governess to an orphaned girl - and is instead offered marriage by the girl's father. But something eerie is determined to keep this couple apart . . .

I have greatly enjoyed some of Sandra Heath's books in the past but I seem to have some trouble with the ones that have magical elements.

In this one a young widow agrees to a marriage of convenience to help an orphaned little girl. But from the beginning she starts to see things, namely a cuckoo determined to help her. When they arrive at her husbands estate it soon becomes obvioous that there is a world of magic from which his first wife came and she not only is still alive in that other world, but keeps wanting to come back to join her lover. To accomplish that she will have to convince her daughter to go to that other world and there's a struggle between the h/h trying to keep the child safe and coping with falling in love and the villains.

Bigger fans of magic and paranormal will probably enjoy it more than I did as that is the most important part of the story. The widow agrees to readily to the marriage of convenience and then they proceed to fall in love too quickly and I really couldn't see the attraction.

Grade: C

[Janet]

Maybe slightly better than one star but not much. Where was the Sandra Heath I so enjoyed. This was fey, unconvincing, muddled ... talking birds, lions, lavender fire sparks, raging tides and and not at all convincing rapport between the hero and heroine. They barely knew each other and altho in the hands of a convincing author, that can be immaterial, this book did not achieve that aim. Really not worth the time, sadly. I would create a "shelf" for first wife hanging around but since I really dislike that trope, it's probably not worth it.

[Angela Montgomery]

So, so bad. Standards are so low with these books -- very disappointing when they aren't met at all. Ridiculous magic sequences with various talking animals including a cuckoo that can't fly (!) Talking animals? Seriously? Is this written for 5 year olds? "Lavender lights" representing a woman from a lost kingdom. All I wanted was a stupid romance -- they're unbelievable enough as it is. To top it all, a hero and a heroine with zero heat between them. When they finally ended up in bed together, I thought it must have been a case of mistaken identities. I won't be reading anything by this author ever again. The only reason I picked this up was because it was recommended by Goodreads -- serves me right for trusting a computer algorithm.

[Donna Hatch]

Fun read incorporating Cornish folklore into a paranormal romance. Some of the funny stuff was a bit overdone, and the heroine took unnecessary risks with predictable disasters soon to follow, but the villain-ess was appropriately creepy and the ending was happy.

[Suchi]

I enjoyed this book very much.

[Alisha]

a bit weird for me