Love Misunderstood

By: Ailene Frances, Eileen Sheehan

Narrated by: Fiona Honan-Bowes

Length: 12 hrs and 21 mins

Publisher's summary

Foolish innocence and wicked deceit took her from the man she loved. Orphaned at the tender age of eight years, Elizabeth is raised as a ward in the loveless home of her uncle. Stuck on the desire for freedom from oppression and unfamiliar with the concept of love, she flees from her husband of an arranged marriage with the assistance of an old family friend. Sadly this friend was no match for the perils that awaited in the new world. To add to her misery, she realizes that she loved the man she'd married and just didn't recognize that love.

©2016 Eileen Sheehan (P)2019 Eileen Sheehan

very good

Loved it !! this story. the narrator is so fantastic it's like your really there!! good overall

Hero is a slaveholder & other spoilers

If I had known that so much of the story was set in the American southern colonies I would never haver purchased this book. I am too familiar with the actual history to be able to ignore the whitewashing of our past. The implication that the cruelties suffered by our aristocratic English heroine were somehow worse because she was “white “ and born free made me feel sick. I realize that would have been the attitude of most “white “ people at the time but it is possible to write historical fiction without appearing to condone the beliefs of the past (or rewriting history to give people anachronistic beliefs to make them more acceptable today.)
I also thought her relationship to the cook Bertha played into the Mammy stereotype.
It is true that conditions and the bitter unhappiness of enslaved peoples were depicted accurately, but the story made it seem that Elizabeth’s suffering was somehow worse.
The accents of the slave holders and the enslaved were surely anachronistic. The “whites” were still very much culturally aligned to Great Britain and the enslaved only a generation or two, at most, removed from their African origins.
If you are willing to ignore historical reality and can accept an extraordinary number of coincidences, then go ahead. I probably wouldn’t have written so much but the outstanding Amazon reviews made no mention of the things I have criticized.
Trigger Warning: this book includes graphic descriptions of rape, including marital rape.

Twists and turns for a great story

A historical romance about a young woman that faces many challenges trying to escape an arranged marriage.
The story is not only about the romantic relationship of our main characters. It also touches some sore spots of human history; slavery and forced human breeding being the main ones.
However, it's Elizabeth's innocence at the love department and the wicked plan of a friend that leads her to suffer during her journey. Meanwhile, our hero is going through a difficult time in his life and fails to interpret Elizabeth's behavior. Well, misunderstandings are bound to happen.

The audio version is really good. The narrator puts a lot of emotion in the story. In my opinion, it's a bit slow, but nothing that I couldn't solve speeding it up a little.