The Proposal by Mary Balogh

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The Rake Appreciation Society book for March was The Proposal by Mary Balogh. This is the first book of her Survivor's Club series. If you haven't heard of the book club before, it's a monthly club hosted by the lovely Crystal and Jen. I was able to use this for the prompts 2 word title for Love Has Sprung and White Horse for the Taylor Swift Quarterly Challenge.

When Gwen goes to the coast for fresh air from her friend that she came to visit in the country, she ends up getting stuck and hurt. She had accidentally crossed over to local Duke's land and ends up being rescued by Hugo, Lord Trentham. He is struggling with becoming apart of the nobility after receiving accolades from war. As he constantly finds himself in contact with Gwen both in the country and back in London, he decides to propose so he can beget an heir. When Gwen rejects his proposal, it's because she wants him to properly court her first.

I have to say, I struggled getting into this book. It was the night before book club and I ended up only being about 70 pages in. I checked my library's hoopla and thankfully they had the audiobook. I listened to it all day at work and was able to get it done in time. Once again I really struggled with a Mary Balogh. I did enjoy this one a lot more than The Gilded Web, but it just fell flat for me after a point. When I first switched over, I got a little more of the humor between them and was enjoying myself, but I think overall it just felt like pretty stagnant character growth for me. This very much focuses on the characters themselves and there isn't much exciting plot, but I just found myself getting bored a lot. I can enjoy character based books, but I just didn't really connect with Gwen and Hugo. I also felt like the humor died down a lot.

I am intrigued enough to try the next book in the series and during the live show several people mentioned that their favorite in the series were other books. I also know that Mary's Bedwyn Saga is very popular so I would be interested in picking those up. I think whatever I pick up from her next though will be in Audiobook. I just find with the slower historicals like this I enjoy them more in audio. I'm not crossing her off my list yet though. If you want to now what other people though, check out the live show!

Have you read The Proposal?

Bookishly Yours,

Stasi🍎

STATISTICS: The Proposal, Mary Balogh, 3.5 stars, 1 day, Audiobook, 365 pages, published in 2012, traditionally published