The Merry Widow

Rating:
Summary: Oy, what a dud.
Review: I adore Meagan McKinney books but this one is painful to read. I finally had to stop around forty pages from the end because I dreaded picking up the book. Although the first chapter or two have some charm, none of it makes any sense and it just gets darker and darker and increasingly less plausible. I agree with the previous critic who suggested this book was ghost-written.

Rating:
Summary: Though not her best it's pretty good
Review: I think some of the reviews below are overly harsh... I would give this book a B- to B grade. It's fun in its way. The settings (Arctic and Gilded Age New York) are interesting, and so are the characters. The premise is unique. There are some cliches (orpahned children and kindly housekeeper) but the story is suspenseful throughout. I did not mind the hero's harshness, given what the heroine had done I thought she was lucky he didn't sic the police on her. I enjoy a dark romance with lots of tension between the hero and heroine and this book had that. I did think that all the stuff with the painting at the end was predictable and silly. But overall I found this book entertaining. Not on the order of Lions & Lace, Fair is the Rose, or A Man to Slay Dragons, but still worth reading for McKinney fans.

Rating:
Summary: Disturbing
Review: OK, there was a whaling station on Herschel Island in the 1880's. As the crow flies, it's about 800 miles from where Sir John Franklin perished, but nobody knew that then. So I suppose it's plausible that at the time he could have been thought to have reached Herschel Island.But since he did die on King William Island and we know that now, there is no way he could have wandered 800 miles on foot to deposit an opal. Our hero certainly takes the long way round to get back to New York. York Factory is 1000 miles as the crow flies through the coldest country in the world, and the least populated. The Iditarod in Alaska covers roughly 1200 miles and can be run in as little as 9 days, but that is a marked trail with trailbreakers and the dogs consume 10,000 calories per day each. Setting out in the dead of winter would be suicidal. The worst mistake however, is having our kidnapped heroine and the dastardly Edmund Hoar disembark in Halifax, where they hire dogs, but set out initially with a mule train. Heading north from Halifax one would cross the well populated province and then encounter a rather large stretch of open ocean before bumping into the province of Quebec. Proceeding north, I suppose that they could use a dog team, but would wind up quite far east of Herschel Island, which is on the other side of the country in the Beaufort Sea off the Yukon Territories. This book has a silly plot, a too angelic heroine, a virile idiot cad as a hero, and a one dimensional villainous villain.But the worst of it is the utter and complete lack of research that the author has done. And please, although it is in that foreign country, Canada, Halifax has a benign climate and we have never used dog sledding as a mode of transport, any more than they do in Boston.

Rating:
Summary: The Merry Widow wasn't merry or even partially happy!!
Review: This book was so disappointing I had to force myself to finish. Meagan McKinney has never disappointed me this way (well, My Wicked Enchantress was pretty bad).

Noel Magnus, a newspaper tycoon, eludes his inner demons by traipsing across the artic looking for a missing explorer and a mystical opal, while wooing and seducing Rachel, the proprietor of a saloon on Herchel Island.

Noel promises love but not marriage. Rachel longs for warmer climates, residence in a house with a white picket fence and being adorned in dresses worn by Godby's models; and nights of passion, but after the ring is installed on her finger. But Noel believes Rachel is protected from a cruel society by remaining in the Artic. He's promising nothing but frigid temperatures and licentious affair.

Thus Rachel sets out to resolve the problems herself by creating the widow of Noel Magnus, whom New Yorkers'presume to be dead. But while the widow inherits wealth, respectibility, and comfort, she also inherits the haunting secrets of the Magnus family and must fight to conquer Noel's demons with love and understanding or lose both herself and Noel to what she considers a 'life without a life'.

On a personal note, Noel was brooding, depressing, and downright abusive. I found nothing heroic, sensual or strong about this man. Yes, he loved the outdoors and was an expert in Artic expeditions, but a polar bear exhibited more warmth and affection than Noel, and polar bears are flesh eaters!!

Happy readers!!

Rating:
Summary: The Merry Widow wasn't merry or even partially happy!!
Review: This book was so disappointing I had to force myself to finish. Meagan McKinney has never disappointed me this way (well, My Wicked Enchantress was pretty bad).

Noel Magnus, a newspaper tycoon, eludes his inner demons by traipsing across the artic looking for a missing explorer and a mystical opal, while wooing and seducing Rachel, the proprietor of a saloon on Herchel Island.

Noel promises love but not marriage. Rachel longs for warmer climates, residence in a house with a white picket fence and being adorned in dresses worn by Godby's models; and nights of passion, but after the ring is installed on her finger. But Noel believes Rachel is protected from a cruel society by remaining in the Artic. He's promising nothing but frigid temperatures and licentious affair.

Thus Rachel sets out to resolve the problems herself by creating the widow of Noel Magnus, whom New Yorkers'presume to be dead. But while the widow inherits wealth, respectibility, and comfort, she also inherits the haunting secrets of the Magnus family and must fight to conquer Noel's demons with love and understanding or lose both herself and Noel to what she considers a 'life without a life'.

On a personal note, Noel was brooding, depressing, and downright abusive. I found nothing heroic, sensual or strong about this man. Yes, he loved the outdoors and was an expert in Artic expeditions, but a polar bear exhibited more warmth and affection than Noel, and polar bears are flesh eaters!!

Happy readers!!

Rating:
Summary: Vivid tale of two worlds.
Review: When artic explorer Noel Magnus, searching for the missing Franklin expedition, kept putting off marriage to Rachel Howland, the only white woman in the frozen north, she took the cursed black opal he wanted and fled to Noel's home in New York, posing as his widow. Along the way, she acquires two homeless children who are also seen as Noel's children. When Noel arrives in New York, he vows to make Rachel's life hell. In addition, Rachel is being threatened by Noel's sworn enemy and competitor, Edmund Hoar.

A vast improvement over McKinney's last novel, this is a rich tale filled with conflict and tension. THE MERRY WIDOW kept me reading until the last page, long after my bedtime.

Rating:
Summary: Amateur Writing from an Old Pro
Review: Who wrote this book under McKinney's pseudonym? I can forgive boring characters, implausible plot and inconsistent story-line; any writer can go through a bad spell. But writer and editor both insult the reader with the unforgivably awful grammar! Please, pay attention to the meaning of lie vs. lay and further vs. farther; avoid split infinitives and study up on subjunctive mood; and for goodness sake! The case when using pronouns! I cringed when I read phrases such as "between Betsy and I" and "It was her...." Ick.