A Christmas Wedding Wager - Michelle Styles

Just one kiss under the mistletoe could change her whole life!

Lovely Miss Emma Harrison has long turned her back on the frivolities of the Marriage Mart and dedicated herself to helping her father. But this Christmas everything changes – the unforgettable Jack Stanton is back! No longer the charity boy determined to make good, he has become one of the richest men in England. Driven to succeed and used to getting anything he wants, Jack makes it clear that he wants Emma.

And as the Yuletide festivities throw Emma into his company, she can’t help but wonder if she made the right choice seven years ago...

Christmas Newcastle Upon Tyne 1846

It's already January but I am still working on one of my Christmas Challenges so I have at least a couple of Christmas reads planned for this month.

I think I put this one on my TBR pile after reading the review in some blog and the occupation of the characters intrigued me. The hero is an engineer and the heroine has taught herself engineering and his now helping her father build a bridge. There is past history between them, seven years before the hero, Jack was the heroine's father protégée and they were in love but due to Emma's mother interference they never actually talked about their feelings and Jack left. Now he is back, rich and seeking to buy Emma's father company.

This was the type of story that relied on a big misunderstanding. The hero thought the heroine never answered his letter when, in fact, she never received it, and more misunderstandings follow because they are now very different people from what they were but especially Emma keeps assuming she knows what Jack is about and is usually not good. That was annoying and I felt like sitting them both down and making them speak.

There's also a secondary mystery about what is really behind Emma's father illness. I guessed what it might be fairly early and her father was another character that I disliked because he could have been a lot more honest with her.

The saving grace is that, in the end, they at least acknowledge that they are very different persons from what they were seven years ago and that they love what they are today, I just had some problems believing they do. In the end I thought that it could have been a much more rewarding story than what it was.

Grade: 3/5