Wandering the books section at CVS as I waited for a prescription to be filled, I came across First Comes Marriage by Mary Balogh, which came out at the end of February 2009. I had never read anything by Balogh, and as I have about 20 or so authors I follow regularly, I generally am not in a position to be randomly picking up new authors. However, I had already been up and down most of the other aisles while I waited for the pharmacist to call my name with my order, so I made my way back to the book section to take another look. After reading the blurb on the back of First Comes Marriage, I found myself intrigued (I had heard good things from friends about her, anyway), and I purchased it.

First Comes Marriage is the story of Vanessa Huxtable Dew and Elliott Wallace, Viscount Lyngate. It is the first novel in a series on the Huxtable family, which includes Vanessa, her two sisters, and her brother, who had been left parentless several years prior to the opening of the story. Vanessa and Elliott meet when he comes to the remote village they live in to inform Stephen, her seventeen year-old brother, that he has just inherited the title of Earl of Merton, due to the passing of a cousin they were unaware of, and that Elliott is now Stephen’s guardian until he turns twenty-one. Elliott takes the Huxtable family from the village to Warren Hall, the seat of Merton, and begins to attempt to direct Stephen in the ways of a member of the ton. Elliott determines that he must marry in order to be able to present Vanessa and her two sisters, Katherine and Margaret, to society and find them husbands, but then decides he will kill the proverbial two birds by marrying Margaret, the eldest sister. Vanessa, however, has chosen to be the sacrificial lamb, as she was referred to by Elliott multiple times, because she knows Margaret is harboring a secret love for a man from the village (Crispin Dew) who had gone off to war.

Confused yet? Unfortunately, when a series is planned, as Balogh surely planned this one, the first book tends to be slow in the beginning and so packed with backstory throughout on all the players that what should be the main story — the budding romance between Vanessa and Elliott — tends to get lost in the rest of the drama. To sum up quickly, Vanessa and Elliott are forced to marry due to a mishap with a hot-air balloon ride (which was suspiciously similar to a scene in Kathryn Caskie’s A Lady’s Guide to Rakes, out in 2005), and though it takes a while due to hang-ups each has with the other, they eventually fall madly in love with each other. There are a few things left unresolved in the novel, most importantly a feud between Elliott and his cousin Constantine, who would have been the Earl of Merton in Stephen’s place had he been born two days later, or his parents married two days sooner. I assumed that more information would be forthcoming in the next novel of the series.

Overall (knowing that a first book is usually not the best of the series due to a slow start and the cramming of information, but a must-read to understand much of anything that goes on in the rest of the series), it was good. It did not make me forever denounce anything Balogh writes or has written. However, book two was much better. Then Comes Seduction came out at the end of March, just days after I finished First Comes Marriage. What good fortune for me, the reader, who hates to wait for a year (or more, in some cases) to continue a series (of which most historical romance novels are a part). In fact, Balogh planned it so well, book three comes out at the end of April, and book four at the end of June.

Then Comes Seduction is the story of Katherine Huxtable and Jasper Finley, Baron Montford. Notorious for winning wagers, especially of a scandalous nature, Jasper makes a wager with his friends that he can seduce and de-flower the virtuous Katherine in two weeks. Jasper plans his seduction to take place at the Vauxhall Gardens, where he is escorting his sister to a small party that Katherine has also been invited to.  Jasper is able to distract Katherine and lure her off into a secluded area, and comes very close to winning his wager, but stops. Katherine promptly delivers a smart retort about him disappointing her, him being a famed seducer, and they go back to the party acting like nothing happened. Katherine, distraught over her behavior and the possibility of facing Jasper again at a public function, leaves London for three years.  Jasper, too, leaves London for a year, after publicly announcing that he lost the wager, and telling no one of how close he actually got to winning.

Three years later, Katherine returns to London to visit her sister Vanessa, and encounters Jasper again.  Though she tries to avoid him, he continues to turn up, joking about a private wager (one she did not accept) between them that he was going to make her fall in love with him. All the while, Jasper’s younger step-sister has accompanied him to London a year before she is to be presented to society, and he is in a feud with his stepfather’s family about whether he is capable of properly raising her with his sordid reputation. Cousin Clarence somehow finds out about the wager from three years ago and the gossip wheels start amongst the ton.  Jasper, knowing that Katherine will be ruined, proposes marriage to save her reputation, though it is only after she realizes that her ruination will negatively effect her sister Margaret, still unmarried, and her brother, as well as Jasper’s step-sister, that she agrees. They travel to Jasper’s country house and there a delightful battle of wits and budding romance ensues, along with the not too overpowering backstory of Jasper’s family that resolves nicely (though I won’t ruin it and tell you how).  Unfortunately, Constantine was only briefly mentioned as the overprotective cousin who thinks his friend Jasper is not good enough for Katherine, and we still have an unresolved feud. However, I sought out Mary Balogh’s website and see that Constantine will have his own book, number five (title and publication date unconfirmed), and am thinking I will have to wait until then.

This series is turning out nicely, and though I will not have the third book (At Last Comes Love, Margaret’s story) in time for my next review, I will promptly review it for the first posting in May. I would definitely recommend, if you have the time, reading the first two books in succession, as I did, so that the first novel feels less overwhelming, and you forget that the love story was suffocated by the backstory. Fortunately for the series, Jasper is one of my favorite heros I have ever “met” so far, and that is saying a lot.

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