Book Review: Three Little Secrets

I so wanted to like this book. I wanted to like it sooooo much. And for about half of it I did like it. As I mentioned, I'm a total sucker for long-lost love storylines. In this book the hero and heroine, Merrick and Madeline, eloped when she was only seventeen. But on the wedding night at Gretna Greene in Scotland her powerful aristocrat father catches up to them. Merrick is beaten half to death and Madeline is told that Merrick only married her to gain access to her dowry. HUGE misunderstanding. Madeline thinks that Merrick has abandoned her and so she agrees to marry an old scholar to save her reputation.

Thirteen years pass by and the two of them meet again, and of course they both hate each other because they both have the wrong idea of what really happened and have grown bitter as the years have gone by. Merrick was the perfect tormented hero, because he was completely, totally in love with Madeline all those years ago. I wanted nothing more than for him to have his wounded heart healed by Madeline, but I never felt like she did it. She was kind of a bitch even after it became clear that her father orchastrated the entire separation. She continued to treat Merrick rather nastily and even at the end I still didn't feel that she at all deserved to be with him. She'd pretty much destroyed him I never really felt like she came close to making amends. I wanted a huge sappy scene where she cried and apologized and professed her love... I never got it. :(

Lindsey's Grade: B