To Make a Marriage [Mass Market Paperback]

In 1875 Savannah, Victoria Redmond was found in a comprised position with the wrong person so her wealthy upper crust family ships her to England to marry an aristocrat. Duke Spencer Whitfield is broke and at risk of losing his estate. He makes up his mind that he will wed the heiress.

Victoria becomes pregnant rather quickly, but cynically Spencer doubts that the child is his. He informs his wife that if the infant fails to have his family birthmark, he will divorce her and send her back to Georgia with someone else's kid. When she learns her family is in trouble, Victoria flees for the states to help them and to forget the man she now loves who her hurt her very badly. He follows her across the Atlantic because his pride is hurt, but soon finds he loves his wife with the only way to prove it being recognizing the infant with or without his birthmark.

TO MAKE A MARRIAGE is a fun Victorian romance though many modern day readers will find Spencer's position stiff and difficult though it fits the society he grew up in. Victoria is an intrepid heroine who knows her family needs her and though her spouse said to stay, she shows the temerity by ignoring him and venturing back to Georgia. Fans of the period will enjoy Cheryl Anne Porter's solid tale of two individuals who have nothing in common except love.

Harriet Klausner

Since the back cover description is already provided on this page, I'll jump straight to my review.

I bought this book expecting to enjoy it thoroughly, as I'd really enjoyed another of this author's books, SARA'S BOUNTY. So I was shocked when I couldn't get even 1/4 of the way through TO MAKE A MARRIAGE.

At first, it started off really well. Rather than a "get to know the characters" period that many authors have in the beginning of their books, Porter jumps right into the thick of the action. When the book starts, Victoria and Spencer have already been married for two months, and she has just told him that she is pregnant. The catch, of course, is that it might not be his child, since she was not a virgin when she was wed to him. Furious, Spencer leaves her in the country, saying that he will return when the child is born. If the child has his family's birthmark, proving that it is his true heir, he will claim it. If it does not, he will divorce her and deny the child, leaving it to be branded as illegitimate.

Woah! Interesting and gripping. So far so good. But things began to go downhill after this first engrossing chapter. Without Spencer's knowledge, Victoria runs home to her family in America. When he discovers that she has left, he makes tracks to follow her. However, the reader has to plow through six more chapters before they characters are even in the same room again. Seperating the hero and heroine for long periods in a book (almost 1/4 of it!) is the kiss of death to a romance novel. The characters need to be together, to set sparks off one another. That's what romance readers want to see! Given the back cover descrption (not to mention the front cover art) I was let to believe that this was a Regency romance, yet much of it takes place in the swamps of Savannah. I felt rather tricked.

The author also started making weird allusions to some sin / transgression in Victoria's past that related to the people who lived in the bayou. I guess it was supposed to add intrigue to the book, but the references were so vague that instead I was left feeling confused and frustrated. I felt like I was trying to understand a movie after missing the first half of it.

The heroine was also rather difficult to warm up to. She had a "poor pity me" attitude when she'd made her own mess. It's not like she was raped--she willingly slept with a man without the benefit of marriage. It was her own fault that she didn't know whose baby she was carrying. I found it hard to feel much sympathy for her, since she'd brought her problems on herself.

I'll still give this author another chance, as I know she's more than capable of writing a romance novel I can really enjoy reading. If you want to try a good sample of Cheryl Anne Porter's work, I recommend SARA'S BOUNTY. As for TO MAKE A MARRIAGE, I recommend you either borrow it from the library, or skip it altogether.

Porter's writing is rich in description, that's much as I can say! But this is such a tedious read--halfway through it I gave up! Please save your money. I don't regularly write reviews, but I just couldn't let anyone waste their time and money reading this!!