Overall Grade: B
Tropes: marriage of convenience; grump/sunshine; pro football MMC; soulmates
Ilsa Madden-Mills will always be a must-read author for this reader. Her stories hit you right in the heart and tend to last long past their reading. Her newest romance, My Darling Bride, is an engaging, yet uneven marriage of convenience romance. When her MMC, Graham, requires a bride to acquire an inheritance as help for his brother, he chooses Emmy, the woman who “borrowed” his Lamborghini, as her penance. There is actually more to it, but Graham, the ever-serious grump who is too focused on football, cannot admit his attraction and interest in her. Madden-Mills’s story is a journey of tears and smiles as Graham comes to recognize his need for Emmy.
There is much to love about My Darling Bride:
*Emmy and Graham’s chemistry is at the top of this list. It’s clear from their meet-cute in the hallway of a motel in Arizona. Their attraction to each other is undeniable, and Madden-Mills deftly builds on that attraction throughout their story, turning up the heat once they return to New York. It is everything you expect from one of her romances.
*Graham’s struggles with life change make for an emotional read. Through his character’s journey, Madden-Mills is able to highlight the inherent danger of football, notably CTE. She has written Graham to struggle with his identity and whether he can be more than football. It’s this struggle that infuses him with the “grump” trope so many of us love in romance; however, he is more cinnamon roll hero as he becomes Emmy’s protector, even when he can’t explain the “why” behind it. Even more, Graham’s family life is fraught, and Madden-Mills uses it as a contrast to Emmy’s loving family, one she created.
*I connected the most with Emmy. She’s the woman who has taken care of everyone around her. Through her journey, Madden-Mills interrogates the trauma of DV in one’s past. There is nothing overt about it in the story, so I don’t think Madden-Mills’s book requires a content warning, but it’s good to acknowledge. With Emmy, we receive the warmth of the story. She loves and is loved, but she sacrifices her comfort for the lives of those she loves. This reality allows Graham to swoop in and care for her. It’s here where Madden-Mills builds the emotion of her story. When Graham cares, it gives Emmy (and the reader) hope for their future. However, Madden-Mills doesn’t make it easy on her reader, and Graham’s subsequent disinterest in hiding his feelings breeds the angst of the romance.
I state all of this to show My Darling Bride‘s beauty, but I struggled with this story. There is something missing from this book: a disconnect at moments in the story. While I clearly understood Graham and Emmy’s relationship, Graham’s indecisiveness throughout much of the story undermines the development of feelings in their relationship. When they are first intimate, I was confused because it was difficult for me to accept they’d move so quickly given Graham’s insistence on space. I found this occurring at different moments through their journeys. And it made the believability of their coupleship difficult.
Ilsa Madden-Mills’s My Darling Bride is a beautiful story about recognizing what matters in life: love and family. But it doesn’t quite have the same magic as her former stories, and I wonder if Graham and Emmy just needed a bit more spark to pull this book together.
In love and romance,
Professor A
Professor Romance 