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3.0étoiles sur 5
a nice read but..., Déc 17 2001
"A Family For Gillian" by Catherine Blair is not (thank goodness)the typical Regency romance novel. Our heroine, Gillian, marries Viscount Prescott, an Irish landowner, a widower with 3 young children. Gilly had set out to ruin herself in London to bypass her Mother's plans for a great marriage. While she was indeed "ruined", after recieving a note from Prescott asking her to marry him, sight unseen, she decides to marry him as she senses his loneliness from the letter. Prescott wants to marry again for the sake of his children. Poor Gilly seems to spend her time trying to live up to the memory of the near perfect first wife, Elizabeth. The story focus's in on Gilly's attempts to be good mother to the children (who are not pleased by her presence, except for the youngest, handicapped daughter), and a mate to her husband. Unfortunately Avery (Viscount Prescott)is still in love with his wife and has no intention of consummating the marriage; he thinks Gilly is ruined thereby he is not denying her the chance at the physical side of romance. But she is innocent and does eventually admit that to her husband. He does feel guilty, then, about the sort of odd marriage. But why such an unnatural marriage? A bit too extreme.What I liked about the story was it was different. Back in that time of history, it was pretty normal for women to marry men not only to give birth to the prescribed heir but also, since women died in childbirth, to become mothers to the widowers children. Regency romances shy away from that. It was not all shy maidens and great matches back then. I was also pleased that Gilly and her husband do sleep together. That was interesting, their relationship before and after. Did he still mourn his first wife after Gilly and he slept together? As in the traditional regency romance, sex is not described at all thereby still being "sweet". Perhaps a detail or two would not have been awful, but you get the sense that Gilly is a normal, desiring woman and her husband realizes this. But he is pretty cool to her and so is Jane, the oldest daughter. In one scene, Gilly is so depressed and lonely she writes to her Mother asking to come home (a letter she throws out). Later, that same day after a fight, Prescott comes to her room and finds the letter he wrote Gilly asking to marry him. It would be have made more sense for him to find the letter Gilly wrote to her Mom. Gilly was so sad. She loved Prescott, and says this horrible cliche, that she loves him and is unhappy but would also be unhappy not to see him so might as well be unhappy with him. Seems so pathetic and out of character for a woman like Gilly who was a rather proactive person. At least Avery would read how sad she was and mabye get off his behind and stop being a jerk. Avery tells Gilly he does not want anymore children. Well, he does sleep with her. She never gets pregnant so he, what, pulls out or something? Did he really not want more children ever and that is fine with Gilly? The story begins with the marraige and ends exactly one year later. And no baby. It would have been nice for the story to end with a possible baby. The baby issue bothered me as well as Gilly sitting around and being so unhappy. And her husband was Irish. Did he have an accent? You would never know it.
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