Review: Never A Bride by Amelia Grey

From the author's website:
Her name is on everyone’s lips . . .
When he left for America six years ago, the handsome Viscount Stonehurst never suspected that he would return home to England to find his lovely fiancé embroiled in the scandal of the decade. The woman he planned on making his wife has been kissing every man in London . . . except him!

But scandal doesn’t matter in search of the truth . . .
Engaged and then abandoned, Mirabella Wittingham is determined to find the man who drove her cousin to suicide, even if it means ruining her reputation and disgracing herself in the process . . .


When her plans go awry, Mirabella has no choice but to turn to her long-lost fiancé for help. But can she trust the man who deserted her so many years ago, or is he destined to fail her yet again?

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This is my first book by Amelia Grey. I'd heard wonderful things about her Rogues' Dynasty series and was looking forward to reading Never A Bride.

The premise of the story was good: Mirabella's father secured her engagement to Viscount "Cam" Brackley. Cam then had no intention of marrying Mirabella until he was old, he only agreed to the engagement because her dowry would help his father pay off debts. Six years later, Mirabella's father demands he come back and marry or Cam's father must repay the portion of dowry he already received.

Mirabella, however, knows none of this - only that her fiancee has been gone and will probably not come back any time soon. She is on a mission to find out who disgraced her cousin so badly that the cousin committed suicide. In order to do that, she must get the young men of the ton alone and get her finger into their neckcloths in search of a scar the cousin had written about in her diary. Needless to say Mirabella is starting to get a bit of a reputation when Cam unexpectely returns.

Here's the thing: I liked both Mirabella and Cam, just not together. They were both lovely characters but they didn't "mesh" for me. It was like they just kept bumping up against each other but didn't quite connect. My other problem was that I guessed the "whodunit" very early into the book. I would have preferred a bit of mystery and suspense on that front. It was frustrating to watch Mirabella go through all her machinations when I already knew who it was.

We also met Cam's best childhood friend, who was unexplainably mean to both Cam and Mirabella, but we never found out why he was such a jerk - jealousy? I'm not sure what he would be jealous of as he was already titled and married and had an heir. I was a bit confused on that point.

As I mentioed above, while I did like the main characters, this book was just not a good match for me.

My rating:

I received this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.