Exclusive interview with novelist Laura Lee Guhrke and a review of her new romance that explores finding love after rejection
Rating: 3 stars
“Being rejected is one of those things we can all relate to, and it’s a big part of romance, but it’s seldom explored in a romance novel except as background information,” says author of Wedding of the Season Laura Lee Guhrke. “I wanted to tell stories about what happens to people after they’ve been rejected, and what they do to find love. That’s how the Abandoned at the Altar trilogy began.”
Wedding of the Season unfolds in the beginning of the Edwardian era, not your typical romance story set in the Regency. Guhrke takes time to develop the era as an integral part of the story. We get to know the characters and see them grow. They don’t jump right into bed as happens in so many romance novels.
Lady Beatrix Danbury always knew she was destined to marry William Mallory. However, when he gets the opportunity to live his dream and become an archaeologist she refuses to go with him to Egypt. The wedding is called off. When he returns six years later he’s a duke, and Beatrix is on the verge of marrying another. Will is only back home to raise funds for his continued search for Tutankhamen. Will Beatrix stay in England or will he reignite her sense of adventure and get her to marry him and come with him to Egypt?
“While I was writing Wedding of the Season, the secondary characters of that book came to life in my head as fully formed as the main ones,” says Guhrke. “That scared me a little because you never want secondary characters to take over. So, I took those two secondary characters and told their story in the second book, Scandal of the Year.”
“For sheer visual deliciousness, I also watched the entire first season of Downton Abbey,” says Guhrke. “Any historical romance reader needs to watch that show. It’s a fantastic slice of Edwardian life. Some might quibble about certain details, but oh my gosh, I think it’s drool-worthy. The clothes. The house. The servants. Maggie Smith. For a romance writer, what’s not to love?” The popular BBC mini-series is recently premiered in America on PBS Masterpiece.
Gulkre says she enjoys reading a lot of fiction set in that period, not historical romances but books contemporary to that time. “A lot of Oscar Wilde, Edith Wharton, and E.M. Forster. It really helps to read works of the period you’re writing in.”
Laura Lee Gulrke is a The New York Times and USA Today best-selling author of fifteen historical romances. She’s received many awards including a RITA Award for romance fiction writing. She spent seven years in advertising, had a successful catering business, and managed a construction company before making a career of writing novels.
Wedding of the Season by Laura Lee Guhrke. Mass Market Paperback, 384 pages, Publisher: Avon; Original edition (December 28, 2010). Language: English, ISBN: 9780061963155 $7.99
