Synopsis
Raised in New York, shipping heiress Sara Fleming was ready to elope—until her disapproving parents tricked her onto a boat heading to England. Her only consolation is getting to see her beloved aunts and cousins. Even the start of London’s Season—and a strikingly handsome earl—can’t make her forget the man she left behind.
Considered one of London’s most eligible bachelors, Christopher Townsend, the Earl of Bridgeton, is not what he seems. Having inherited his father’s crushing debt, he must choose a wealthy bride to save his family’s estate. Though rumored to be penniless and committed to another, Sara takes his breath away—and makes him question what he truly needs to be free of the past. But he’ll have to win the headstrong beauty’s heart one kiss at a time.
The Heiress He's Been Waiting For by Kaitlin O'RileyMy rating: 1 of 5 stars
Release date: August 28, 2018
Cliffhanger: No
Rating: 1 star
I really wanted to love this book, and I was very optimistic going into it despite the fact that this was my first read by this author. Obviously you don't know what to expect with an unfamiliar author, but the description and cover hooked me at first glance. The synopsis proclaims the Hamilton family women as independent book owners who find love on their own unconventional terms. What's not to love about that? Turns out, a lot. It's not often that a book manages to fill me with rage, but the "headstrong" Sara Fleming had to be one of the worst heroines I've ever read. Headstrong isn't even close to an adequate description of her. Childish, churlish, bratty, selfish, hypocritical...I could go on.
By the end of the book she had FINALLY seen the error of her ways, and I couldn't find it in me to care. I wanted Christopher to pull a Rhett Butler and deliver a "Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn" kind of line and find someone who would show him the love and appreciation he deserved. You know when you're not happy that the two main characters got married in the end that the book didn't work for you.
The idea of this plot was intriguing. Unfortunately it was executed poorly, and it all fell apart the more I read and tried to cling to the scraps of what I originally liked. Sara and Christopher had a situation where they weren't able to explore any potential feelings for each other. She believed herself to be madly in love with someone from America already, and his father's debts forced him to seek out an advantageous marriage to save his estate. (Translation: find a rich wife. Yesterday.) The twist is that he believes her to be a poor relation to the wealthy Hamiltons, when in fact, her father is a self-made millionaire. So throughout the book, he's reluctantly courting a rich candidate for a bride that he absolutely loathes. All the while yearning for the beautiful, sparkling, and self-confident creature that unexpectedly entered his life and took his emotions by storm.
Never had a woman made him feel this way. A complex mixture of powerless and powerful, of need and desire, of possession and possessed. He wanted her. It was as simple as that. And as complicated.
Christopher admired her from their very first meeting, and he didn't hesitate to acknowledge his growing feelings to himself. He was overwhelmed with shame over having to marry for avaricious reasons, but he knew his family would be homeless in a matter of months. I didn't always agree with his sneaky behavior and treatment of the woman he was pursuing. But I could step back and see the bigger picture. He was putting the safety and care of his sisters as his top priority after years of physical and emotional abuse by their father. Mistakes were made along the way, but I always admired his sense of loyalty and (mostly) chivalrous personality. Instead of being the typical Victorian man, and trying to sell off a female family member to the highest bidder, he put himself in that position in order to give them a better life.
Women in general had been given a tough enough lot in life. After all his two sisters had been through, he couldn’t fathom trapping either of them into loveless marriages. It appalled him how few options his sisters had other than to marry or to remain living at home. He wished he could do more for Evelyn and Gwyneth.
Sara on the other hand was completely blind, deaf, and DUMB to reality. She spent the entire book sulking and plotting behind her parents' backs because they separated her from the man they found to be dangerous. Being coddled and pampered her entire life, she couldn't stand the fact that she wasn't getting what she wanted. She refused to listen to everyone around her urging her to remember how much her parents love her, and would never take such drastic measures without reason.
At no point did I feel as if Sara was falling for him. She stubbornly clung to her schoolgirl "love" based on his flimsy words of praise that masked malicious intentions. Christopher on the other hand was merely a handsome friend who she found entertaining to flirt with coquettishly on an endless loop. Then reminding him firmly that her fiancè would be coming to take her away soon. It was enough to make you want to bang your head repeatedly against the wall. She quite conveniently forgot the fact that she had a fiancè when lust overtook her, and she allowed Christopher on numerous occasions to kiss, touch, and finally, take her virginity.
She never felt an ounce of guilt or remorse about her unfaithfulness to the man she was so madly in love with, or even started to ponder if she could be mistaken about her what she feels. No, these occurrences were just odd weak moments that meant nothing, and she didn't plan to think or speak of them again. (Seriously, did she not realize that when she got married, that her husband would find out that she had been with someone else?? Was she that stupid?)
Here's where I got really, really MAD. The day after sleeping with Christopher, she once again chooses Alexander over him and runs off to his hotel to be with him. This was her thought:
Everything that had happened last night with Christopher now seemed like a faraway dream. Could she simply brush it away like the wispy clouds of a reverie? Could she just erase it from her memory and pretend it never happened? Well, she would have to do so to marry Alexander.
AND YET...when he rushes to save her from her idiocy after she rejected him, she is offended. Yes, OFFENDED that he asked her why she would run off with Alexander when she could be pregnant from the night before. She has the nerve to think that he was insensitive, as if it meant nothing to him. So she can discard him like trash, and not once listen to reason, and HE is wrong here?
How dared Christopher mention what happened between them! Last night wasn’t anyone’s business but theirs. And to throw it in her face like that! As if it didn’t mean anything. Stung by his cruel callousness, Sara blinked back tears, replacing them with outrage. She would not cry...
For some reason, her brain ceased to function properly when Christopher kissed her. But it didn’t mean that she wanted to marry him either. Especially not when her parents were now telling her that she had to marry him. Besides, he was already engaged! To that ridiculous little Beckwith girl, of all people! At least now Sara understood why the other day in the carriageChristopher said he couldn’t marry her. Well, fine. Bonnie Beckwith could have him.She didn’t need or want Lord Bridgeton!
It was like she completely lacked skills of self-reflection and the ability to understand her own faults and mistakes. With 10-15 percent of the book to go, she finally realized how selfish she has been, and ungrateful for the family who loved and protected her. Even after hearing Christopher's stories about his abusive father, and the trauma he inflicted on them, she stubbornly clung to her own whiny complaints of her unfair life. At this late stage in the story, he had just thought to himself that she clearly didn't love him despite everything that had happened. And it hurt.
The characters just lost all semblance of authenticity for me. Reactions and actions need to make sense to a reader. It didn't make sense to me at this point that in one scene he was feeling hurt that she had no feelings for him, and the next accepting her apology and marrying her as planned. There was no hesitation or residual anger. She finally decides to see how worthy he is, and I just didn't care anymore. And with all of the stubborn dramatics that Sara displayed, I couldn't see her through his adoring eyes. He saw her through an altogether different lens than me.
I am extremely sad to have disliked this book, because I did think the author had a lot of beautiful quotes in The Heiress He's Been Waiting For, however I was incapable of feeling the ring of truth in any of them. It was unfortunately a total fail for this reader.
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