The Ideal Bride

Michael Anstruther-Wetherby is a rising political star who needs a wife, and he has found a suitable candidate in a young woman whose aunt, Caroline Sutcliffe, immediately identifies his purpose and objects to it. What Michael did not anticipate is finding himself captivated by the aunt rather than the niece. Caroline has been independent too long to welcome the loss of autonomy that marriage represents, and Michael must convince her that what he is offering is not constraint but partnership.

Simon Prebble narrates Stephanie Laurens' Cynster series with the formal ease of a narrator thoroughly comfortable in Regency romance conventions. His performance gives Michael's political ambition and genuine emotional awakening equal weight, and he renders Caroline's wariness and eventual surrender to it with appropriate nuance. Prebble's delivery handles the novel's more explicitly romantic passages with the warmth that fans of the genre come to the Cynster books for.