A Lady Awakened (Blackshear Family, #1) by Cecilia Grant
Series: Blackshear Family #1
Published by Bantam on December 27, 2011
Genres: Historical
Pages: 346
Goodreads

FINAL DECISION: An intellectually interesting twist on the normal romance story, but ultimately I found the book too uneven to be a great book.

THE STORY: Martha Russel is newly widowed and determined to protect the people of her estate from her husband’s brother who stands to inherit. So she concocts a scheme: she will quickly get pregnant and pass the child off to as her husband’s heir. She approaches a temporary newcomer to the area, Theo Milkwood, with a proposition. She will pay him to impregnate her. Theo, sent by his father to learn some responsibility, is insulted by Martha’s offer, but is happy to take the widow up on a month of irresponsible sex.

OPINION: I wanted to really love this book. There was something fresh and interesting in the story. The relationship between the hero and heroine begins cold and through their interactions, I loved how the two of them change and find something special together.

That first part of the book, however, was pretty difficult to get through. There is a lot of unsatisfying sex to get through. Unfortunately, when things change for them, the satisfying encounters don’t really outweigh the two thirds of book that come before.

What I did like was the development of the heroine. I never really liked her much. She’s not a character that I came to really love, but I found her journey intriguing. This was an interesting exercise of a book to read, but it didn’t really seem like a book that I would voluntarily pick up again.

Parts were really good, and I didn’t really mind way the relationship between the characters develop, but I left the book really not feeling that the happy ending outweighed everything that went before.

WORTH MENTIONING: I think the book might have been better with an epilogue showing these characters happy together.

CONNECTED BOOKS: A LADY AWAKENED is the first book in the Blackshear Family series.

STAR RATING: I give this book 3.5 stars.