Reviewer Comments: Ms. Perkins’ debut effort is a strong start to her writing career. She has taken and created some very likeable characters the readers will truly care about and more importantly want to read.
Maggie Delaney knocks on the door of Captain John Grayson only moments before she delivers their son. She is quite shocked when she realizes the man who has just helped her deliver her baby is not the father of the child but rather someone else calling himself Grayson. Sooner rather than later she realizes the man she thought she married is not the one who’s helped her and she now finds herself in a very tenuous position. What is she going to do?
John Grayson is back from the war trying his best to drink his memories away. So when a very pregnant woman shows up on his doorstep, he’s unsure what he should do. It doesn’t take long for his long buried honor surfaces long enough to help the lady. When he hears her story he’s not prepared to step in but he does get his cousin to help her out. John plans on returning to his regiment and can now do so without any guilty. So when he returns years later, and finds Maggie his “wife” happily installed at Summerton. His first instinct is to move her on so he can resume his life…he’s not counting on forming any attachments to her but you just can’t choose where the heart is going to settle. Will these two people find a happy ending or will the past finally get in the way?
John and Maggie are very engaging characters. Some may find fault with Maggie but if they continue with the read they will eventually come to understand her motivation. This was a strong debut effort and Ms. Perkins’ is a voice we should keep on our radar screens.
Reviewer Comments: Mary Balogh and Carla Kelly make room; there is a new kid on the regency block. I don’t give it very often, but I’m giving it here – the sacred 10. The Improper Wife is a beautiful story and Diane Perkins has honed her craft nicely. Her characters are well drawn and the story’s sensitivity is brilliant. Yes, I liked this book.
Maggie Delaney is a sparkling heroine. She unfolds through the pages as a gentle loving mother. Maggie Delaney would do anything to protect her son – even lie. Captain John Grayson is a marvelous hero. He unfolds through the pages as a gentle man. John Grayson believes Maggie Delaney has deceived him, but the question is – why?
Diane Perkins creates Maggie Delaney as a strong, capable woman. The reader will not find a sniffling little creature in this story. Maggie Delaney is living under a huge misrepresentation at Summerton Hall, the country estate belonging to John Grayson’s father. The old earl believes Maggie Delaney is his son’s wife. At Summerton Hall, everyone loves Maggie Delaney and her chubby little son, Sean. All is well, until Captain John Grayson returns home to England and to Summerton.
Diane Perkins has used superb pacing, realistic dialogue, and gentle humor to enhance The Improper Wife. The episodes with little Sean are simply delightful! However it is the sensitivity the author applies that lifts her story into the reader’s heart. Such a ploy is a brilliant move; it causes the reader to turn the pages with zeal. The results? The reader cannot put the book down! Well done, Ms. Perkins.
Reviewer Comments: Setting – London, 1816 --- Very pregnant, alone, and nearly penniless Maggie Delaney was at the end of her rope when she discovered that she had not killed the husband she’d accidentally pushed into the river. From a newspaper she learned that her husband Captain John Grayson was alive and living in London. Maggie discovered his direction, marched up to the door and asked the handsome but scruffy looking man who answered the door if these were the rooms of Captain John Grayson, who answered in the affirmative, then she asked when he would be returning. John Grayson insisted he was the man in question and that these were HIS rooms. Maggie, quickly realizing how she’d been duped was overcome with both shock and contractions and before you knew it, John was assisting her in the delivery of her child in that very room!
When Maggie realized she’d no idea who the man was she’d given herself to in marriage and impregnated her, one would imagine her breaking down – but only a mother would recognize the strength of purpose and love that was born the moment she embraced the miracle that was her son. John was in awe of that bond and the pure essence of the love she showered onto her babe. While John didn’t want to be involved and anxious to get back to his regiment, he was not immune to her needs and arranged for his cousins to come and take her to their home. Leaving funds with his cousin for her care and feeling he had done more than was his duty, John happily left only to return two years later to discover that his ‘helpful’ cousins had installed his ‘wife’ in his boyhood home of Summerton. In those two years, Maggie had ingratiated herself in the good graces of his family. Gray’s first instinct was to get rid of the baggage but the more time spent with her, the more he was convinced that this very ‘improper’ wife of his should be a real wife in truth!
*** Diane Perkins has created a beautifully written, emotionally sensitive and totally awesome romantic read devising a most original and cleverly plotted second chance at love. Maggie was a very strong heroine and while some would reason that she was manipulative, others can totally empathize that she was motivated solely with, and for the sake of love for Sean, her young son. While John suspected her motives as calculating and manipulative he soon realized that she had brought joy and love back to a home that had been sorely lacking for years. The story gently evolves into a sensual dance that the readers will find themselves fully basking in its rhythm and grace. The addition of an endearing cast of secondary characters, particularly the child Sean and his cousin Rodney, only make this dance more memorable with gentle humor and a gracious warmth.
Reviewer Comments: The Improper Wife has become one of my most-loved "keepers". Diane Perkins' main characters, Capt. John Grayson and Maggie 'Smith', are so realistically and deeply drawn that they fairly jump off the page. The entire book feels this way -- full of life and realism. The romance feels deeper, their emotions feel more authentic... all in all, it's just more moving than many other romances I have read.
And the excitement, even the love, starts immediately -- on page one! Maggie bursts in upon Capt. Grayson ['Gray'] and promptly delivers a baby boy, there in his rented rooms in London -- and they are total strangers. Maggie thought she'd finally located her 'missing' husband... but she had not. He merely has the same name, and the plot thickens. I won't tell the whole plot again here; it's been told in previous reviews.
I loved Gray within the first few pages. He is certainly a man with a past, burdened by grief and regrets. But he's a man of honor, a gentleman in the truest, oldest sense of the word. He's kind and considerate to Maggie and the newborn, even though they are most definitely an inconvenience... but he cannot leave them homeless, and they'll have nowhere to go when it's time for Gray to return to war. Harry and Tess, Gray's family members who take the new mother and child in, are appealing, and again, 'real' -- they have their own peculiar (and humorous) ways... we KNOW people like Tess! There are other secondary characters I also came to love. Maggie comes to love all of them, too, as she raises her child in the [mostly] welcoming environment of Gray's father's estate -- while Gray is still away. And we come to admire her very much, as she proves herself to be a kind, strong, and capable woman.
But is she Gray's wife, as his whole family believes, or is she not? And, if not, can Gray and Maggie find a future together, when he returns? Can they find love?
There's so much more to tell, but please treat yourself, and read this book. I was mesmerized, from start to finish.
Diane Perkins also wrote the fabulous WAGERING WIDOW and THE MYSTERIOUS MISS M for the UK, as Diane Gaston. Two more incredible books... you cannot go wrong. I will be reading all her books.
