Rushed to the Altar by Jane Feather
Blackwater Brides Series
(Book #1)
Kindle Edition: 468 pages
Published: June 11th 2010 by Pocket Books
Genres: Historical Romance, Regency Romance, Chick Lit, Adult Fiction
Kindle Version ~ Paperback ~ Audiobook
Synopsis
Jasper Sullivan, Earl of Blackwater, needs a prostitute. Not in the usual way, however. His wealthy uncle’s will promises to divide his huge fortune among his nephews if each rescues a fallen woman … by marrying her! And since Jasper’s estates were already mortgaged to the hilt before he inherited them, when he catches a pretty young prostitute trying to pick his pocket, he immediately makes his proposal.
Clarissa Astley is not at all what Jasper believes. The orphaned daughter of a prosperous merchant, she is searching the seedier districts of London for her young brother, abducted by their evil guardian, who wants the little boy’s inheritance. But she needs powerful help, and the darkly handsome Earl of Blackwater is certainly that. So she pretends to be exactly what he assumed — a risky charade for an innocent virgin. But when passion flares between Jasper and Clarissa, the deception becomes even more difficult to handle.
My Opinion on Rushed to the Altar
Clarissa it’s a young woman with a big problem. Her parents are dead, her brother will inherit everything when he gets to the majority of age but he is only 10 years old now. Until she turns 21 years old, they both are under their uncle Luke’s thumb and this is not good.
Luke takes Francis away and put him in a baby farmer, expecting the boy to die in a few months. According to his brother will, if Francis dies, Luke will inherit everything and with the debts he has, he need the money, badly.
Clarissa believes something is wrong with her brother when her uncle stops the communication between them. She took off to London to find Francis and take him far away until she turns 21 in only 10 more months.
After a few weeks of trying to find her brother, she follow Luke to a piazza and in order to avoid being seen by him, she turn and dive head first into a strong body. Jasper Sullivan’s body to be exact and he thinks she is trying to pick his pocket.
Jasper Sullivan, Earl of Blackwater has an uncle that is as devious as the devil himself. His father died when he was 12 and he and his brothers had to find that the man died leaving a lot of debts behind. He had gambled his fortune away. The only solution was to get his uncle’s fortune and pay everything in order not to loose what his family loved so much. The bigger problem was that the old man has decided that in order to inherit his fortune, his three nephews (Jasper, Perry and Sebastian) have to marry a girl in need of salvation and they have to do so before his death.
Jasper was thinking of this problem and trying to find a way to trick his uncle when a redheaded woman collided with him. He has been around too many people in his life and recognized a pick pocketer when he saw one, but this woman was different and he couldn’t point what was it about her that made him think so.
When the woman, that said her name was Clarissa, made him think she was a whore, he saw the perfect person to use to get to his uncle’s fortune. Being the man he was, he wanted to explain things to her but it was difficult to do so because she was acting innocent in details that she should not be innocent about and he decided she was just acting in order to get him as a client.
This was how this characters meet and it was how things develop during the whole book. Jasper believing Clarissa was a whore, and she was hiding the truth from him. Jasper’s uncle dubbed Clarissa being a whore but never found out the truth and it was a good thing that he didn’t.
I enjoy this story a lot. I wanted to have the written version so I can read faster than the audiobook was developing the story for me. This is something that always bothers me with audiobooks because I read faster. If a book it’s 11 hours long, I can finish it in less for sure.
The narrator was great with the accent and tones to differentiate the characters. I like it and it was not a problem to know who was talking at each given moment.
Jasper was amazing. A book boyfriend material for sure. Elegant, funny, direct, honorable, a good man all together and loyal to the bone to his family. The fact that he wanted exclusivity in a relationship also told that he was going to be a great family man someday, when he find the right woman to marry him and stay with him.
Clarissa was young and with a strong sense of family, responsibility, a will that I envy and the determination that she was not going to fail her little brother. This was by far one of the strongest female characters I have read in historical romance so far, because even though she had to lie, became a mistress and fell in love, she had what she wanted in mind and did everything to get it: her brother at her side and safe.
Maybe because I heard the book instead of reading it, my opinion is different. The passion that the narrator put behind each word and action is different for sure that in the written format.
I still believe that it was a great story full of things to learn and remember. And since I’m not a history major or something like that, the facts were given and things were not out of place for my point of view.
Something that I didn’t like was the way man of an era like that thought of women in general when it came to being poor and the use of whores instead of their own wifes to satisfy his sex apetite. I get it. That has not changed much really but well… I just don’t like it.
This story made me wish of having a man that believes family it’s important, and hard work, and loyalty, and exclusivity between the couple. Makes me think of a time when marriage was a real institution, an important step in life and not just something you jump in and out of.
Rating
Jane Feather was born in Cairo, Egypt, and grew up in New Forest, in the south of England. She began her highly successful career after she and her family moved to Washington D.C. in 1981. She now has over ten million books in print.
Has also written under pseudonym of Claudia Bishop (books written in 1984).