The Marriage Miracle
By Liz Fielding
3/5
()
Currently unavailable
Currently unavailable
About this ebook
Matilda Lang is terrified when she feels herself falling for hotshot New York banker Sebastian Wolseley. An accident three years ago has left her in a wheelchair, and Sebastian's the man who can make, or break, her heart….
Sebastian is compassionate, sexy and, most importantly, he treats her like a desirable woman. It would take a miracle for Matty to risk her heart after what she's been through. But Sebastian knows he's the man who can help this brave woman embrace life and love—and persuade her to say “yes” to his proposal of marriage!Liz Fielding
Liz Fielding was born with itchy feet. She made it to Zambia before her twenty-first birthday and, gathering her own special hero and a couple of children on the way, lived in Botswana, Kenya and Bahrain. Eight of her titles were nominated for the Romance Writers' of America Rita® award and she won with The Best Man & the Bridesmaid and The Marriage Miracle. In 2019, the Romantic Novelists' Association honoured her with a Lifetime Achievement Award.
Read more from Liz Fielding
Mistletoe and the Lost Stiletto Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Flirting with Italian Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Vettori's Damsel in Distress Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBecoming the Tycoon's Bride: An Anthology Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Bittersweet Deception Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Sheikh's Convenient Princess Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Five-Year Baby Secret Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Last Woman He'd Ever Date Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Billionaire's Convenient Bride Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5SOS: Convenient Husband Required Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Chosen As The Sheikh's Wife Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLiz Fielding's Little Book of Writing Romance Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Rosie's Little Book of Ice Cream Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTempted by Trouble Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A Family Of His Own Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Marriage Miracle Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSecret Wedding Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Ordinary Princess Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Related to The Marriage Miracle
Related ebooks
The Lionhearted Cowboy Returns Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Road Trip with the Eligible Bachelor Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Valtieri's Bride & A Bride Worth Waiting For: An Anthology Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Gold Coast Angels: A Doctor's Redemption Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Rancher's Blue Ribbon Bride Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsReturn of the Prodigal Son Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Surgeon's Cinderella Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSecond Chance with Her Island Doc: Get swept away with this sparkling summer romance! Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsNyc Angels: Flirting With Danger Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Father's Heart Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Nurse's Search and Rescue Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5No Ordinary Joe Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSwept Away by the Seductive Stranger Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5His Christmas Angel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Cowboy Doctor Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDante's Shock Proposal Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Last Single Maverick Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5One Hot Night with Dr. Cardoza: Get swept away with this sparkling summer romance! Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAn Heiress On His Doorstep Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBaby, Oh Baby! Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Their Double Baby Gift Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMeant-To-Be Marriage Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSomebody's Baby Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Unlikely Santa: The Tyler-Royale Stores, #3 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Tides Of Love Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsInstant Mommy Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Stand-In Father Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Valentine Promise Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Bridal Swap Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Son For The Cowboy Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5
Romance For You
Adults Only Volume 3: Seven Erotica Shorts Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Erotic Fantasies Anthology Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5It Starts with Us: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Stone Heart Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Wish You Were Here: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Bossy: An Erotic Workplace Diary Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5After Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Under the Roses Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Ugly Love: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Him: Him, #1 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Messy Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Before We Were Strangers: A Love Story Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Seven Sisters: Book One Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Wuthering Heights Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5All Your Perfects: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Buzz Books 2023: Fall/Winter Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Heart Bones: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5November 9: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Without Merit: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dating You / Hating You Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5My Favorite Half-Night Stand Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Confess: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Home: the most moving and heartfelt novel you'll read this year Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Maybe Now: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Swear on This Life: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Finding Perfect: A Novella Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Hopeless Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Josh and Hazel's Guide to Not Dating Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Little Shop of Hidden Treasures: a joyful and heart-warming novel you won't want to miss Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Something Borrowed: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for The Marriage Miracle
12 ratings1 review
- Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5The best I can say about this patronizing mess of romance cliches is that it had impeccable grammar and spelling. It's going to be hard to review this without punishing it for the sins of other books, but that's just how it goes sometimes.
The book starts off well enough. Sebastian Wolsely is a banker who usually lives and works on Manhattan. He's come to London to settle his wealthy uncle's estate as well as attend an old friend's wedding. Having come directly from the funeral, he's looking somewhat less than celebratory when Matty Lang, cousin of the bride, decides to chat him up. He likes how she shamelessly flirts with him without laying on the giggles, and she's impressed at how he doesn't lose a beat once he notices she's in a wheelchair. When he attempts to ask her out to dinner, however, she turns cold. Unfortunately for her, he's not a man used to taking no for an answer.
Here's where it all goes pear-shaped for me. Now, I understand that the determined hero in pursuit of the reluctant heroines is anything but particular to books working with a disability theme. Where it infuriated me was with her reasons for trying to put off the hero. There's insecurity, which pretty much everyone falls prey to every now and again, and then there's self-loathing.
Matty's behavior did not at all strike me as that of a healthy woman with normal insecurities about her place in relation to the world and the cosmopolitan hero. They were the musings of a deeply troubled woman stuck in mourning. She dwells on everything she's lost since being paralyzed in a car accident she blames herself for. I can understand wistfulness and regrets, but not being able to look at her godson without pangs of sadness at what she'll no longer have, three years on from her accident? Lying to her fiance while she was in rehab to drive him away? Feeling that her fiance's mom was right to have said "thank you" to Matty for setting him free to marry a non-cripple? Isolating herself from clients so they won't know she's in a wheelchair? Or, most dramatically, hacking at her hair with nail scissors to discourage the hero by making herself ugly:Painful as the subject was, at least he seemed to have forgotten all about her hair—the reason she’d attacked it with the nail scissors. At least she hoped he’d forgotten. Because it wouldn’t take him long to work out that hacking it off in the bathroom that day in the rehab centre had been a symbolic gesture. Severing herself from all that was womanly, alluring in her appearance. A denial of her very femininity.
And then he’d know why she’d done it again today.
So much for keeping him away.This woman isn't merely insecure, she's more emo than a Smiths album playing on a rainy February day. She doesn't need a husband, she needs therapy.
This being a 45k word Harlequin, this is just completely glanced over. I don't hate this book for having a head-case heroine, I hate it for attempting to pass her off as healthy, normal or as an example of how any woman would behave in her shoes. The book lacks any sort of self-reflection concerning her behavior, leaving me with the impression that she's supposed to be a crippled everywoman, and I didn't buy it.
So, and this is where I punish this book for the sins of others, I walked away angry at yet another romance using physical disability to provide angst and high drama. Independence is not about living alone and working. It's about confidence. Accepting help isn't a sign of weakness, so I'm baffled at how the genre seems to regard a stubborn refusal of help and friendship as some sort of sign for a strong, independent heroine. Conversely, the easiest thing to do is hide, mope and avoid. So when you show me a woman who pushes new friends away, hates herself for needing help and is embarrassed of her wheelchair, I see a deeply troubled woman. I don't see someone who can commit to a marriage after a weeklong courtship. If she can't love herself, how can she love anyone else?
Also irksome is the popular "I don't want to be a burden/I know I'm a burden" theme. Matty voices this about herself clear through the book. She interprets Sebastian's advances and others' actions in terms of how they must be wary of what a handful she is or that if she showed them how she's different they'll distance themselves. Since this comes up often and is never really dealt with, I had to wonder if this is what people think of the disabled. So far as I could tell, I was supposed to admire the hero for being the one to condescend to take on a pitiably crippled woman. That he was a good man for loving her despite her otherness. Her disability seemed to exist to make him look good.
In the end, I just have to say that you're not telling a story about transcending differences if the plot hinges entirely on a character's otherness. As a Harlequin Romance, it's an uninspired three star story of an artist swept off her feet by a lordling in disguise. As a treatment of disability, however, it's a resounding, patronizing fail.