A Christmas Promise

Rating:
Summary: A rocky relationship turns to gold
Review: Could there be a more inauspicious beginning for a marriage than the one in this book? The hero and heroine literally hate each other, and both have the worst misconceptions about each other (due in large part to the unusual circumstances and the fact that they hardly met before they married). Their initial intimate scenes are not at all romantic and border on uncaring (or worse). But somehow Balogh manages to take these two people through a series of events that leads them to understand and respect each other and to eventually fall in love. It's a tribute to her talent that she can make this transformation credible.

Eleanor's family and Randolph's friends make wonderful secondary characters who help turn this marriage of convenience into a love match. And there's more than one happy ending as a result. The book's not perfect; there could have been more evidence of a gradual softening of their feelings toward each other. But in the end, it's all good.

Rating:
Summary: A Father's Gift.
Review: Eleanor Transome loved her father dearly. He called her his treasure. He only wanted her happiness. Eleanor Transome's father was dying. So he bought Eleanor a husband!

Randolph Pierce, the Earl of Falloden, is on the brink of ruin, he needs money quickly. He must preserve Grenfell Park, the debt-ridden home of his youth. With much reluctance, the Earl of Falloden accepts the coal merchant's terms. He will wed Eleanor Transome, a young woman he has never met.

Two very different people from two very different worlds. Two very separate entities. They were man and wife, a stranger from a class she hated and she from a class he despised. Yet, there was more to it than that. They had to make a life together. They could derive mutual satisfaction from each other. He would take pleasure from her and she would take pleasure from receiving him. For Eleanor did not want to be alone. Eleanor wanted to love someone, Eleanor wanted children.

Balogh again hits the jackpot. A CHRISTMAS PROMISE is delightful. It is a quiet story about two people who: meet, observe, and fall in love with each other. Nothing unusual -- except these two people are already married. Balogh relies on a Christmas theme to enhance her story delighting her readers with the traditions of Christmases past. A time when families gathered, for days, to celebrate the joy of the season. A time when Christmas celebrations revolved around life's simple pleasures: horse drawn sleighs, sledding at night, gathering yule logs, or rejoicing in a star-filled Christmas sky.

Again Mary Balogh proves she can write a romance book. At the end of A CHRISTMAS PROMISE, Mary Balogh wisely chooses her poignancy pen. Quietly I wept as Eleanor opened her father's final gift and then I rejoiced when the hero offered his heart. A CHRISTMAS PROMISE is a Signet Regency Romance book and is currently not in print; presently an interested reader must obtain it on the secondary market. Grade: A

Grace Atkinson, Ontario - Canada.

Rating:
Summary: "Not Balogh's Best..." -- DON'T BELIEVE IT!
Review: I just have to disagree with the 3-star reviewer who said this was "not Balogh's best but still readable"...I put this book right up there with "A Temporary Wife" and it IS one of her best, absolutely!! Randolph & Eleanor have a hard time before they find happiness and that's REAL. That's what makes this story so good; its characters' feelings are rooted in reality. They learn about each other; more importantly they learn about themselves. It makes their love story all the more satisfactory at the end.

Rating:
Summary: "Not Balogh's Best..." -- DON'T BELIEVE IT!
Review: I just have to disagree with the 3-star reviewer who said this was "not Balogh's best but still readable"...I put this book right up there with "A Temporary Wife" and it IS one of her best, absolutely!! Randolph & Eleanor have a hard time before they find happiness and that's REAL. That's what makes this story so good; its characters' feelings are rooted in reality. They learn about each other; more importantly they learn about themselves. It makes their love story all the more satisfactory at the end.

Rating:
Summary: A wonderful Christmas tearjerker
Review: Mary Balogh writes some truly wonderful books, and this is definitely one of them. Randolph, Earl of Falloden, is struggling under the vast mound of debt left to him by his spendthrift cousin, the previous earl. He is astonished when a cit, a *coal merchant* of all people, comes to visit him to inform him that he's bought all Randolph's debts. And he will write them all off, and give Randolph half of his fortune, if the Earl will marry his daughter. (...)

This is a lovely, poignant love story, in which a couple who seem completely unsuited to each other in the beginning gradually come to understand, and to love, one another; and it's set in the magical season of Christmas, a time which Mary Balogh does so well. If you can find a copy of this somewhere, snap it up!

Rating:
Summary: Talk about a rocky start to a marriage. . .
Review: This marriage has a horrid beginning. The first love scene is a bit rough. The characters do indeed hate each other. In fact with as much as they hate each other in the beginning, they have no right to be as in love with each other as they are by the end. Actually, I'm amazed that Balogh pulled it off. I liked both characters by the end despite how terrible they were at the beginning, and that has to take talent. Not Balogh's best, but still very readable.

Rating:
Summary: Tough start but unusual turn...
Review: This story by Mary Balogh is the only one in which I have cried at the end, and I don't usually cry over books. The book starts out unpromisingly with an aristocrat being blackmailed into marriage by a dying merchant. He finds the merchant's daughter to be cold, title-obsessed, and unfeeling - and also surprisingly passionate. She sees him as a gambler and a wastrel, and remembers only that he has shown her no love nor sympathy. The marriage therefore starts off unpromisingly, especially when the father-in-law dies shortly afterward and the heroine refuses to wear mourning for longer than a month.

However, both have severe misconceptions about each other. The hero, Randolph, is not a wastrel. The heroine, Eleanor, is not cold nor unfeeling. How they come to these realizations without the usual Big Misunderstanding dominating the story-line is what I will leave you to discover. Suffice it to say that there is a wonderful sled race, some rather amusing relatives of the bride, and no less than three minor romances that nevertheless do not take our attention away from Randolph and Eleanor as they struggle to a better understanding of each other.

And as to why I cried? Well, it has something to do with why Eleanor did not cry at her father's death and what finally happens in the conservatory.

There are no villains, just some remarkable misconceptions based on initial behavior at a very trying time. As such, this book is both refreshing and yet oddly touching. If I could find a copy of this book, it would be definitely a keeper.

Rating:
Summary: Tough start but unusual turn...
Review: This story by Mary Balogh is the only one in which I have cried at the end, and I don't usually cry over books. The book starts out unpromisingly with an aristocrat being blackmailed into marriage by a dying merchant. He finds the merchant's daughter to be cold, title-obsessed, and unfeeling - and also surprisingly passionate. She sees him as a gambler and a wastrel, and remembers only that he has shown her no love nor sympathy. The marriage therefore starts off unpromisingly, especially when the father-in-law dies shortly afterward and the heroine refuses to wear mourning for longer than a month.

However, both have severe misconceptions about each other. The hero, Randolph, is not a wastrel. The heroine, Eleanor, is not cold nor unfeeling. How they come to these realizations without the usual Big Misunderstanding dominating the story-line is what I will leave you to discover. Suffice it to say that there is a wonderful sled race, some rather amusing relatives of the bride, and no less than three minor romances that nevertheless do not take our attention away from Randolph and Eleanor as they struggle to a better understanding of each other.

And as to why I cried? Well, it has something to do with why Eleanor did not cry at her father's death and what finally happens in the conservatory.

There are no villains, just some remarkable misconceptions based on initial behavior at a very trying time. As such, this book is both refreshing and yet oddly touching. If I could find a copy of this book, it would be definitely a keeper.