The Bad Luck Bride by Janna MacGregor

Narrated by Rosalyn Landor

Ever eager to find new authors to enjoy – and because Rosalyn Landor’s name on an audiobook cover is guaranteed to make me take a second look – I decided to listen to Janna MacGregor’s début historical romance The Bad Luck Bride, the first in her Cavensham Brides series. The book starts well, as our hero, Alexander Hallworth, Marquess of Pembrooke, vows revenge on the former friend whom he holds responsible for his sister’s death. The first few chapters grabbed my attention as Alex sets his plan into motion, ruthlessly and deviously engineering the downfall of Lord Paul Barstowe by using the man’s predilection for high-stakes gaming to bring him to the brink of financial ruin, and then forcing him to jilt the fiancée whose dowry could have saved him. The “heroine-as-revenge” plot isn’t a favourite of mine, but I was keen to see how Ms. MacGregor would redeem a man capable of stooping so low and turn him into a romantic hero I could root for. Unfortunately however, at around a quarter of the way in, things begin to fall apart. Too many plot points, contrived misunderstandings, choppy writing and inconsistencies in the characterisation of the principals combined to fragment the story’s focus – and not even the extremely talented Ms. Landor could recapture my interest, which waned to such a degree that I kept checking my MP3 player to see how much of the playing time was left.

Lady Claire Cavensham, daughter of the late Duke of Langham (and niece of the current duke) lost her parents in a tragic accident when she was just a girl. Beautiful, poised and very wealthy, she was thought sure to make a brilliant marriage, but in the years since she came out, she has been betrothed three times – and none of those betrothals ended in a wedding. Now dangerously close to being on the shelf (and if not a laughing stock, then a frequent topic of gossip among the ton) Claire is hopeful her current engagement to Lord Paul Barstowe will get as far as the altar.

So it’s easy to understand her devastation when she receives a note from Lord Paul during the ball at which they were to have announced their betrothal in which he tells her that he can’t marry her. Keeping an eye on the proceedings from the sidelines, Alex watches as the note is delivered, and follows Claire into the gardens, intent on persuading her to marry him instead. Needless to say, Alex – talk, dark, handsome, charming and sympathetic – doesn’t have too much trouble on that score, and he and Claire are quickly betrothed and set to marry by special license in a few days’ time.

The first of those contrived misunderstandings I mentioned earlier quickly follows when, during a conversation a couple of days before the wedding, Alex jumps to a (not unreasonable) conclusion about Claire that, even though quickly corrected, leads her to decide she can’t marry Alex because he doesn’t trust her. Realising Claire is skittish and could very well call everything off, Alex – unbeknownst to her – does something really dumb which backs Claire into a corner and more or less forces her to marry him.

After the wedding, the pair journey to Alex’s country estate, which is not far from Claire’s childhood home. She is still unhappy about her new husband’s lack of trust and determines to remain aloof, but after a few days, she begins to relent, and soon she is joining Alex on his visits to his tenants and workers and taking an interest and active role in the local community. The couple grows closer, both in and out of bed, and Alex has to admit to himself that he is coming to care for his wife in a way he hadn’t expected. But of course their idyllic time together is destined to be short-lived; Claire accidentally discovers the deception Alex practiced on her and quite naturally wants nothing to do with him ever again.

While the premise of The Bad Luck Bride is not an original one, the storyline had potential – but fell short in the execution. The revenge plot itself is a pretty large source of potential conflict between the principals, but the author then throws in the trust issues, the dumb thing Alex does that I mentioned before, AND gives Claire a tortured past owing to her having witnessed the deaths of her parents, plus three (then four) broken betrothals – all of which serve to convince her that she is somehow cursed. And the thing is, she actually believes it; she refers to ‘her curse’ many, many times – in fact, I noticed the references to it far more in audio than I did in print – and I just couldn’t buy that an intelligent woman could actually believe herself to be cursed. Each time Claire mentioned it, I rolled my eyes so hard it’s a wonder they haven’t fallen out by now.

The characterisation is inconsistent, too. Alex begins the story as a bit of a manipulative bastard, pulling strings to ruin Lord Paul and getting Claire to marry him under false pretences. But apart from the very beginning of the story, there’s no sense of ruthlessness or danger about him; he’s pretty much your text-book romantic hero, and a fairly bland one at that. Claire, too, is quite generic, notwithstanding the trauma in her past – which seems to have been introduced in an attempt to make her more interesting. (Spoiler – it doesn’t.) I didn’t connect with either character – never a good thing in a romance – and at times, their behaviour doesn’t make a lot of sense.

With all those negative things said about the story, it will probably come as no surprise when I say that even a narrator of Rosalyn Landor’s calibre is unable to wallpaper over the large cracks in the storytelling and characterisation and make The Bad Luck Bride into an entertaining listen. As always, she delivers a thoroughly accomplished performance; her pacing is excellent, all the characters are clearly and flawlessly differentiated, and she injects just the right degree of emotional nuance into the story, especially towards the end when Claire finally opens up to Alex about the accident that claimed the lives of her parents. But just as we all know that an exceptional narrator can enhance a good story, we also know that saying about silk purses and sow’s ears, and this is a case in point. Ms. Landor does her very best, but I really can’t recommend The Bad Luck Bride for anything other than the strength of her work, because the story itself is weak and ultimately unengaging.

Caz