Until You by Judith McNaught

I really enjoyed this story. I wasn’t sure what to expect after having just read Whitney, My Love which could have been entitled A Tale of Misunderstandings and People Who Are Too Bullheaded To Even Consider Talking Things Out, … but I digress.

Until You was a pleasant surprise.  I enjoyed the storyline and thought Stephen was very charming before he became an ass—but he wasn’t too big an ass considering his bride had left him at the altar. He did wait several hours, hoping she would return. When she didn’t and when he learned where she had gone, he decided to put the past behind him and move on and under the circumstances, who could blame him? But honestly, we could see that he wasn’t really moving on with his life, he was merely going through the motions.

I liked Sherry and couldn’t fault her for being a runaway bride when she learned the truth of who she was. She was so ashamed of what she had learned, humiliated by the way she learned it and then toss into the mix that which Charise was threatening to do to her and the Westmorelands—well,  what was a girl in her shoes to do, I ask you?

One of the things I most appreciated about this story was that Stephen, when presented with the facts, was willing to risk being humiliated once again and arranged to have Sherry brought to him so he could convince her to marry him. There wasn’t a lot of long, drawn out anguish (well, not compared to Whitney, My Love there wasn’t) and things were resolved relatively quickly.  I loved the dramatic entrance of Stephen and Sherry as man and wife into the dowager duchess’s birthday ball, and the sweet and very funny reuniting of Sherry’s family – especially Stephen’s reaction to Rafe, who I believe is deserving of his very own story.

All in all this was, in my opinion, a great read. Not light and fluffy but not overly dark and torturous, either—which after reading Whitney, My Love was a needed and most welcomed change of pace.