Against the scandal and seduction of Regency England, New York Times bestselling author Mary Balogh introduces an extraordinary family—the fiery, sensual Huxtables. Vanessa is the second daughter, proud and daring, a young widow who has her own reason for pursuing the most eligible bachelor in London. One that has nothing to do with love. Or does it? The arrival of Elliott Wallace, the irresistibly eligible Viscount Lyngate, has thrown the country village of Throckbridge into a tizzy. Desperate to rescue her eldest sister from a loveless union, Vanessa Huxtable Dew offers herself instead. In need of a wife, Elliott takes the audacious widow up on her unconventional proposal while he pursues an urgent mission of his own. But a strange thing happens on the way to the wedding night. Two strangers with absolutely nothing in common can’t keep their hands off each other. Now, as intrigue swirls around a past secret—one with a stunning connection to the Huxtables—Elliott and Vanessa are uncovering the glorious pleasures of the marriage bed…and discovering that when it comes to wedded bliss, love can’t be far behind.
Read: March 23, 2026 – March 26, 2026
“My happiness has to come from within myself or it is too fragile a thing to be of any use to me and too much of a burden to benefit any of my loved ones.”
I am a sucker for a marriage-of-convenience trope, especially when done right. Prior to this book, I’d read Someone to Wed and Remember Love, both by Mary Balogh and both involving forced proximity and a marriage of convenience. Those two books made me excited to pick this one up, though I must admit that Someone to Wed is one of my favorite books this year (Wren and Alex have my heart).
First Comes Marriage is the story of the second Huxtable sister, Vanessa, a widow who lost her husband due to sickness after being married just a year. When the Viscount Elliott Lyngate visits Throckbridge and makes up his mind to propose marriage to Margaret (her older sister), Vanessa offers herself in her stead and thus the marriage of convenience begins. I found Vanessa to be an incredibly funny, witty, and all around sunshine character. I was actually laughing aloud at some points, whether that was her love for her family, her banter with Elliott, or her simply reading him for filth. I loved the dynamic between the Huxtable siblings – you could tell they had been through so much together and their love was palpable from the pages. And even Vanessa’s relationship with her dead husband’s family was endearing. Elliott, on the other hand, took some getting used to. From the moment he was introduced, he was incredibly standoffish, pompous, and quite frankly too obsessed with thinking how ugly and unattractive Vanessa was for most of the book.
…which brings me to my biggest gripe with this story. In EVERY chapter (I wish I was exaggerating), Vanessa’s unattractiveness, undesirableness, and just general “plainness” is mentioned and harped upon by her, her family (well, her mother and father in passing memory), Elliott, the members of the ton… it is all too much. In Chapter 18, 74% of the way through the book, Elliott finally tells her to view herself as beautiful because she is… but remember this is coming after she’s cut her hair, changed out of her mourning clothes, and is basically all dressed up at the height of London fashion. I can appreciate having a female character who isn’t considered extremely attractive but I fear the book spent most of its time on that fact and I began to grow quite exasperated as I was reading.
The romance was quite decent (as I mentioned, sucker for this trope in particular) but I do wish we’d gotten some more time with the reformed Viscount. His love confession at the end of the book was all well and good, but it felt a bit as though it had come out of nowhere. There was obvious chemistry between him and Vanessa, especially their banter and flirting, but it was rather tiresome to hear him deny it in his thoughts because she was simply so unattractive a woman. A fine book, nevertheless, but I wasn’t going to pick up the second book until I read the sample of the first chapter at the end of this one and now it’s on my TBR lol.
I’d recommend for anyone who wants a grumpy x sunshine, marriage of convenience, historical romance… but if you tire of hearing how ugly a woman is, this might not be the book for you.
Final Rating: 3/5 stars – okay read, but I have some notes/gripes