Theme: Contemporary or Category Romance Brides (and Grooms)
For this week and the next two weeks, we’ll be focusing on June brides on romance covers.
It’s June, and not only is summer in the air but so is love! The sixth month of the year is seen by many people as the month of love and romance. So it’s not unusual to know that it’s the most popular month for weddings.
First, we’ll look at brides on the covers of contemporary category romance novels.
The Covers
For the week of Monday, June 6, 2022, to Sunday, June 12, 2022, we’re highlighting contemporary series romance covers with beautiful brides and grooms.
(From left to right, top to bottom) Accidental Wife, Day LeClaire Harlequin, 1996, Ron Lesser cover art An Innocent Bride, Betty Neels, Harlequin, 1999, Will Davies cover art Bittersweet Marriage, Jenneth Murray, Harlequin, 1987, Daniel Crouse cover art Marry Me Tonight, Marisa Carroll, Harlequin, 1995, cover artist TDB
Books about self-absorbed, beautiful, wealthy women with nothing to do but go to lunches & parties, shop, and plan their weddings in excruciating detail are not my thing. A Convenient Bridegroom was one of the most boring romances I have ever read and there have been quite a few snoozers!
The Plot?
Ayse and Carlo are engaged to each other because that’s what’s excpected of them. Their families are lifetime friends.
The two are having amazing sex but have yet to say I love you. It’s not because they’re emotionally cold people struggling to come to their true feelings. It’s because… neither has said it first. That‘s the big crisis.
Plus, the blank slate of a heroine, Ayshe, is so stupid and insecure she believes some random skank’s word when said skank says Carlo’s cheating with her.
And the hero just stands there and says nothing.
The heroine is so conflicted; this is all she can think about. But she never addresses this issue. To add insult to injsury, only in the last page is this “conflict” resolved over a few sentences.
This is this book’s idea of more drama: “Oh no I got the wrong veil!” or “Oh these flowers just won’t do! Mama will be so upset!”
I can read a book where the hero is an evil misogynist. At least even if the book is bad, it’s entertaining.
But this story was dull, dull, dull!
Final Analysis of A Convenient Bridegroom
A Convenient Bridegroom was so BORING–and that is the worst literary sin of all.
Rating Report Card
Plot
0.5
Characters
0.5
Writing
0.5
Chemistry
0.5
Fun Factor
0
Cover
3
Overall:
0.8
Synopsis
With just two weeks until the wedding, it was too late for Aysha Benini to back out of marrying Carlo Santangelo.
Everyone expected her to be a radiant bride, blissfully entering a marriage of convenience that would unite two powerful families…
Aysha would gain wealth, status – and a fabulously good-looking husband!
Only, she couldn’t ignore two painful facts: one, she desperately loved Carlo; two, he clearly had no intention of giving up his glamorous mistress.
Could she convince Carlo to be more than a convenient bridegroom?
