Not Quite Married

Rating:
Summary: A New Twist on a Treasure
Review: Betina Krahn is one of the best writers if you want to read a book that makes sure the heroine has guts and brains and still is believeable as a woman. In this retelling of a tale, or a remix for the younger crowd, Betina takes a sweet character and one of her first novels to a further understanding. If you want to see the progression of a writer, this would be one of the better examples out there.

Congratulations to Ms. Krahn on staying innovative not only with her craft, but with her genre as well.

Rating:
Summary: convoluted claptrap
Review: Bettina Krahn usually writes a good novel. This was not.
The plot was convoluted and silly. Her dominating Daddy wants to marry her off to a man of little honour, who is a one dimensional very nasty fellow.
Our intrepid heroine goes off to London and pays the hero 4000 pounds so he'll wed her, a total stranger. He then seduces her, just as her slimy fiance does

a few days earlier. She seems to have trouble saying no to complete strangers. The wedding is a sham, and she docily marries the villain who is a very, very bad fellow indeed. She keeps him from the marriage bed, but he fortuitously expires in suspicious circumstances. Oh yes, she undergoes a complete overhaul of her appearance and gets skinny. Probably from being locked in the dungeon. And then we have the Big Misunderstanding. I didn't finish it. This was apparently one of these rewritten early stories. Why take a potboiler and make it worse? Bettina, you are capable of so much better.

Rating:
Summary: Convoluted reissue
Review: I can't say the book didn't hold my interest, but I can say I won't be re-reading it. It's a very convoluted story, with multiple marriages (one of which would have been illegal, so it was rather silly to threaten the heroine with it in the first place). I really liked the hero, but the author doesn't seem to have a grasp on how primogeniture works, or on how titles descend, which bugged me. He couldn't be disinherited by his father, and he couldn't renounce the title. He could choose not to use it, but he couldn't bestow it on his brother. Simply didn't work that way. Yet another case of the writer bending history to suit her story line . . . I was also really put off by the heroine's father. He vacillates from loving dad to abuser who rules with an iron fist and back again so many times it made my head spin.

I won't say don't buy it, but I also can't really recommend it. I certainly won't be buying anything else by this author.


Rating:
Summary: Good But Not Great
Review: If this is your first Betina Krahn book and you weren't impressed, don't give up on this author. I am a HUGE Betina Krahn fan, and I picked this particular book up after I had already read her Marriage Test series. It was like reading a different author and I nearly put it down several times. The heroine's actions in marrying and bedding the hero weren't plausible and overall this book had a darker tone than her others. However, Betina Krahn has such a way with words that you're drawn in, in spite of the weaknesses. This book was previously published in 1983 as RAPTURE'S RANSOM, so I'm just chalking it up as a work written by a younger, less experienced writer. Her more recent books are absolutely wonderful, and they're keepers in my library. If this is the only book by Krahn that you've read, then try one of her others, like THE HUSBAND TEST -- you're in for a real treat.

Rating:
Summary: Maybe not Krahn's best book, but still a fun read
Review: Unlike most of Krahn's books, I had to pick this one up a few times to really get into it. I have to admit, though, that may have been as much because of the cover as the writing. I loved 'The Husband Test' and the two books that followed, and picked this book after those.

As I said, it took me a few chapters to get into it, but once I did, I really enjoyed it. While I don't know that I'd necessarily read it again and again, I definitely put it back on my bookshelf to keep rather than out with the pile for the used book store -- something which not many mass market books achieve in my household.

Like most of Krahn's books, the strength lies in the incredible tension between the different characters, the depth of the emotion, and Krahn's ability to portray independent women while still retaining an incredible amount of historical accuracy.