Thoughts: Sweet Bea

Sweet Bea

by Sarah Hegger
Book 1 of Sir Arthur's Legacy

~ Goodreads ~

Rating:  4.0 Stars

Is anything sweeter than revenge?

In a family of remarkable people, ordinary Beatrice strives to prove herself worthy.  When her family is threatened with losing everything, she rushes to London to save them.  Unfortunately, she chooses as her savior the very man who will see her family brought low.

Garrett has sworn vengeance on Sir Arthur of Anglesea for destroying his life when he was a boy and forcing his mother into prostitution for them to survive.  He has chosen as his instrument Sir Arthur's youngest daughter, Beatrice.

Can Beatrice’s goodness teach Garrett that love, not vengeance, is the greatest reward of all?

I'm actually quite pleasantly surprised with how much I enjoyed this book.  I was expecting some historical fluff, and while the book was definitely fluffy, it was actually also kind of inspirational, even if not on any global levels.

Beatrice is kind of the odd sheep in her family of extraordinary people, as the summary states.  Her mother, the Lady Mary, is well-respected and authoritative; her father a great knight and warrior whom even the king has become envious of.  Her brothers readily follow in Sir Arthur's footsteps in kind, and her sister, Lady Faye, is the perfect beauty, wife, and mother.

Meanwhile, Bea is simply known as the one with hair-brained ideas who keeps finding herself in one form of trouble or another.  But when her family is in trouble, she takes it upon herself to seek out her father with hopes of saving the day.

In truth, Beatrice could have been that heroine I love to hate.  Bea is naive and innocent, too trusting of others, at times kind of ditzy.  And her main hair-brained idea in this book truly DOES get her and her companions into a lot of trouble.  But aside from all of that, she's a Mary Sue of epic proportions as even one of her fellow companions states that she's a rare person with a big, warm heart.

And so while she's a heroine I normally can't stand, somehow, Bea comes off kind of endearing, and manages to show us that she's so much more than what she's always described as.  There's a lot of feisty and a churning mind under her lovely, sweet personality that I don't think characters in the book give her enough credit for.

One thing that bugged me includes how Bea's family treats her, even by the end of the book.  If she's ignorant about current events or even family goings on, it's because nobody ever tells her anything.  And when she actively seeks out answers, they either omit facts or lie to her or just tell her that she doesn't need to know, keeping her completely in the dark.  So I feel like the whole "Bea shouldn't do anything if she doesn't know what's going on" mentality is a bit unfair to her.  Hard to keep a wandering child from falling off a cliff if you don't warn her that it's there, or what will happen if she gets to close.

Even as the conclusion rolled around, I still didn't know whether or not Bea's adventure was pointless.  The family still isn't really saying anything about what they already knew, or what kinds of precautions were already active--there are STILL secrets being kept.

Which brings me to the second thing that didn't work for me as the ending.  Truth be told, it was a nice, well-rounded ending.  But it was well-rounded because we pretty much pick up all of the story's stray eggs and stick them all in the basket and call it good.  I mean, everything just fell together like we were in a hurry to wrap up the show or something.

Anyway...

The book started off a little hard to get into, as I had a hard time with caring about the characters.  It wasn't that I didn't like them; they just didn't mean anything to me, and neither did the story.  So I'm glad that things picked up pretty quickly, and with the short length of this novel, the progression was straight-forward.  We set off on a journey, and despite a few random detours, the book pretty much took us where it meant to take us since day one.

On a side note, I loved the rag tag group that Beatrice manages to collect along her way.  I mean, she really only picks up two people to join her gang, and one of them was a little brat boy of a thief who kept trying to manipulate Bea's emotions; however, it DID make the adventure a little more amusing.  I definitely loved the inclusion of Ivy and her subtle, budding friendship with Bea, and the small spark of romance with Tom.

Again, this book was more enjoyable than I'd expected, and that is always a good thing.  I can't say that I completely fell for Garrett by the end of the book, but I don't dislike him either.

I may or may not continue on in this series.

***

I read this book for Romance Bingo 2017 for the "Headless" Woman square.

Other possible squares:

• New Adult - Bea and Garrett are fairly young, and I doubt they are any older than their mid-twenties.
• Virgin & Best First Time - For obvious reasons.
• Rogue - I would label Garrett as this.
• Historical Romance - I think this book takes place in the Middle Ages.
• Love (Free Space)