Second Thoughts - Sandra Heath

Although Lord Carismont is dashing enough to take any girl of the ton for his wife, the widower has only his daughter's best interests at heart. When Carismont interviews Kate Kingsley for the position of governess, he believes he's discovered a suitable mother for his little girl and readily offers Kate more than she ever expected: a marriage of convenience.

A charming young widow with a son to care for, Kate hesitantly accepts Carismont's proposal and all the security that comes with it. But when she arrives at his castle off the coast of England and learns that someone—or something—is determined to keep them apart, she begins to have second thoughts about their union that only the magic of true love can put to rest.

I have greatly enjoyed some of Sandra Heath's books in the past but I seem to have some trouble with the ones that have magical elements.

In this one a young widow agrees to a marriage of convenience to help an orphaned little girl. But from the beginning she starts to see things, namely a cuckoo determined to help her. When they arrive at her husbands estate it soon becomes obvioous that there is a world of magic from which his first wife came and she not only is still alive in that other world, but keeps wanting to come back to join her lover. To accomplish that she will have to convince her daughter to go to that other world and there's a struggle between the h/h trying to keep the child safe and coping with falling in love and the villains.

Bigger fans of magic and paranormal will probably enjoy it more than I did as that is the most important part of the story. The widow agrees too readily to the marriage of convenience and then they proceed to fall in love too quickly and I really couldn't see the attraction.

Grade: 3/5