Love And Beauty Bloom From Within

 

This is a new author to me---at least, I don't think I've read Caitlin Crews.  If I have, I haven't kept any of the prior books of hers that I read because they just didn't wow me.  This one however, spoke to me.

Characters: Geraldine Casey, Lionel Asensio (with guest appearances by their family)

Premise: In order to please his grandmother, man impulsively marries a woman who crashed his wedding after his intended bride is carted off.

People, I did not expect this story to begin by the intended bride being carted off ala King Kong and Fay Wray, but that happened and our male lead, Lionel Asensio, turned to wedding crasher Geraldine Casey, dragged her up to the altar, and married her before she could even say "How do you do?", which, Sir!  No!  No!  That is not how any of that is supposed to go at all!  But anyways, after that's accomplished, Lionel tries to tell Geraldine what he expects from her only to have her make her own demands: take a paternity test and claim his child.  As it turns out, Geraldine's convinced that he's the father of Julie, the daughter of her late cousin, Seanna, which in Geraldine's defense, Seanna had said Lionel's name on her deathbed, so yeah, I can see how she had made that leap.

Anyhoo, after the marriage, Geraldine is given a total makeover which doesn't want as she has spent her whole life hiding her body as she witnessed Seanna using her own looks to party and self-destruct within the modeling world, and you know what?  I get it.  If I had witnessed something like that, I probably would've been convinced that being beautiful was a bad thing too.  To be honest, this was the only part I was "Nnng" on because no one listened to what she wanted, and they took away her glasses, which she needs to see.  The story mentions her wearing contacts, but they never say whether or not she goes back to those again.  Throughout all of this, Geraldine is trying to convince Lionel to get a paternity test, which he keeps refusing, and finally tells her that even though he had in fact met Seanna, they had never hooked up, revealing that instead, he had encouraged her to take stock of her life before she destroyed herself, indicating that this is the reason Seanna says his name at Jules' birth and her death.

On his part, Lionel is trying to control everything and just keep it as a business arrangement, determined to not let feelings to get into the mix after watching both his grandfather and father make spectacles of themselves and bring heartache to his grandmother and mother under the guise of "feelings" and "emotions", which given how he grew up, I can see why he would view them as a bad thing and treat marriage as a business contract and to ensure he had an heir after his passing.  But of course, the man does have feelings and it's not until he has a talk with his beloved grandmother that he realizes that giving into one's feelings and emotions doesn't necessarily mean that it will lead to someone else being destroyed or ruined, leading to more of a happily-ever-after for him and Geraldine.

To be perfectly honest, I was taken by surprise.  On the surface, this seems to be the typical Harlequin novel, but both the male and female characters had to learn not to be afraid of inner and outer beauty.  Lionel's lesson as mentioned above was that just because a man thinks with his heart or emotions, that doesn't automatically mean that he is being selfish and irresponsible, while Geraldine had to learn that it was okay for her outside to match her inside.  Inside, Geraldine is a beautiful soul, stepping up to take care of her beloved cousin, vowing to love and protect her, while refusing to let herself be as outwardly beautiful as she was inwardly.  Just as Lionel thought that following your emotions and ruining other people's lives went hand-in-hand, Geraldine equated her physical beauty with self-destructing.  While I feel that Crews could've delved into this somewhat deeper, I'm pretty sure that she didn't actually intend for that to be the "lesson" of the novel and just wanted to tell a pretty story, which she did.  I liked this story and I give it about a 6.