The Girl With The Make-Believe Husband by Julia Quinn

The Girl With The Make-Believe Husband (The Rokesbys, #2)

by Julia Quinn

"While you were sleeping... With her brother Thomas injured on the battlefront in the Colonies, orphaned Cecilia Harcourt has two unbearable choices: move in with a maiden aunt or marry a scheming cousin. Instead, she chooses option three and travels across the Atlantic, determined to nurse her brother back to health. But after a week of searching, she finds not her brother but his best friend, the handsome officer Edward Rokesby. He's unconscious and in desperate need of her care, and Cecilia vows that she will save this soldier's life, even if staying by his side means telling one little lie... I told everyone I was your wife When Edward comes to, he's more than a little confused. The blow to his head knocked out three months of his memory, but surely he would recall getting married. He knows who Cecilia Harcourt is--even if he does not recall her face--and with everyone calling her his wife, he decides it must be true, even though he'd always assumed he'd marry his neighbor back in England. If only it were true... Cecilia risks her entire future by giving herself--completely--to the man she loves. But when the truth comes out, Edward may have a few surprises of his own for the new Mrs. Rokesby."--provided by publisher.

With her brother Thomas injured on the battlefront in the Colonies, Cecilia Harcourt has two unbearable choices: move in with a maiden aunt or marry a scheming cousin. Instead, she chooses option three and travels across the Atlantic, determined to nurse her brother back to health. But after a week of searching, she finds not her brother but his best friend, the handsome officer Edward Rokesby. He's unconscious and in desperate need of her care, and Cecilia vows that she will save this soldier's life, even if staying by his side means telling one little lie. When Edward comes to he finds the blow to his head knocked out three months of his memory-- but surely he would recall getting married!

Reviewed by stacey_is_sassy on

3 of 5 stars

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I wish I could say the book was as good as its ending…

Should I base my rating on my feelings at the end of the book?

I could easily tell you that I finished The Girl With The Make-Believe Husband (geez, that’s a mouthful) with a big smile on my face. There’s even a chance I could say that the ending left me satisfied and excited for more. I’d even go as far as to say that that ending was a 5-star ending. Unfortunately, I can't rate a book on the ending alone. For most of this journey, I wanted to throttle the heroine. I could have easily reached into the book, dragged Miss Harcourt out by her hair and lectured her about honesty and growing a backbone. If only the hero hadn't taken a blow to the head. Seriously, I wanted better for him.

I won’t need to go on too much in this review because it’s pretty straight forward. This chickie’s father dies, and a slimy cousin wants to marry her. She decides to travel across the Atlantic to visit her injured brother who is stationed in New York with the Army. On arrival, turns out her brother is missing and his best friend is in the hospital. Now, this best friend is sort of her penpal. They won’t let her see him because she’s not family. Well, her answer to that was to make herself “family”. He wakes up, finds out he has a wee problem with his memory and is gobsmacked to find out he has a wife. What follows is a tale full of…

LIES, LIES…AND A FEW MORE LIES

The End

Ok, I admit, there’s a wee bit more to it than that but I seriously struggled to get past the LIES and it went on for most of the bloody story.

Miss Cecilia Harcourt - LIAR

Captain Edward Rokesby – Son of an Earl, handsome, strong, loyal and a devoted friend.

There are plenty of other things that I grew to admire about Edward but I can honestly say that I struggled to like Cecilia. She came across as weak, conniving and self-serving. Yes, she had her reasons and they weren’t all bad but, to me, her bad outweighed her good.

If this story, and my rating, could be based solely on Captain Rokeby, I would easily rate it 4 or 5 stars. With Miss Harcourt in the mix, I struggled...lordy how I struggled. As I mentioned, I really enjoyed the ending. I just wished that the truth had come out a lot earlier. I wanted to see them together together, not just with secrets and lies marring their happiness.

I am a huge fan of Julia Quinn and will always love her writing. Unfortunately, The Girl With The Make-Believe Husband just missed it by that much (think Maxwell Smart). Of course, this will not make me hesitate to read more of her books in the future.

Stacey is Sassy, received an advanced copy of this story. The copy provided is not the final copy and may be subject to edits and changes.

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Reading updates

  • Started reading
  • 24 May, 2017: Finished reading
  • 24 May, 2017: Reviewed