His Betrothed

Rating:
Summary: Good book - looking forward to the sequel!
Review: I enjoyed this book -- It was not quite the in depth story as those by other romantic authors but still I felt the romance between Spencer and Roselyn. I am often facinated by men like Spencer who because of their birth and history often feel inadequate or less worthy and finally when they meet and get to know the right woman they let their guard down and really become all they can be as a loving person. This is what eventually happened between this couple and it was a romantic read for me!!
As I said I am looking forward to the next two books in the series.

Rating:
Summary: Mediocre; not nearly as good as its sequel
Review: I expected a lot from this book because I happened to read the sequel (His Scandal) first. Loved that book, but this one is much less...well, it's just less. Less romance, less intriguing characters, less action and intrigue (which is bad considering Spencer is a spy who's life is in danger), less sensuality, less humor....just less.

Rose is, frankly, a strong but rather boring heroine. Spencer isn't all that exciting either. He has his moments, but brother Alex (His Scandal) is so much more...heroic.

The plot just never really went anywhere. It seemed repetitious and slow. Just skip this one and go on to His Scandal.

Rating:
Summary: An exciting Elizabethan romance
Review: In 1556, at a London party on the eve of her wedding, Lady Roselyn Harrington sees her fiance, Sir Spencer Thornton for the first time. She finds Spencer lacking in simple courtesy. Roselyn wonders if that is the fault of his mother's Spanish blood. He really fails in comparison to her father's kind groom Philip Grant, especially when he becomes drunk. Spencer does not want to marry Roselyn, but she leaves him with his hangover at the church steps to elope with the understanding Philip.

Three decades later, Roslyn remains disowned by her family and is now an impoverish widow. During a sea battle with the Spanish, an injured Spencer is washed onto the beach near Rosleyn's home. She recognizes her former fiance as he does her. Though he must reach Queen Elizabeth with vital information, Spencer decides to punish Roselyn, but neither one expected love to forge itself on top of a foundation of mistrust.

HIS BETROTHED is an exciting Elizabethan romance that stars two lead protagonists struggling between an attraction and their past on the eve of Drake's victory. The story line is fast-paced though it needs a needle in the haystack chance of meeting in that remote location to allow the reader to feel a pivotal point in history. Still, the battle of the sexes and not the war of two great nations, as Roselyn and Spencer humorously squabble with their own feelings and each, other own this tale. Gayle Callen opens this sixteenth century trilogy with a page-turner that never rests for even a paragraph.

Harriet Klausner

Rating:
Summary: It has a beginning and an ending ...
Review: Maybe it's because I am a fan of the more passionate novels than the "romantic" ones (or maybe I just like Medieval romances than Elizabethan romances), but this novel did not seem that at all interesting. Roselyn seemed too meek around the time she came face to face with the fiance she jilted (thirty years later!), and the fact that Spencer Thorton came to the wedding drunk made me lose interest in the hero. There didn't seem to be enough suspense or surprises. I am not knocking the book all together, but it just did not seem to capture much interest for me while something a little more, ahem, sensual like Samantha James' "Truest Heart" (where a ship crashes and the washed-ashore hero ends up being nursed back to health by the heroine). To each their own.

Rating:
Summary: It has a beginning and an ending ...
Review: Maybe it's because I am a fan of the more passionate novels than the "romantic" ones (or maybe I just like Medieval romances than Elizabethan romances), but this novel did not seem that at all interesting. Roselyn seemed too meek around the time she came face to face with the fiance she jilted (thirty years later!), and the fact that Spencer Thorton came to the wedding drunk made me lose interest in the hero. There didn't seem to be enough suspense or surprises. I am not knocking the book all together, but it just did not seem to capture much interest for me while something a little more, ahem, sensual like Samantha James' "Truest Heart" (where a ship crashes and the washed-ashore hero ends up being nursed back to health by the heroine). To each their own.