My rating: 4 of 5 stars
A copy of this book was provided by the author for an honest review at Romancing Rakes for the Love of Romance.
Lady Claire Heyworth is starting her life over after twenty years of loveless marriage to a man her family considered more worthy of her than the one she thought she loved. Now the faithless husband has gone missing after making off with the bulk of her inheritance and Claire has to learn to exist as something other than a privileged, albeit unhappy, Marchioness. With the support of her brothers and their wives, she moves to New York and lands a job that immediately throws her into the path of Benjamin Hayek, the man she’d reluctantly left behind so many years ago.
Ben never forgot that magical summer when he’d loved a quiet English lass who had up and left him without so much as a goodbye. When Claire unexpectedly appears on his doorstep, Ben’s immediate reaction is to scowl, growl, and slam the door in her face. But the attraction from so long ago is still there between them. Now that they’re both older and wiser, Ben and Claire must decide if they want to take up where they left off, or walk away and leave the past alone.
I hadn’t read the previous books in Megan Mulry’s Unruly Royals series (although I own them both – blame my giant To Be Read list!) but I had no problem reading In Love Again as a stand-alone. It was a joy to see Claire emerge from the persona forced on her by her mother and society, and become a fully actualized adult who made her own decisions. Ben is just the sort of fellow that Claire has always needed in her life – one who loves unconditionally and supports her completely without undermining her fragile and recently hard-won self-esteem. I was especially gratified that with so many opportunities along the way, there was never a Big Misunderstanding between the hero and heroine other than the original one which had parted them twenty years before.
In Love Again also features a delightful cast of characters from both families, and shows how the wrongs done to Claire by her detestable husband are righted in a somewhat implausible but easy to forgive series of events. It’s a lovely romance between a hero and heroine who have paid their dues, learned from their mistakes and earned their happiness together. (Now I need to go back and read the other two books in the series!)
Favorite Quote:
His kiss made her feel…everything. She felt the cold air against her cheeks, the hot press of his lips against hers, the tender, inquisitive touch of his fingers as they found their way beneath her blouse and trailed across her belly just above the waist of her jeans. Claire felt an electric snap, like a transformer blowing.
