THE BEAST TAKES A BRIDE

A marriage of estrangement becomes real just as it's ending.

Alexandra Bellamy kissed her first love goodbye on the day of her wedding to war hero Colonel Magnus Brightwall, widely known as the Beast. The seeming betrayal stalled her new life and led to five years of separation from her husband, who went off to Spain as a diplomat without her. Now Magnus has returned to England and proposed a permanent separation, but not before they pretend to be a happy couple so as not to jeopardize his imminent elevation to Earl of Montcroix. Saddened that her action hurt her husband, Alexandra agrees to the plan—and thus begins their stay at the guesthouse known as the Grand Palace on the Thames. Their forced proximity and the presence of the inn's charmingly eccentric inhabitants bring Alexandra and Magnus to a pained understanding of the happiness they could have had together. This "Beauty and the Beast" rewrite is evocative of some of Lisa Kleypas' and Sherry Thomas' historical romances, where marriages must be rebuilt by two complicated people healing the wrongs they did to each other and baring their true selves. Long's thoughtful prose is studded with striking analogies for emotions and character traits that reward attentive reading. For instance, unfulfilled love is compared to the weather: "Did it merely spend itself like a storm, and then make way for new weather?" There are also some chuckle-inducing moments, with the style ably buttressing the plot, which asserts that romance is hollow without a man respecting a woman's choices and selfhood.

A keeper, fusing the beauties of historical romance with present-day ideas of individual happiness.