Entertaining? Yes, if you ignore annoying TSTL moments and hero's tendency to poor-woe-is-me i-am-not-worthy insecure introspections."As You Desire" is one of the classic historical romances. If that's one of your favorites and you pick this up thinking to relive it, this sequel will disappoint. The story does follow "As You Desire's" Harry and Dizzy's eldest, Ginesse Braxton. First, I have to say, "Harry, WTF, where's the love for Dizzy!" Ginesse is the oldest of 8=E.I.G.H.T. offspring. They have birth control methods in the Victorian era, you know. And, really, practicing that would extend Dizzy's lifespan.On the other hand, given the adventuress that Dizzy is, perhaps pregnancy and childbirth was Harry's way of extending Dizzy's life.So, on to The Other Guy's Bride. Ginesse is, like her parents, an adventuress, and is also somehow a trouble and calamity magnet. Like, literally. From relatively harmless luggage getting lost to ships running aground, sandstorms, cave-ins, etc . . . She gets sent away to boarding school because she accidentally started a fire in one of Harry's digs.A grown woman now, Ginesse discovers clues to a lost Egyptian city while being a research assistant to a university professor in England. She decides to find this city by herself, thereby earning her name (instead of being endowed by being born a Braxton) as an archaeologist/ancients scholar. On board the ship she meets Mildred Whimpelhall, a proper English lady who is to meet her fiancee at a fort in Egypt. Mildred is to meet an "American cowboy" named Jim Owens in Cairo, who will be her guide in the desert. When Mildred is too ill to keep traveling via water, Ginesse takes on her identity, solving her dilemma of how to get to the site of where she thinks the lost city is.On the way to Mildred's fiancee, Ginesse and Jim fall in love. Of course, Jim thinks he has fallen for "The Other Guy's Bride," while Jim himself is not all who he pretends to be. Jim has his internal conflict (i.e. why is he this cowboy with occasional British accent, in the middle of Egypt), and Ginesse has hers. Then there's the external conflicts: they meet Indiana Jones and The Mummy style misadventures.The external conflicts are thrilling and entertaining . . . what a ride! Way more entertaining than the movies, by the way. And there was a lot of humor on this caper, too. However, the internal conflicts were really unattractive (to me) and just seemed too contrived. Ginesse is too enmeshed in her fantasy world, Jim in his own insecurities, that I don't find myself convinced in their HEA.As for the narration itself, this is my first listen to Justine Eyre. Her performance was not stellar, but it didn't bother me either. I appreciated her distinctions in accent: she would put on just the right amount of Yank and Western drawl for Jim, just the right snotty British accents for Mildred and Colonel Lord Pomfrey, the diluted tones for Egyptians who went to English schools, etc. I had no trouble hearing who was talking. It must be a mark of how excellent audiobooks have gotten (and how spoiled I've become) that I write here that the narration is not stellar. Okay, so I'm not crazy about the title of this book, but the book itself is almost as good as it's sort of prequel, As You Desire. I absolutely loved it. I might buy this one, too, because I really think I might read it again. Ginesse was a great character. She was so accident prone that it added a lot of humor to the story. Jim was a really good match for Ginesse. He was one of those rough guys with a good heart. Again, like with As You Desire, I really liked the setting of Egypt. The reader gets to see a lot more of Egypt's landscape than they got to in As You Desire, which was a nice change. Although the historical aspect of The Other Guy's Bride is sort of embellished, Brockway lets her readers know this at the end. She tells the reader of the real facts she found in her research and how she molded it to fit with the story. I'm not a big stickler for absolute historical accuracy, so it didn't bother me at all. I would recommend this novel
Do You like book The Other Guy's Bride (2011)?
a treat! great couple, interesting story, nifty setting, and a purposeful fairy tale ending
—felo
Couldn't get past 16%. Didn't like the writing style.
—Nicknack10
A fun read that has some steamy romance scenes.
—elisaawad
