📖 Book Review ~ A Kiss to Stop a Wedding by Sarah Mallory

Mills and Boon Historical
19 June 2025

My thanks to the author for my copy of this book

He must speak now…

Or she'll be bound to another for ever!

Engaged to a viscount, Flora is the envy of every debutante. But her husband-to-be has a cruel streak that makes him anything but desirable. When Flora meets Matt Talacre, the dashing owner of Bellemonte Pleasure Gardens, she discovers what desire truly feels like…after he sets her body ablaze with a single look!

Yet Flora knows that she can’t act on their intense connection—her hateful betrothed is privy to a family secret which means that she can never walk away. Unless Matt can help her…starting with a moonlit kiss at a masquerade ball!

📖 My Review…

Earlier in the year I read The Earl’s Marriage Dilemma is which Matt Talacre had a peripheral role, I was delighted therefore to discover that Matt has been given a wonderful story of his own and his beguilement with the beautiful, Flora Warenne is obvious from he moment he meets her. However, Flora is betrothed to the odious Lord Whilton, but with no date set for her wedding Florence remains living with her aunt and uncle, and yet her momentous meeting with Matt Talacre is about to upset everything about her ordered, and rather boring, life in the country. Both Matt and Flora are characters to fall in love with, their will they, won’t they, relationship is beset with problems from the very start but with steely determination Flora shows that she no simpering miss but a passionate woman who is more than a match for the devilishly handsome Matt Talacre. 

The restrictions placed upon women in the Regency world is beautifully explored and whilst Flora doesn’t always follow convention she is still at the mercy of an unscrupulous fiancée who sees her as little more than attractive appendage with an impeccable bloodline. Brooding heroes and dastardly villains are what this author does so well and in this lovely story we certainly have both extremes but what also shines through is the author’s creative ability to bring such passion to her characters that you can’t help but fall in love with them and be drawn deeper into the stories they have to tell.

A Kiss to Stop a Wedding is a beautifully written, passionate romance, with memorable characters, and a realistic sense of time, place and memories.

About the Author

Sarah Mallory was born in the West Country and grew up with a love of books and history. She has had over 40 historical novels published and won the Rona Rose Award from the Romantic Novelists Association in 2012 and 2013.

Website

Twitter @SarahMRomance

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