Lady Lorraine Caldwell is desperately in love with Francis,
she even wanted to elope, but Francis was adamant: he needed
Lorraine's father, the Duke of Ridlington, to agree to the
match. Ridlington suspects Francis is after Lorraine's large
dowry, and to keep her from acting rashly, Ridlington has
started thinking of hiring a bodyguard for his strong-willed
daughter. Ewan Mostyn, the neglected third son of an earl,
was a war hero. He is a man of action and is now employed as
a muscle man in a gentleman's club. One evening, when a
disturbance occurs and Ewan swiftly dispatches the
belligerents, Ridlington knows he has found his man. Ewan
refused until he learns the identity of Lorraine's suitor.
THIRD SON'S A CHARM is the first book in Shana Galen's brand
new series The
Survivors. They are the remaining twelve men of a
troop of thirty who came back from the Napoleonic wars. Ewan
has a chip on his shoulder the size of a continent, being
shunned and ridiculed his whole life for a disability that
makes him appear dim-witted. Nobody will call him stupid,
and given his size and his muscle mass, he can shut them up.
He is also a man of very few words. Regardless of his
leonine splendor, I never connected with him, mostly because
of his barely contained rage, his aggressive behavior, and
his violent musings. While he is an interesting character,
he was not my idea of a romantic hero. I also felt that the
fact that he speaks so very little made for very static
reading, as Lorraine and Ewan's conversations bordered on
monologues conducted by the chatty Lorraine.
Lorraine is a beautiful character, and I understood
perfectly why she would be attracted to Ewan. She is a very
passionate woman, and Ms. Galen wrote a convincing heroine
who acknowledges that she cannot wait to experience the
bliss of the marital bed, and curses the society she lives
in, which forbids her to enjoy the same sexual freedom the
men have. I loved the camaraderie between the former
soldiers, and Jasper and Neil's interactions are a riot. In
THIRD SON'S A CHARM, Shana Galen solidly establishes the
setting for the series, while her vibrant descriptions bring
the Regency era to life. As expected for this author, a
little mystery was unavoidable, and I wished there had been
more of it because watching Neil, Ewan, Rafe, and Jasper
work together was very exciting.
Ewan Mostyn thinks a job as a duke's daughter's
bodyguard will be easy—but Lady Lorraine has a few tricks up
her sleeve that spark an undeniable passion
Fiercely loyal to his friends and comrades, Ewan Mostyn is
the toughest in a group of younger sons of nobility who met
as soldiers and are now trying desperately to settle back
into peaceful Society. Ewan trusts his brawn more than his
brains, but when he's offered a job watching the Duke of
Ridlington's stubbornly independent daughter, he finds both
are challenged.
Lady Lorraine wants none of her father's high-handed ways,
and she'll do everything in her power to avoid her
distressingly attractive bodyguard—until she lands herself
in real trouble. Lorraine begins to see Ewan's
protectiveness in a new light, and she can only hope that
her stoic guardian will do for her what he's always
done—fight for what he wants.