Friday, October 12, 2018

Short Story Review - Tasha Alexander's The Bridal Strain: Emily and Colin's Wedding

The Bridal Strain: Emily and Colin's Wedding by Tasha Alexander
Published by: Tasha Alexander
Publication Date: 2009
Format: Kindle
Rating: ★★★★★
To Buy

After much temptation, much heartache, and much delay, Colin has decided that he can no longer wait to be married to Emily, his future mother-in-law and Queen Victoria be damned. So drenched to the bone high above the caldera on Santorini he proposes that he and Emily be married that very night and Emily agrees. Though Emily is swept away by the romantic gesture, not thinking of the practicalities of showing up at the church soaking wet and demanding to be wed, she is thankfully marrying a very organized man capable of pulling off the most elaborate of missions for the crown with the simplest of ease. So when they return to her villa she shouldn't be surprised that preparations are underway for a full wedding celebration, and yet she is. She's surprised and touched. The entire village has come together to see her and Colin wed. But that won't be the only surprise of the evening, as Emily's dearest friend Cecile is also on hand, there to celebrate the nuptials, but also there to provide emotional support while mourning such a handsome man leaving the marriage market. Though Cecile wouldn't let Emily marry unless the man was worry of her, luckily for Colin he is. And so, their married life begins.

So much of the first two books in Tasha's Lady Emily series is the will-they-won't-they of Emily and Colin. This isn't just played for romantic tension, though one can't deny that it is titillating, but it's practical. Emily, as a widow, has so much freedom that she has to be certain of Colin in order to be willing to shackle herself into another marriage where to the majority of Victorian society she would be nothing but a possession, and viewed, in the extreme, as a slave. But thankfully Colin loves her not as the ideal her first husband Philip viewed her as, but as this intelligent woman willing to fight at his side, not sit home and be content as the typical wife would in raising her brood. He loves her for what she has become, what she has evolved into, and that's why their relationship is so epic and why it would have been a shame not to see their wedding day. To be there as they became one, but still stayed themselves. Colin's wedding gift to Emily, of a gorgeous Greek vase, shows that he loves her for who she is and he will never force her into a mold labelled "Standard Victorian Wife." Though Tasha's extras are interesting in that it sheds light on the fact that what we view as the "Victorian Standard" isn't truth. Not everything is as it seems, Victorians were far more liberal, and there were quite a few pregnant women walking down the aisle...

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