There Goes the Groom - Review

There Goes the Groom (A Romance of Rank, # 1.5)

By: Esther Hatch

Publication: April 15, 2024 by Arbory Press

234 pages

Genre: Adult, Historical Fiction, Regency

Source: Personal Kindle Library

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Goodreads description--Catching a husband has never been so complicated.

Matthew Harrison has only one task in life: to marry money. After failing miserably in London, his family takes matters into their own hands by arranging his marriage to the wealthy Lucy Bateman. But when he meets Lucy for the first time, his resolve to save his family from ruin crumbles. Lucy looks to be nothing more than a child, and he cannot fathom going through with the union. Without a thought for the consequences of his actions, he runs away.

Lucy Bateman didn’t like the idea of an arranged marriage, but she agreed in order to save her sister from suffering the same fate. However, when she played a trick on her groom-to-be by sending her younger sister to meet him in her place, he fled without a word. Now, three years later, Lucy stumbles upon her long-lost fiance working as a cart driver. Fate has given her a second chance and this time there will be no tricks… other than pretending to be someone else entirely in order to convince him to come home and marry her.

The description of There Goes the Groom tells you pretty much everything you need to know. Matthew's family needs him to marry for money to save their family. Lucy's family wants her to marry into a title. An arranged marriage isn't what either of them wants, but Lucy agrees so that her sister will be able to choose her own husband one day. Matthew agrees against his better judgment. Yet, when Matthew meets his betrothed, he is struck by how young she is. And nothing is going to entice him to marry a child. He thus runs away. 

Lucy wanted to get the measure of her husband-to-be and that's why she sent her younger sister to pretend to be her. Yet she didn't expect him to flee. The fact that he did says a lot about him, but it's been three years, and she hasn't broken the engagement. I'm not 100% sure why, but Lucy has been living with Matthew's parents since he disappeared. So Lucy stumbles upon him one day while shopping with his mother. She doesn't introduce herself. But she does concoct another scheme. This time, she will go undercover and get to know Matthew herself. 

Stories like this are fun to read about when I don't take them too seriously. Yet, I have a hard time believing them to be realistic at all. When the show Catfish was popular, nearly all the couples on the show couldn't get over the fact that the other person lied to them repeatedly about who they were. Even when they were told that the person was being real and their pictures were the only thing that was fake. Trust, once broken, is hard to build back up. And relationships that start out with deception don't tend to stand very well in the end. But I try not to think too deeply about books like this, and instead, enjoy the journey. 

Favorite quotes:

-What was it about accents that made him want to mimic them?

-"Don't wonder where your work comes from. Just be grateful you have it."

-"Tis a strange thing to be very different from one's parents. What will make them happy could have made me very unhappy. And yet, I was still willing to do it when I didn't think I had another choice."

-"My husband didn't understand subtlety. So I knew I was going to have to tell him outright I was interested in him, or kiss him. He wouldn't have understood anything less." "Really?" Lucy smiled as Mrs. Tucker, with her mob cap and no-nonsense precision, ladled their breakfasts into the bowls. "Which of those did you decide to do?" Mrs. Tucker smiled with a twinkle in her eye. "Both, naturally."

There Goes the Groom was a fast book for me. Changing genres and book length often helps me stay out of a reading slump. And I needed a change from the romantacy genre. I can't take a book like this too seriously. And it isn't meant to be. It's just a fun story to entertain you. I liked the characters. But I don't analyze books like this too closely. There Goes the Groom gets 3.5 Stars. Have you read There Goes the Groom? What did you think? Let me know!