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To Beguile A Beast (The Legend of the Four Soldiers)

Elizabeth Hoyt
Forever (2009)
ISBN 9780446406932
Reviewed by Sally Gorsuch for Rebecca's Reads (7/09)


A nicely written romance with just a little bit of an unusual take on the girl meets boy. They both feel an irresistible tug but spend most of the story fighting against it; typical story.  As has been true in countless stories of times well past, when a woman does not have a man to take care of her and provide for her, she can be homeless and penniless, relying on the kindness of relatives.  Or, in the more unusual cases of the more imaginative desperate woman, as we find the heroine of this story becoming capable of using her brains and imagination in making up a story to gain entry into a grand home as a member of the household staff.  

This is the case in " To Beguile A Beast" a story about Helen Fitzwilliam and her two small children.  The twist to this story is that she is not destitute because of the death of a beloved husband or her parents, rather she had become the mistress of a very rich and selfish man who had tricked her into becoming his as a young girl when she still believed in love.  She had everything, home and a staff to wait on her, keep the house and cook for her, but no love.  As she grew older she realized that she was nothing more than just a possession to him to own and show off.  She wanted more.  She managed to get information about a far away, remote castle where she was sure he would never find her and her children.  Enter the hero of the story; a lonely, seriously scarred man, Sir Alistair Munroe, who lived in the castle with no staff, except one drunk who was stealing from him.  Helen managed to become his housekeeper in the huge dirty, uncared for castle and felt safe from the outside world.  Along the way, she learned not to judge by appearances sake, as Sir Alistair Munroe's face was horribly scarred which made him a unsociable bitter man.  They learned from each other as she brought him back to where he could again smile and laugh. And when her former lover found them and stole the children away, he learned he could love again too.

There is a bit of a completely separate story at the beginning of each chapter, a story about Truth Teller which I found to be very distracting.   Otherwise, To Beguile A Beast"  by Elizabeth Hoyt was nicely written with the reader hoping it would work out well in the end.  This seemed to be pretty obvious it the beginning but there were just enough slight differences from the typical stories that made you wonder.

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