How To Lose A Bride In One Night (Forgotten Princesses #3) by Sophie Jordan
Historical Romance
July 30, 2013
Avon

Reviewed by Tori

Favorite Quote: “Life had not shown her a string of honorable men.”

When Annalise Hadley marries the man of her dreams, she never imagines he would attempt to kill her on their honeymoon. Tossed overboard and left for dead, Annalise manages to make it to shore before collapsing. Rescue comes in the form of a recluse hero whose secrets bind him tightly to the shadows.

Owen Crawford, The Earl of McDowell, home from the war, doesn’t want any responsibility in his life but Annalise intrigues him with her incredible courage and strength. He agrees to help her heal and teach her never to be a victim again…then he will send her away before she discovers just how unheroic he really is.

Loss and regret are a powerful mixture but sometimes when the right man and woman meet…the past can be forgiven and the future explored if they are both willing to take the chance.

How To Lose A Bride In One Night is the final installment of Sophie Jordan’s Forgotten Princesses series. More emotionally weighted and melancholy than the first two of the series, this story focuses on the marriage of the last daughter, Annalise Hadley. The illegitimate daughter of the infamous gambling den owner, Jack Hadley, Annalise agrees to marry the man her estranged father has chosen for her. With her physical deformity, Annalise is considered lucky to even be marrying, much less a handsome Duke. As Annalise prepares for her wedding night aboard the barge her and her husband are honeymooning on, she is shocked when her husband attacks her, attempting to choke the life from her. She falls unconsciousness and awakens when he tosses her overboard. Struggling against the rivers raging currents, Annalise is injured and falls unconscious again, only to awaken in the arms of a stunningly handsome man.

Owen Crawford has just returned from war. The traumatic memories combined with discovering the woman he loved has married his brother, he buries himself in the countryside, effectively divorcing society. Unsure what to do with the injured woman he finds, he takes her to a gypsy caravan and bargains for healing. Unable to get any information from Annalise concerning her name or reasons she was in the river, Owen decides to take her to his estate to complete her healing.

I wish I could say this story blew me away me, but I cannot. An interesting premise and intriguing plot elements never seemed to quite gain a foothold and expand. A deliciously decorated package that when opened, lacks substance. I found the energy and exuberance that ran through the first two books in this series was missing here. This story moves slow and steady; focusing singularly on our protagonists and their respective journeys. A familiar often told story that revolves around a tortured hero and heroine. Both are rather mild mannered in their outward appearance, only giving in to their turbulent emotions in their own thoughts and internal dialogue. If that energy and emotion had released into the open earlier, I would have enjoyed the story more. It was if I was reading two stories-one for each character-that just happened to exist in the same book. It was just all so…polite. I never connected to either of them and found them both boring at times.

Both Annalise and Owen have strong emotional barriers that not only kept them at arms length with each other but also from the reader. Annalise has known nothing but heartbreak from men-starting with her absent father. Her trust is extremely limited. Owen has scars from his time in the war and hurt from losing the woman he thought he loved. It’s compounded by the fact his brother married her and now they are expecting a child. Annalise seeks to be more than just a victim in life while Owen seeks forgiveness and redemption.

A majority of the book is spent with Owen and Annalise in seclusion, fighting their attraction for one another and keeping close hold to their secrets. I could understand Annalise’s fears, in the beginning, that kept her from confiding in Owen. Her husband just tried to kill her. Should Owen know the truth, he could legitimately return her, as she is legally her husband’s property. I did feel that with the time they spent together, she should have realized that had she told him the truth of the matter, he would never had returned her to her husband. What I didn’t understand is why she never attempted to contact her sisters or her father for protection. I was hard pressed to believe that they would have forced her return to her husband after she told her story, even if she had only known them for a year. The romance develops slowly, a tedious tug of war as Owen and Annalise admit to attraction and then run from the attraction. It’s only towards the end that they open up to one another and the chemistry is finally felt. I enjoyed the love scenes; tasteful yet steamy.

The climax of the story, Annalise’s confrontation of her murderous husband, is resolved in a chapter and fell into the unbelieveable realm.There were just too many non sequiturs. Even though she has only been missing a few months, her husband isn’t in mourning and is already pressing suit to another woman. How is that possible? Even as a Duke, society would have frowned upon that. The woman in question would have been gossiped about terribly. I was shocked she and her father had no qualms about it. They were both actually upset that Annalise returned from the dead and ruined their plans.  I was also somewhat put out we don’t really get any scenes with her family after she returned from the dead. A few lines is all. Of course we get our happily ever after but even then, we are only given a sliver of the emotional scene.

Overall, I felt the story was weak, poorly executed, and I couldn’t relate well to the hero and heroine.

Rating: D

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