Sandra Heath: The Halloween Husband

An unlikely spiritual attraction brews on All Hallow’s Eve between innocent Rowena Melcombe, who had narrowly escaped another man’s rakish intentions, and Lord Justin Alderney, who has the town beauty for his mistress.

Not only are paintings alive like in Hogwarts, but once a year for 24 hours they can fly out of the paintings and exact ghostly mischief on the living. Naturally, Halloween is the prime day to do so…and the timing couldn’t be more urgent.

Oh boy, this book is a hot mess. Although it does get you in the mood for Halloween and has some cute scenes, overall its all over the place. First, the H/h against all odds and despite the fact that they are both sporting major crushes on other people, fall in love at first sight. And despite being told over and over how the heroine is no beauty, a bit bookish (which she suddenly isn’t at the end of the book), and has an amazingly large, unfashionable rack—oh, and destitute–the super hottie hero with a huge bank account is suddenly ready to throw caution to the wind and marry her. Yea, he has been threatened that he needs to marry or else face bethrothal to an undesirable woman…but, you think he might think twice about marry someone he a) doesn’t know b) really needs a rich husband and c) cries a lot.

Then, on top of ghosts there is all of a sudden these weird scenes with gargoyles–its making me laugh right now as I write this because its so funnily absurd–that keeping popping in like an afterthought.

There is also a lot of sex…not raunchy, very vanilla, but still weirdly prevalent. Even the ghosts get down. (So imagine how I tried to grapple with that, given my consternation over vampire anatomy).

Then there are these other details. They have been married long enough for the hero to settle her family’s financial affairs, but she is still borrowing clothes from one of his besties? Yes, a modiste would’ve taken some time prepping a whole new wardrobe but she would at least have gotten a few ready made things of her own (a hat, new gloves)…especially if he is wealthy enough to settle a mortgaged estate, send three boys to Eton, and settle other debts.

I didn’t get having two characters meet at Gunter’s for ices in the middle of winter. I am sure it happened, but it seemed like a lazy way to add in Regency authenticity. Why not at a coffeeshop as they peruse newspapers? Or at a museum?

It also struck me as odd that she kept calling everyone’s coats and pelisses and things “outdoor clothing.”

There were a couple of other weird outliers, but generally it was like the rest of the book–pretty darn silly. And while I made it through the entire thing and had my moments of enjoying it, most of the time I was alternating between eye rolls at the romance and lol at the disjointed additions.

5 Stars 2 out of 6 So I made it all the way through. There were some cute scenes and enough Regency flavor to keep me entertained. But the romance was silly. Very silly.