Title: True Love (Nantucket Brides Trilogy #1)
Author: Jude Deveraux
Date Published: July 2013
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Pages: 464
★★★✰✰
Just as Alix Madsen is
finishing up architectural school, Adelaide Kingsley dies and wills her,
for one year, the use of a charming nineteenth-century Nantucket house.
The elderly woman’s relationship to the Madsen family is a mystery to
the spirited Alix—fresh from a romantic breakup—but for reasons of her
own Alix accepts the quirky bequest, in part because it gives her time
to plan her best friend’s storybook wedding.
But unseen forces move behind the scenes, creaking Kingsley House’s ancient floorboards. It seems that Adelaide Kingsley had a rather specific task for Alix: to solve the strange disappearance of one of the Kingsley women, Valentina, more than two hundred years ago. If that wasn’t troubling enough, Alix must deal with the arrogant (and extremely good-looking) architect Jared Montgomery, who is living in the property’s guesthouse.
Unbeknown to Alix, Jared has been charged with looking after her while she lives on the island—an easy task for him, considering the undeniable chemistry between the two. But Jared harbors secrets of his own, which, if revealed, may drive a wedge between the pair.
With a glorious Nantucket wedding on the horizon, sparks fly, and the ghosts of the past begin to reveal themselves—some of them literally. Finding their lives inextricably entwined with the turbulent fortunes of their ancestors, Alix and Jared discover that only by righting the wrongs of the past can they hope to be together.
But unseen forces move behind the scenes, creaking Kingsley House’s ancient floorboards. It seems that Adelaide Kingsley had a rather specific task for Alix: to solve the strange disappearance of one of the Kingsley women, Valentina, more than two hundred years ago. If that wasn’t troubling enough, Alix must deal with the arrogant (and extremely good-looking) architect Jared Montgomery, who is living in the property’s guesthouse.
Unbeknown to Alix, Jared has been charged with looking after her while she lives on the island—an easy task for him, considering the undeniable chemistry between the two. But Jared harbors secrets of his own, which, if revealed, may drive a wedge between the pair.
With a glorious Nantucket wedding on the horizon, sparks fly, and the ghosts of the past begin to reveal themselves—some of them literally. Finding their lives inextricably entwined with the turbulent fortunes of their ancestors, Alix and Jared discover that only by righting the wrongs of the past can they hope to be together.
I am so conflicted with this review. So. Since I apparently can't tell my head from my behind with this one, I'm planning on just going through the list of ... things ... one by one and letting you guys make a decision on your own!
There might be some little mini-spoilers ... nothing serious or story ruining ... I promise!
At this point, you've probably already read the description for this book so you know kind of what is going on. Forget everything that they have posted. Just throw it out the window and hope that a car runs over it, smashing it into oblivion. Now. I'm not saying that the description is false. At least not completely. But when you're faced with a ghost in this book ... Yes. A ghost. One that talks. And people can hear it. A ghost you can have full blown conversations with. Now, maybe I have issues reading correctly or someone is going in and changing the book description when I go to read it ... but I didn't know that ghosts were a part of this book. It was just a weird thing not to include in the description, especially considering that it comes out within the first couple of chapters - so it's not like it was a secret only to be revealed at the end of the book.
Okay ... here come some little spoilers ... you might want to skip this paragraph. So. Reincarnation. I don't have feelings either way on this topic. Reincarnation might be possible, it might not ... who am I to say. But this is another topic that I didn't think would play a pivotal part in the book. But it does. And during a bit of the book, it was a little hard to keep up with who was who in another life and who dated who 5 gazillion years ago before they turned into another person who dated this other person 899 years ago but then fell in love again 458 years ago just to die in a freak space-ship accident but came back as pet leopard of the person they fell in love with back when rocks were forming. Yeah. It's a lot. And maybe how I explained it is a little more extreme than it actually was in the book, but you get my point. It was confusing. Or maybe I'm slow. Both are very likely possibilities.
Onto the last "issue" that I'm going to bring up in the review. Page 318 in my advanced uncorrected proof (or ARC) is where I will be referring to for my current tirade. Let me just take a moment to set the scene on this one ... female main character (Alix) is standing in the bathroom ... male main character (Jared) is in the shower trying to clean off a little boy (Tyler) that they are watching ... Tyler had a messy diaper - the kind that parents worldwide fear - your child has gone poo and then something horrible happened - the poo goes up their back, out of their diaper, getting on anything and everything in it's way while headed to the poor child's neck. Okay. So Jared stripped down (he was covered in transferred poo), Tyler is stripped down and they are standing under the spraying water in the shower and Alix can't get over how beautiful they look. Deveraux goes on to say that Alix was so affected by the sight that she had to hang onto the sink to avoid collapsing. I'm sorry. I'm a mom. I have two boys and the creeping poo has happened to my husband and I more times than we can count. Maybe I'm just weird but never and I mean NEVER have I looked at my do-do smeared boys and thought that they were beautiful. I don't know if that makes me a horrible mom or what but I just don't see the beauty in those situations. It could be that my problem is due to the fact that I'm holding back gags and my eyes are watering so badly from the smell that I can't see the beauty of the scene. Either way, it was just a weird addition to the book and a strange way to convey Alix's visual appreciation of Jared and Tyler.
That all being said, it was an okay book. It's not the worst, not the best. And I might have given it a higher rating if the weird ghost thing had been in the description so that I was prepared. I don't usually enjoy books about ghosts and it just ruined part of the story for me. The interaction between Jared and Alix was great. I thought that the characters were really well written and completely explored - I didn't really have any questions about who they were or where they came from. I don't really know if I'll pick up the next book in the series, but it's not completely out of the question.
There might be some little mini-spoilers ... nothing serious or story ruining ... I promise!
At this point, you've probably already read the description for this book so you know kind of what is going on. Forget everything that they have posted. Just throw it out the window and hope that a car runs over it, smashing it into oblivion. Now. I'm not saying that the description is false. At least not completely. But when you're faced with a ghost in this book ... Yes. A ghost. One that talks. And people can hear it. A ghost you can have full blown conversations with. Now, maybe I have issues reading correctly or someone is going in and changing the book description when I go to read it ... but I didn't know that ghosts were a part of this book. It was just a weird thing not to include in the description, especially considering that it comes out within the first couple of chapters - so it's not like it was a secret only to be revealed at the end of the book.
Okay ... here come some little spoilers ... you might want to skip this paragraph. So. Reincarnation. I don't have feelings either way on this topic. Reincarnation might be possible, it might not ... who am I to say. But this is another topic that I didn't think would play a pivotal part in the book. But it does. And during a bit of the book, it was a little hard to keep up with who was who in another life and who dated who 5 gazillion years ago before they turned into another person who dated this other person 899 years ago but then fell in love again 458 years ago just to die in a freak space-ship accident but came back as pet leopard of the person they fell in love with back when rocks were forming. Yeah. It's a lot. And maybe how I explained it is a little more extreme than it actually was in the book, but you get my point. It was confusing. Or maybe I'm slow. Both are very likely possibilities.
Onto the last "issue" that I'm going to bring up in the review. Page 318 in my advanced uncorrected proof (or ARC) is where I will be referring to for my current tirade. Let me just take a moment to set the scene on this one ... female main character (Alix) is standing in the bathroom ... male main character (Jared) is in the shower trying to clean off a little boy (Tyler) that they are watching ... Tyler had a messy diaper - the kind that parents worldwide fear - your child has gone poo and then something horrible happened - the poo goes up their back, out of their diaper, getting on anything and everything in it's way while headed to the poor child's neck. Okay. So Jared stripped down (he was covered in transferred poo), Tyler is stripped down and they are standing under the spraying water in the shower and Alix can't get over how beautiful they look. Deveraux goes on to say that Alix was so affected by the sight that she had to hang onto the sink to avoid collapsing. I'm sorry. I'm a mom. I have two boys and the creeping poo has happened to my husband and I more times than we can count. Maybe I'm just weird but never and I mean NEVER have I looked at my do-do smeared boys and thought that they were beautiful. I don't know if that makes me a horrible mom or what but I just don't see the beauty in those situations. It could be that my problem is due to the fact that I'm holding back gags and my eyes are watering so badly from the smell that I can't see the beauty of the scene. Either way, it was just a weird addition to the book and a strange way to convey Alix's visual appreciation of Jared and Tyler.
That all being said, it was an okay book. It's not the worst, not the best. And I might have given it a higher rating if the weird ghost thing had been in the description so that I was prepared. I don't usually enjoy books about ghosts and it just ruined part of the story for me. The interaction between Jared and Alix was great. I thought that the characters were really well written and completely explored - I didn't really have any questions about who they were or where they came from. I don't really know if I'll pick up the next book in the series, but it's not completely out of the question.
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