The Temporary Wife (Signet Regency Romance, 9143)

Rating:
Summary: Absolutely Outstanding
Review: This novel was, I believe, one of Balogh's last Signet Regencies. It's just a gem. A bit darker in theme than her usual work of this period, the novel contains a familiar Regency plot device (warm country lass marries into cold, repressed aristocratic dynasty) but is rewoven by Balogh to make an intriguing, thoughtful, and impossible-to-put-down read.

What I liked most about this book was how Balogh believably makes her heroine an amateur psychologist. That might sound off putting but Balogh makes it work. The heroine takes on more than she knows when she agrees, for money, to marry a nobleman for the sole purpose of shocking and hurting the nobleman's haughty father. As the heroine comes to understand the history and unhealed wounds of her husband's dysfunctional family, she can't help trying to "open up the windows" in the hearts and minds of those she's living with. How she does so, and how her efforts are received by her husband and his family, is the core of the drama.

In the course of the story some disturbing family issues come to the surface: the devastating effects to children who are made their parents confidants, the corrosive nature of unrequited love, and the terrible price of misplaced pride. The novel even skirts around children's awareness of their parents sexuality, a rather unusual topic in a romance novel.

Once again, Balogh, has created a complex and thought provoking story and tells it with style and grace. When Mary Balogh is at the top of her game, no one--and I mean no one--writes better Regencies. This is an example of her best and not to be missed by anyone who is looking for an intelligent, moving and extremely well written Regency romance.