[RRV]⋙ Download The Proposal Survivor Club Mary Balogh 9780385343329 Books

The Proposal Survivor Club Mary Balogh 9780385343329 Books

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The Proposal Survivor Club Mary Balogh 9780385343329 Books

Boo 5, 'Only Enchanting' was my introduction to the Survivor's Club series and I enjoyed it very much for its character development and originality. Those qualities are in place in book 1, The Proposal, but didn't find it quite as absorbing as the first book I read.

Perhaps it is the slower pacing or a couple of insufficiently explained plot points, but this one just didn't hold my interest quite as well. That said, it's still a good read and I'll probably continue on with the series.


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The Proposal Survivor Club Mary Balogh 9780385343329 Books Reviews

I did things a little backward with this series and read books two through five first. I love the series and was always curious about how it all got started with Hugo and Gwen's story.

The book started slow as it set up the series with the background of The Survivor Club. Then in alternating perspectives Gwen and Hugo contemplate their quiet, serene existence.

Gwen discovers that she is lonely as a widow seven years after her husband's death and decides that it might be time to finally rejoin life. She has a loving supportive family, dear friends, and a comfortable financial situation, but as she looks at the loving couples around her, she dreams of more. She decides to find a quiet, easy man who just wants companionship nothing of passion and nothing like before. She still bears the guilt and the scars from her last venture into matrimony. Unfortunately, a trip to a friend, a twisted ankle, and a huge, large man with a scowl and a blunt way of speaking confuses all her plans.

Hugo has had his year of mourning and knows he needs to fulfill his promise to his father to care for his step-mother and half-sister, take care of his father's business, and continue the family legacy with a son of his own. He is fine with the first two tasks even though he prefers his quiet, home away from people, but getting the son involves getting a wife and that would mean sharing his home with another. Hugo has a lordly title that was bestowed on him for heroic services to the Crown, but he grew up middle class and it is to that class that he plans to turn for his wife. With the help of his friends in The Survivor Club, reconnections with his family, and a most blue-blooded aristocratic woman that is all wrong for him, but he can't get out of his head, Hugo is forced to rejoin life and embrace living.

As I said, this one starts out slow and takes a while to set up. In fact, it is guilty of rehashing the same ground a few times making the pace stutter. Fortunately, the characters are worth it and their situation kept me reading through the end. They are most definitely an opposites attract across the social classes romance. I loved reading their story. Hugo was the best. He reminds me terribly of another Hugo from an older book and I do wonder if the author was paying her own tribute to such a fantastic, engaging male hero. Because with his big rough ways, blunt speech, and gentle heart under his forbidding appearance, Hugo had my heart early on in the story.

The situation was teased out slowly and carefully with nothing coming fast and easy. These two people have been through so much. I loved watching them help heal each other as they shared their dark, tragic secrets for the first time. They were antagonistic and struggled through misconceptions for much of their early acquaintance even while the attraction sizzled between them, but then the understanding and commonality came and I was swept up in their romance that they felt was doomed to go no where.

The surrounding characters were a strong secondary layer to the romance. Hugo's friends and family and Gwen's family, even bad guy of the piece added something. I loved seeing Hugo with his friends, but also his younger sister. And that big confrontation scene with his nemesis had me holding my breath. I haven't read the Bedwyn Saga and its prequels, but for those who have, this would be a special treat reuniting with those characters and seeing Gwen as a crossover figure.

So, it was a slow and steady read with some spice in the romance, nice balance to the historical backdrop of post-Napoleonic war, and a solid group of characters. I would most definitely recommend it.
This is my first Mary Balogh book, and from the reviews I've read, it seems that this is not her best. I found an enjoyable enough book, but not one that really stands out much in a super crowded regency romance field. It is difficult to articulate all that simply made this an average three star book for me. The feel of this book was different than many similar books in this genre, but instead of it feeling unique and fresh it almost seemed the opposite ... like I've read something like it a thousand times before. I guess I could say that I felt as if I was in the middle of a formula driven romance, one where all the elements necessary for a good romance were there without any of the emotion and heart needed to drive my reading experience.

Why?

Well, I think that it all boils down to characters. Hugo is a big ex-soldier who returns from war a hero after leading a suicide mission that eventually helps England to win an important battle. He has middle class roots, wealthy due to his father's businesses, but now he has been given a title because of his valor. This puts him in the aristocracy, but at heart he is still a commoner. Oh, and by the way, he hates the aristocracy. Hugo saves a woman after a fall on the estate where Hugo goes to meet fellow wounded warriors, The Survivor's Club. Gwen is a widow of seven years. Her husband died in a horrific manner as she watched, and she has never really recovered. She is an aristocrat. Hugo shouldn't fall in love with her. She shouldn't fall in love with him. But they do. That's the story.

The problem is that the characters are written in such a way that I never truly feel sympathetic to their plight. Hugo spends almost the entire novel frowning or stone faced. He hardly smiles at all until the novel is almost finished. Thank goodness that the third person narration allows us inside his head, or I don't think I could have found any love for him as a character. He is distant and often aloof when it comes to Gwen. He makes no secret of his dislike of aristocrats and his reasons for staying away from her. Gwen is not much better. I got the feeling that each of these characters was so much better than their outward appearances, but it was never shown half the time. I would have rather had more action displaying their underlying goodness and compatibility with each other. Instead I felt like I was reading an entire novel of cold shoulders. The absolute best parts of the novel are the parts where Hugo and Gwen open up to one another, revealing their deepest, darkest memories and finding ways to work beyond them as they unburdened themselves to each other. I wish that there were more scenes like that. As it was written, this couple spent the majority of the novel talking about how much they did not want to marry one another. What happened to turn this somewhat combative relationship into love? I have no idea. Just one day each of them woke up and decided they were in love. That made no sense. I just had to take their word for it because their conversations and actions did not display this transformation at all.

Outside the main characters the secondary characters showed a lot of potential, but they weren't really spotlighted enough. Each scene where these characters appeared almost seemed like a possibility for fun or interesting character studies, but not enough time was spent with the extras for them to matter. In the final family garden party scenes I felt as if several characters were being thrown about, willy nilly, without any regard for plot development or anything. They were just there as place holders.

There were several parts of the plot that seemed to be wrapped up a bit too nicely for my taste as well. The biggest problem for me was the issue involving Hugo's stepmother. She did something in her past relationship with Hugo that, frankly, I find almost unforgivable. It was horrible. It caused the kind-hearted Hugo to flee to the army and have a pretty rough time of things. And yet ... nothing. After revealing what happened it isn't really resolved at all. Sure, at the end she makes some sort of little apology, but that's it. All is forgotten. For me I could not stomach that. If it is going to be brought up as an issue in the novel, enough time needs to be devoted to really working through things, in my opinion.

All of these issues combined to make this a good enough book, but not a great one. There are enough in this genre that contain good stories, great characters, and equally important ... heart. That's what I wanted in this book. That is what I did not find. Fans of Mary Balogh might find much to enjoy in it. I just needed more. Three stars.
I have read many of Mary Balogh's books and liked most of them a lot.

I have only given four stars to this because I thought it dragged a little. She could have condensed the plot a bit, but instead we have this back and forth between Hugo and Gwen--he loves me, he loves me not, etc.--which becomes repetitive.

I loved both main characters and the author always fleshes out her secondary characters as well, so that we get to know a little about all the characters, which a lot of authors do not do.

She is an excellent writer one of my favorite romances of all time is "The Secret Pearl". OMG, I loved that book!

I am looking forward to reading the rest of the series, but I'm afraid that it won't compete with the Bedwyn series, which I loved.
Boo 5, 'Only Enchanting' was my introduction to the Survivor's Club series and I enjoyed it very much for its character development and originality. Those qualities are in place in book 1, The Proposal, but didn't find it quite as absorbing as the first book I read.

Perhaps it is the slower pacing or a couple of insufficiently explained plot points, but this one just didn't hold my interest quite as well. That said, it's still a good read and I'll probably continue on with the series.