Claiming the Forbidden Bride (Harlequin Historical #1008) Book

Again, this one was more of a miss than a hit for me. This series has been quite variable so far.

Things I liked about this one:

- the hero - wounded soldier, with a strong sense of honor. What's not to like? I like the way the author takes a hero with such strong personal convictions and throws him into the middle of such an impossible situation, all the while knowing that he'll end up doing the right thing by himself as well as the heroine, but I wish he'd been accompanied by a heroine more worthy of him. You can almost see their relationship descending into a nagfest and he reluctantly looking for a gentle touch elsewhere.

- the way the series plot is worked in. The thread to the series plot is relatively weak, although the connection to th Gypsy is stronger. It actually makes it more mysterious than previous books, since it raises other possibilities and uncertainties

- the gypsy setting. It was an inspired idea to get a glimpse of Stefano's other family, from their point of view. It added to the mystery whilst offering few answers. Great.

Things I didn't like so much:

- the heroine annoyed the pants off me. She's gorgeous, rescues young children and is a more knowledgeable healer than English doctors. I found her irritating in the extreme. And then, she also has this awful bad-attitude, which basically makes her push the hero away, even though she can't help but stick her tongue down his throat. Beyond lust, I couldn't see why the hero would want to stick around with her long enough to actually have to talk to her, since she didn't give him any encouragement. I just wanted to slap her, and kept wishing for a much nicer sister/cousin to materialise.

- the whole relationship between the heroine and the Gypsy/Stefano felt all wrong. They are supposed to be brother and sister, he older than her. However, their mother killed herself after his father died. So, her husband just put up with this? I don't believe it. My, admittedly limited, understanding is that Romany culture is extremely monogamous, and not accepting of relationships outside marriage, with couples generally getting married at a young age even now. I really struggle to believe that (a) their mother would have married after an affair, particularly marrying the leader of the family and (b) that the child resulting from that affair would have been accepted as the leader of their family, and not someone else. Why not make them cousins or something? Why not make him someone other than the leader, say, an outcast?

- also, I hate, hate, hate, when a character, who proves to be incredibly important to the account just turns up for the first time in the last 10 pages. This was the hero's grandmother in this book. She's a great character, extremely interesting, and we don't get halfway enough of her. She just turns up.

- there are a few errors which annoyed me - a widowed aristocratic lady doesn't live in a dowager house but a dower house, and we never really learned how old the heroine was. I know this is a minor thing, but I like to know whether they are 15 or 50.

So, 2 stars, "it was OK", was a fair rating for this one, but like the sucker I am, I'll read the rest because I desperately want to find out what happens in the end.