The Merry Widow (Wheeler Large Print Book Series (Cloth))

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: 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!!