This was my first book by this author, and I will definitely be reading more. I’m a sucker for a spy romance, and this is a good one. Gabriel and Lydia were a wonderful couple; their history made this such a rich story. The book was so deeply engrossing that I read it one sitting. A nice level of heat and angst was just the icing on the cake. Check this one out; you won’t be disappointed.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the eARC. All opinions are my own.

Just buy it. It is so great and you will not regret it. "A Bride by Morning" by Katrina Kendrick is a historical romance novel that transports readers to a bygone era, filled with societal expectations, forbidden desires, and passionate love. Set against the backdrop of Victorian England, this story follows the journey of two individuals entangled in a whirlwind romance.
Kendrick creates a vivid and immersive historical setting, capturing the essence of the time period with attention to detail. The societal constraints and expectations of the Victorian era are portrayed effectively, and the author successfully conveys the sense of duty and propriety that shaped the characters' actions and decisions.

Thank you NetGalley for this eARC in exchange for an honest review.

Things I liked:
- The tension. We all love a good amount of sizzling chemistry in an ‘I’m not good enough for her’ romance. Brilliant.
- The FMC, Lydia. She is strong and knows her own mind, whilst also being very sweet and understanding.
- The MMC, Gabriel. Poor, broken, foolish man that he is, I love him anyway, even if I do sometimes feel like slapping him.
- The realistic portrayal of trauma. Whilst this is a romance, there are also several major issues dealt with, one of which is PTSD and the effects of violent conflict.

Could have been improved:
- Some of the dialogue was a bit stuffy, and some of the language was not period appropriate.
- Friends to lovers to not-quite-enemies back to lovers is just a bit much for my purely enemies to lovers brain. A bit too much complication in the actual relationship! Also not a huge fan of swearing, although I can live with it.

Overall, a great story and a good read.

I really loved the premise of this book. Childhood sweethearts, a spurned promise and a marriage of convenience, A Bride by Morning seemed to tick all my historical romance boxes. Unfortunately the execution didn't quite live up to the promise.

The book opens ten years before the main plot when second son, 19 year old Gabriel leaves for his first role in the diplomatic service, a role that will take him abroad for some time and asks his childhood friend 17 year old Lydia to wait for him. She agrees and she keeps her word. For three years she writes to him and he replies and then nothing. But still she keeps her word, waits and writes, until he returns home after the death of his father and brother and cuts her dead, refusing to see her or speak to her. Hurt and bewildered Lydia withdraws into herself and becomes a wallflower, until one night she sees something she shouldn't and the only way Gabriel can keep her safe from the consequences of his past is to marry her.

As I said above it is a great premise, but I never really got drawn into the books or believed in the characters.. The whole plot was a little melodramatic, which with some real emotional growth from the hero and heroine would be fine, but that growth just wasn't there. I didn't get an emotional connection strong enough to explain why what they had wasn't just two infatuated teenagers who never found anyone else but a real enduring love. I didn't see Gabriel really own his past and work for Lydia's forgiveness, I didn't see Lydia as a real rounded person who existed beyond her feelings for Gabriel. Add some awkward sex scenes and a very unVictorian forwardness from Lydia (which is fine but at least explain why she's so confident talking about sex) and I found myself skipping through the book which was a real shame.

This book was AMAZING. I literally finished it in one day because I could not put it down. It has everything you could ever want or need from historical fiction. A steamy romance. A marriage of convenience. A spy plot. I do wish that Lydia's character had been fleshed out a little more, but she was still charming nonetheless. Gabriel's trauma and obvious ptsd were handled in a decent way, which I appreciate. He didn't automatically get over it once he got the girl, which is actually realistic. I cannot wait to read more by this author.

A huge thanks to NetGalley and Aria & Aries for giving me the opportunity to read and review this book. All opinions are my own.

Addictive reading! Read this in less than 24 hours, perfect holiday read or to get you out of a slump.

As I was reading the ARC provided to me by the publisher and NetGalley, I couldn't shake the feeling that I had read "A Bride by Morning" before. After finishing I did some poking around, and it does appear that this book is a rerelease of some sort. Not necessarily relevant to one's enjoyment of this story, but something I think would be helpful to know.

I liked this darker take on historical romance. Most such stories do not have a significant body count. Gabriel is detached and in serious need of therapy to address his PTSD. Lydia has learned to hide her emotions behind a mask of icy indifference. Childhood sweethearts, Gabriel asked Lydia to wait for him as he left for the diplomatic service. At some point during his time abroad, he became an assassin and deep undercover spy for Queen and country, doing all manner of violence over the course of several years. Lydia meanwhile waited for Gabriel, only to be summarily rejected when he returns to England following the deaths of his father and brother.

The couple end up back in each other's true orbit when Lydia witnesses Gabriel searching the study of a suspected traitor. A confluence of events finds them marrying to protect Lydia from Gabriel's Russian nemesis, retreating to the country for safety that ends up being an illusion. Along the way, Gabriel tries to avoid Lydia and Lydia tries to understand what happened to the boy she loved to bring him to the man she married.

Lydia and Gabriel have chemistry from the outset, even as he pretends to ignore her. He is admittedly overly cruel and she overly accepting but her acceptance of his flaws is what allows them to come together in the end. Her love for him is able to mature and allows him to accept himself and all that he has done.

A solid 4 stars. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for a complimentary ARC of this book. The opinions herein are my own,

Oh this one was quite dark! A

At the beginning of the book we meet Lydia and Gabriel, who are childhood friends, who love each other. Gabriel is the second son of an Earl and is bound for the diplomatic service. He wants to make something of himself and asks Lydia to wait for him, till he comes back and they'll marry.

Fast forward either seven or ten years (that sentence in the book confused me a bit) and Gabriel is back, after the deaths of his father and brother. And oh dear. He is now a *chilly fellow* who barely acknowledges Lydia and turned her away from his house when she tried to reach out to him.

Turns out that diplomatic service took a bad turn and he ended up a rather ruthless assassin, embedded with a Russian crime syndicate. Soooo he's got some very serious issues.

Lydia is baffled as to where her friend has gone and very hurt.

A reappearance of one of Gabriel's skeletons from the closet brings them back together - into a hasty marriage.

It's all quite dramatic, and Gabriel is very damaged... but Lydia is tenacious and determined to drag him back to something more like himself.

Worth a read. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC.

A Bride by Morning was absolutely fantastic. I devoured it in three chunks; before work, after work, and until the wee hours of the night hiding under the comforter from my husband. As a parent with a toddler, forgoing sleep is high praise.

Lydia and Gabriel grew up together and had been (as far as Lydia knew) madly in love. Gabriel leaves to go into Foreign Service, but asks Lydia to wait for him until he comes back. She promises and fends off all suitors, but many long years later when Gabriel returns he is a cold, distant man who wants nothing at all to do with her. At 27, Lydia is resigned to her fate as an unmarried woman -- until she catches some cracks in Gabriel's facade and suspects that there's more going on than meets the eye, both in Gabriel's personal and professional life. Gabriel is, of course, a spy.

A friends-to-lovers, enemies-to-lovers combo is apparently exactly what I enjoy. I particularly enjoyed how the author handled Gabriel and Lydia's initial interactions, with that combined attraction and care from youth and a heavy dose of newfound coldness from the life that separated them. In particular I appreciated Lydia. While she did not go through nearly what Gabriel went through, she was not a stuck character, the naive young girl just aged up. She had her own armor and demons and justified anger. I was here for it. Tortured heroes like Gabriel are common in the Romance genre, but Lydia felt distinctly different than other heroines I've read.

Readers should be aware this book contains some darker struggles. Violence, murder, and and PTSD abound. I thought these themes were handled very well, and lent a great humanity to the characters. I personally greatly enjoyed the grittier subject material, finding it a nice change from the Historical Rom-Com + Spy novels I have read before. In addition, I'd rate this 4 out of 5 on the spicy scale.

I read this unaware of Katrina Kendrick's other books. This works perfectly well as a stand alone but I'm off to read the others!

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the eArc.

I could NOT put this book down. It hit the tropes of second chance romance, fake marriage (with a twist), and secret identity (if you like looking for those sorts of things). Truly, I loved everything about it. Gabriel and Lydia were wonderful protagonists, both individually and together. The spy bits were fun and added a layer of traumatic darkness to the story. All around a great quick-read romance that you'll want to devour in one sitting like I did. I'm looking forward to checking out the other books in the series.


Note: I received a free Kindle edition of this book in return for the honest review above which contains my true opinion of the book. I would like to thank Netgalley, the publisher, and the author for the opportunity to read and review it. Thank you.

The plot had potential: Lydia and Gabriel were childhood friends. More than that: Before he left for diplomatic service, he asked her to wait for his return and promised to propose to her then. Only his stint in the diplomatic service involuntarily turns into a career as spy and assassin for her majesty's government, and now he feels unworthy of Lydia. (OK, and instead of just writing her a "please forget me" letter he ghosts her, but we do not read romance novels for protagonists who make reasonable and intelligent decisions, so I could have forgiven that). But fate throws them together again...and you never guess what happens then!

Now, this could have been good, if it had seriously dealt with Gabriel's PTSD/general fucked-up-ness after what he had experienced and Lydia's reaction to the fact that Gabriel broke his promise to her, left her an old maid and even completely ignored her upon his return, but it didn't. Instead, everything is drowned in the most melodramatic purple prose imaginable. I mean

But all were trivial inconveniences compared to the thing that irked him most: smiling. Damn, but Gabriel loathed smiling.



Yes. That is an actual sentence from the book. I know I just made the "Edward Cullen called and told you to cheer up" joke but seriously? I am expected to take a character serious who whines about having to smile?

And who has monologues that sound like they are lifted from teenage emo poetry?

Gabriel's heart had flared to life, wakened by the taste of her, the sensation of her lips on his. It was if he'd been in purgatory, a ghost of flesh and blood. He wandered through the world, but was dead in every way that mattered.



Not that Lydia is any better:

So she had forged her own protections. Gabriel wanted to shut her out? Very well, let the battle commence. Her heart would guard itself with something more impenetrable than timber; Lydia would smelt it from iron, so he'd never hurt her again. Reinforce that barrier with iron, day by day, year by year. Nobody would know her heart had never healed.



The kissing-scenes, meanwhile, made me long for the simple days of tongues battling for dominance.

She was a battalion meeting his enemy siege. Their lips met like duelling swords, every touch becoming a battleground.



And in-between all of that...I missed any of them seriously dealing with their emotions about the past. There's melodramatic whining, duelling lips then a misunderstanding/Gabriel fucks things up by saying the wrong thing/the B-plot makes a sudden appearance and has to be dealt with, and then it's back to the monologuing but both are so horny that they rather jump each other instead of having a conversation like adults. Rinse repeat. I just fully expect that they will continue this cycle and if they have a disagreement about the curtain colour, both will see it as proof that the other one doesn't love them any more and there will be more melodramatic monologuing.

This ticked a lot of my boxes. The pacing was good, the spy element was well plotted, and the premise of the romance was excellent (childhood friends who’d promised themselves to one another before the hero left for a post in the diplomatic service and then abandoned her). Lydia was a sympathetic character and her anxiety in reflecting upon the uncertain future of unmarried gentlewomen in Victorian times was conveyed very effectively.

However, I never quite bought into the protagonists’ feelings for one another. Maybe I needed to see more of them together before his departure to understand this unswerving love they had for one another; as it is, the text told me their love has never faltered over ten years of separation, but I couldn’t feel it.

The writing veered erratically from evocative to cliched. Gabriel was undeniably tortured but there was no need to describe him as having ice around his heart on almost every single page (and occasionally, multiple times per page). I lost count of the number of times I rolled my eyes at him; I think the overwrought tone backfired in this instance.

Overall, this didn’t live up to its promise for me.

I downloaded this book while still reading another, and, not remembering the synopsis, read a page or two to refresh my memory. That was about 36 hours ago - I couldn’t stop reading. I loved the story, thought the writing was great. Would have loved the last scene of violence to have more depth but that’s all I can complain about.

I loved this historical romance. The relationship between Gabriel and Lydia was just everything I look for in a romance novel. Their feelings for each other were so intense and I was rooting for them so much! If you are a fan of the forced marriage trop and miscommunications galore. This is the book for you!

This was enjoyable. I liked Lydia and Gabriel well enough. The banter was fun and swoon. (Although I think the spicy scenes could have been better written.) Also, I think that "that" was a flimsy excuse for a marriage of convenience.

A childhood to lovers historical novel,melodramatic,full of angst and with a good dose of action.The male character was a big no-no for me.I can understand all the torment faced by Gabe,but the way he behaved toward Lydia was cruel and selfish...if he knew he could not fulfill his promise to Lydia he should have done the right thing and allowed her to find happiness elsewhere rather than feigning indifference and causing her suffering