A sparkling excerpt from New York Times bestselling author Mary Balogh's SIMPLY LOVE: Mary Balogh returns to the elegance and sensuality of Regency England as she continues the enthralling story of four remarkable women - friends and teachers at Miss Martin's School for Girls. At the center of this spellbinding novel is Anne Jewell, a teacher haunted by a scandalous past…until she meets a man who teaches her the most important lesson of all: nothing is simple when it comes to love.…

Customer Rating:
Summary: Great story!
Comment: Mary Balogh is a wonderful writer and this is another beautiful and sensitive story from her. I started this book early in the evening and couldn't put it down till I finished it close onto midnight.

This is a tale about two people who had much pain in their lives, and we see how love heals them.
Sydnam Butler the hero, was brutally tortured as a prisoner of war. He is horribly disfigured on his right side and heart-wrenching handsome on his left. Because of his startling disablities and horrific scars, he is prepared to live out his life alone, as the steward, in the remote estate of the Duke of Bewcastle, in Wales.
He did not expect it to change until he meets Anne Jewell and her illegitimate 9yr old son, who had come to the estate to spend summer there at the duke's guest.

The two lonely souls, after a few mistart, connect and makes for a very wonderful, adult love story and the problems they face with scars both surface and deep, and how they help each other through it makes for very satifying reading.
A sensuous tale of two very real people finding love and making each other's lives whole and beautiful.
This is a lighter story compared to MB earlier 'darker' books and less 'erotic' but I liked it. It was moving, insightful, and shows how love truimphs all.
'Simply Love' is a book worth reading!

I love the Bedwyn's and it was lovely to read about them again... but one complaint, really, really hate Wulf's Quizzing glass!

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Was I missing something
Comment: Anne Jewell is a single mom and teacher in Regency England, when she is invited to the Duke of Bewcaslte home during the summer. While there she meets Sydnam Bulter,the estate manager and war vetern. Both Anne and Sydnam are struggled against their past. Anne with rape, and having a child out of wedlock and Sydnam with injuries from the war. But when these two lost souls meet it brings a passion within them.
Okay I waited a long while to get "Simply Love" by Mary Balogh, I thought that it looked like a great book on the cover. But once I got inside of it, I was just lost. I felt that I was only getting half of the story, and was missing. Maybe if I had read all the books in the series I would have ejoyed "Simply Love" more, but I just don't wanted waste my money

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Beautiful and Sensitive
Comment: Simply Love by Mary Balogh is another Beauty and the Beast story and like most of them, it works. Anne and Sydnam are lonely outsiders, she is socially and emotionally handicapped, he is physically handicapped. This love story is about people who have survived great catastrophes and learned to live despite their losses. They make the best of what they've got, they have their lives, their friends and their work and until they meet, that's enough.
After they become friends both become aware of just how lonely they really are and how much more they want out of their lives, things that they feel they will never have. Gradually they turn the courage it took to survive into the courage it takes to fall in love and as the story unwinds, Sydnam and Anne each find within themselves the strength to not only survive, but to rise above their limitations and really live.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Different but great!
Comment: This is a very different romance story and I must say I was pleasantly surprised. The two main characters have real problems and demons that haunt them and don't overcome them by simply getting married and living happily ever after- they actually have to work to make things happen.
She is an unwed mother of a 9 year old son. He was brutally tortured which left him without the right eye, right arm and with scars all over his right side of the body. He was never a rake (a rarity in historicals) and was a gentle soul with dreams of becoming a great painter. She had to go and work to help fund her brother's education, got raped and ostracized by her family for it.

The issues are not fluffy and there is a lot of depth to this story making it well worth the read. Highly enjoyable!

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Another Beautiful Balogh Book
Comment: Simply Love is a book about Anne, a girl's school teacher with an illegitimate 9yr old son, and Sydnam, a *severely* wounded ex-soldier. He is working as a steward at an estate in Wales where they meet when she and her son go to visit for a month. Nearly all of the secondary characters are Bedwyn's from the Slightly series (which my be confusing for those who have not read the series).

It is a VERY slow moving, but deeply touching love story. Balogh once again creates two characters with raw depth and emotion. One carries obvious external pain, while in the other an internal turmoil exists. These are slowly peeled away and exposed to the reader. I loved how Balogh took the time to describe and remind the reader of Sydnam's physical limitations, how he could no longer to this or that. The same went for the Anne and her difficulty with physical intimacy.

Although the pace is very slow, it didn't bother me as much as I thought it would. This isn't a firecracker romance where two people meet and fall in love instantly. Rather it (to me anyway) is very realistic. Two very wary individuals meet and something stirs, but because of their own fear/inhibition nothing happens. They become good friends first and then a bit more. Again, its a slow road but one definitely worth taking.

A beautifully romantic book. Recommended.

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