Sandy M’s review of My Unfair Lady by Kathryne Kennedy
Historical Romance published by Sourcebooks Casablanca 1 Dec 09

Kathryne Kennedy has become a favorite author for me since I started reading her Relics of Merlin series. The world she has created in those books is fun to read, the characters are delightful, she gives the reader a new look at the paranormal, and I look forward to each new addition to the series. So when I had the chance the read her new historical, I jumped at it. She’s taken an old story and put her own spin on it, giving us more delightful characters that very stealthily sneak under your skin.

The best part of this book is the heroine, Summer Wine Lee. She’s frontier born and bred, growing up in Arizona, losing her mother early in life, left with a father unable to cope with that loss, friend to a Native American who teaches her how to survive on her own. She’s happy in her life until she meets Monte, a man she falls in love with, a man who is related to the New York Astors who look down on her because of her lowborn breeding. Wanting to become the lady Monte would be proud to have on his arm, Summer and her best friend Maria head to England with the goal of turning Summer into a lady under the tutelage of the Duke of Monchester.

The English don’t know what hit them when Summer blows into town. And what they don’t know or understand, they condescend to just as the New York elite did. Summer has an American accent, of course, and it’s laced with a western dialect and she’s full of western euphemisms. She straps a knife to her leg and can thow it unerringly accurately, can shoot a gun and bow and arrow like nobody’s business, loves animals so much she has a rescued menagerie of her own, and she’s her own CSI team thanks to her Apache friend who taught her how to track anything and anyone. But she wants all of these things she is to disappear as she morphs into a well-bred, gentile lady, something she hires Monchester to help her do. For a price, of course.

His impoverished state has kept the duke living on the largesse of others, his blunt and lethal tongue forging his way into the company of Prince Albert, keeping HRH in stitches with stories of putting society in their place. Hating title-seeking heiresses, English or American, he takes Summer at her word of not wanting an English lord since she’s left her fiance in America and wants to return to him as a lady. Thinking the task daunting but interesting, he has no idea what is truly in store for him once he begins to see the woman Summer really is.

After seeing Summer in action at what she considers her worst but is truly her best, after she helps pave the way for him to finally embrace his son, Monchester can’t help but fall for her. It’s Summer who won’t give in to her feelings for the duke, taking her word to another man seriously. These two characters grow on you with every chapter. Along with Summer’s “eccentricities,” Ms. Kennedy has given us a hero who is shorter than average, though the perfect size for Summer; so along with having to realize how he’s lived his life thus far, we learn about how he’s grown into the man he is, having to literally fight his way there. They both grow by leaps and bounds through the pages of this book.

I tried not to compare this book with those of the Relics of Merlin series. I love those novels so much, but I tried to be as fair as possible, and I know there’s a part of me that can’t look at the differences totally impartially because of my enjoyment of those preceding books. But despite that, My Unfair Lady is a very fun read with charming characters who can laugh at themselves with delight so that you take pleasure in their story while being pleasantly entertained, which for me has become this author’s trademark.

Grade: B+

Summary:

He created the perfect woman…
The impoverished Duke of Monchester despises the rich Americans who flock to London, seeking to buy their way into the ranks of the British peerage. So when railroad heiress Summer Wine Lee offers him a king’s ransom if he’ll teach her to become a proper lady, he’s prepared to rebuff her. But when he meets the petite beauty with the knife in her boot, it’s not her fortune he finds impossible to resist…

For the arms of another man
Frontier-bred Summer Wine Lee has no interest in winning over London society—it’s the New York bluebloods and her future mother-in-law she’s determined to impress. She knows the cost of smoothing her rough-and-tumble frontier edges will be high. But she never imagined it might cost her heart…

Read an excerpt.