MY UNFAIR LADY

Author: Kathryne Kennedy ISBN: 9781402229909 12/2009 HISTORICAL Publisher: SOURCEBOOKS
Time Period: Victorian 1885

A wild west heiress, Summer Wine Lee knows that she's not an acceptable bride for her fiance's knickerbocker family. She grew up in an Arizona mining town, cares more for critters than people, carries a knife under her skirts, and, worst of all, she has a highly improper secret from her past. But she also has high hopes that a real English Duke can teach her how to be a lady… Were it not for his father's gambling debts, the Duke of Monchester would never have stooped to civilize Summer. But the more time he spends with her, and the more social scrapes he has to rescue her from, the more he finds it impossible to change her into a proper lady. How could he, when he's falling in love with her just the way she is?

RRAH's THOUGHTS AND PONDERINGS:

This is the fourth book of Kennedy's I've read, though this is the first straight historical.  Her series with Dorchester, the Relics of Merlin, are infinitely entertaining and amusing with a dash of magic.  For a different spin, MY UNFAIR LADY has suspense and a murderous plot afoot for the heroine and hero to foil.

Summer is ill-equipped to be considered a Lady in the sense of the word.  She's brash, crass, and aggressive—she was raised on the frontier, where women had to be that way to get anywhere.  Now, though, she wants to impress her future in-laws with how dainty and well-mannered she can be.  If it doesn't kill her first. 

She chooses Monchester, which may or may not have been her worst idea ever, depending on your viewpoint, and what begins is a clash of temperaments.  Monchester is used to people fearing him, but the little slip of an American chit gets the best of him.  Before he knows it, he's in love and stuck helping the woman he loves win another man!

Neither Summer nor Monchester are cookie cutter protagonists.  They both embrace their flaws, and in Summer's case, they tend to bite her in the butt.  They're a good team, however, bantering well and providing chemistry to keep the book moving even when I wanted to knock Summer around a bit.  As her feelings grow more confused, her thinking seems to as well (she never had sense in my opinion), and she baffled me with some of her decisions.  I honestly could not see what was so great about her American would-be husband.

I enjoyed MY UNFAIR LADY and was firmly rooting for Monchester to win the day.  I would have liked a bit more development on who was trying to kill him, but in the end I was in it for the romance, so that mattered not so much once Summer got her head on straight.

Alexandra Cenni