US Cover
The Deal: Having survived the Peninsula War, thanks to the help of The Survivor's Club, Hugo Emes, Lord Trentham is really looking forward to see them again at the annual meeting. But meeting Gwendoline, Lady Muir on the second day of his stay and, thanks to an accident, having her stay with him and his friends, is nothing short of annoying and disastrous.
Even though he was given a title due to his actions during the war, Hugo comes from a middle class background and doesn't deal well with the aristocracy - even though all his friends in the Survivor's Club have a title of some sort- so he finds it very infuriating how attracted he is to Gwen.
UK Cover
Gwen has been widowed for seven years, and the mix of love she felt for her husband and the regrets of her marriage have kept her away from encouraging suitors or pursuing a second marriage. She finds Hugo a bit too straight forward, but also attractive, and it really annoys her that he's the only one she seems to be able to open up with about what her marriage was really like.
My Thoughts: I really wanted to like The Proposal, I hadn't read a book by Mary Balogh in a while but I liked the sound of this one. Sadly, the Proposal wasn't anything like I was expecting, and I didn't particularly care for what it actually was.
The book is well written, the characters nice enough - if a bit too stubborn and contrary - but I didn't actually feel that much chemistry between them other than because THEY SAID they were attracted to each other (annoyingly so). Also, I felt like there was a lot of info-dump in this book, the narration went on and on, and the characters talked and talked, but the story were no where for a lot of the book.
I had hoped this book would be more about The Survivor's Club and how these damaged people put themselves back together but, in the end, the whole Club thing was more a plot device to link this series than anything else (at least that's my opinion so far), and I don't really care to known the stories of the other ones.
What's a Book Speed Date, you ask? It's a quickie review--about 150 words or so--of any genre book (variety is the spice of life, after all).
