Saving Grace

Saving Grace - Julie Garwood This is set in Britain in 1206 and revolves around a 16 year old English girl, Johanna, who was married for three years to an abusive husband, then second time around marries a Scottish laird, Gabriel, in an arranged marriage. I did actually stick it out to the end with this novel and enjoyed some of it. On the other hand, there were parts that struck me as implausible, there were the usual style issues that seem endemic to romance (God, the Ping-pong point of view problems in these books!), not much happens for half of the book and the overprotectiveness of Gabriel and the initial timidness of Johanna got on my one nerve. Still, there's smile-worthy humor, primitive golf, lovable wolfhounds and manly men in kilts, and I liked how it dealt with one aspect of women's status in the medieval period. This doesn't strike me as a book-even-someone-that-hates-romance-books-might-enjoy, (and at this point I may be suffering from Stockholm Syndrome to have finished it) but if you like the genre already, this might be a good bet.