Simply Love (Simply Quartet) Mass Market Paperback – February 27, 2007

Enjoyed it immensely will keep to read again - I always keep my favorites and read again! Mary you are a wonderful and tender writer one of my favorites. Thank you!

Amazing story about two broken people and their way back to life, home, and love.It was different, and it tackled hard issues that you don't usually see in these kinds of books.I loved it.I could do with less Bedwyns mentioned by name when it didn't really contribute to the story. But the story was so good that I could let it go.

Very sweet, hopeful and brings a smile. Loved reading about Wulfric and the family once more. The Sega continues. Fun

I`d read about Sydnam in  The Proposal  and my heart broke for him there. He`s an artist with two very masculine big brothers and in an attempt at proving his own masculinity, he went into war on the Peninsular. Unfortunately with devastating results because he came home scarred and without his right arm and eye. Because he was very strong-willed, he managed to ride a horse and took a position as a steward instead of just being cared for and collecting dust in his own home. I found Sydnam a very admirable character in The Proposal.I read about Anne in  Simply Unforgettable  and was curious about this single mother - unwed, not a widow - who was now a school teacher. She`d had her son David when she was just 19 as a result of a rape.These two characters made my heart bleed even before I started reading Simply Love and I was looking so much forward to reading this book when I opened the first page. Luckily Mary Balogh did not let me down. Simply Love was an extraordinary book about two people with scars (inside and/or out) who find each other but find it hard to trust the other person. They build a good friendship but can they ever be more?Sydnam was very far from the typical alpha male. He was an artist with a strong will but he was also quiet, considerate and very much a thinker. He did not force Anne into bending to his will - on the contrary. He was a very sweet person and so was Anne. It`s alway so gratifying to see two nice people finding each other - especially when life has treated them cruelly.This book moved slowly and there was no big drama in it. But that only made the emotional drama inside these two hurt people all the more stronger.I can truly recommend this book if you want to read something else than "big alpha male grabs the woman he wants and makes her fall in love with him whether she wants to or not".

Simply Love is a historical romance and is the story of two troubled souls who meet,find love and in that journey they start to heal.Anne Jewell is a teacher at an all girl school in Bath, England. She is a fine teacher well liked by both students and teachers and also an unwed mother the results of a rape nine years before. Sydnam Butler is the steward of a remote seaside manor in Wales owned by Wulfric Bedwyn,Duke of Bewcastle, Sydnam lives a reclusive existence. He is the youngest son of an Earl, wealthy in his own right but a man with many demons, a man of deep sorrows and passions. During the war he was captured by the French and brutalized, leaving him crippled with one eye, and half his face disfigured. The handsome man he once was is now a shell of a man who cuts himself off of society and a man children call monster. Anne first spied him in the deepening dusk of evening --- a lone figure of breathtaking strength, his handsome face branded by his pain. Yet he senses in Anne a kindred soul, and between these two wary hearts, desire stirs. Unable to resist the passion that has rescued them both, Anne and Sydnam share an afternoon of exquisite lovemaking. Suddenly the unwed mother and the war-scarred veteran must make a decision that could forever alter their lives.This is a wonderful story and an outstanding romance. Mary Balogh once again shows her talents in writing about topics that are very sensitive. She weaves a very believable story of healing, understanding and forgiveness, while creating a love story that is timeless. Simply Love is a stand alone book but is part of her Simply series, it is book 2, also characters from other series, Bedwyn series, do make an appearance now and then in the story. Sensual level I would put at a 7, Ms Balogh writes passion, and the reader feels the hot and sizzle but she is not graphic in her sex descriptions. I highly recommend this book to read again and again.

Just really, really lovely. It's a story of two damaged souls who help each other begin again.The hero was horribly injured in the Peninsular Wars. He feels he has been made untouchable.The heroine worked as a governess, where she was raped, left pregnant, and abandoned by her family.Neither the hero's nor the heroine's trauma is recent. They both survived and have built new, productive lives for themselves. But, though they are okay, they both long for more.Benevolent friends introduce these lost souls to one another, and they slowly awake to the possibility that they can more than simply survive. They can dream.Wonderfully brave and lovable hero. He's great. Lovely (though hesitant) heroine. A great rootable pairing.My only strong criticism is the pressure on the heroine to forgive the family who abandoned her when she needed them most. I don't know how or why she should forgive them. I was also uncomfortable with her rapist's relatives claiming kinship with her son against her wishes. And yet it says something about her worthless family that at one point I found myself hoping that when the story stressed reunion with family that it would result in her being more open to her rapist's family rather than a reunion with her own family. At least her rapist's cousin and sisters believed her when she said she had been raped, protected her where they could, and supported her so that she could regroup and build a life for herself. Her biological family abandoned her for ten years. Why should she make any effort to reconcile? Why shouldn't they be required to make some effort?But that is a side issue. The central romance is beautiful.

This story is so much more than a romance novel. It gets your heart.

I really think, this book is one of Mary Balogh‘s best books. Because it is very different to the others. It is not „the typical clichee you expect“… When I began reading it and came to the typical point where you know about who two people this book will be about, I was like.. hang on a moment, really???!!!And I think therefore the book goes much deeper and you think much more about life amd people and not just wait for a romance to begin…Absolut splendid! 👏

I ordered and bought this book on 01/01/20, prior to that I read a library copy which itself was a special order as my library branch did not have its own copy. I was already familiar with the characters in the Slightly series and also the family of Sydnam, the hero in this book, who was mentioned in..One night for love...and appeared in ...A summer to remember ! From then on I was greatly interested in his life and wanted to know where did he go from there and how. When I finally read this I was wowed by Sydnam, the journey he had to take to find his happiness, and of Anne who was to be the love of his life. Anne's character I knew nothing about and I will admit, at times I wondered if they were right for each other. At one stage she got Sydnam to open up to her and convinced him she understood what he had gone through because she had gone through a traumatic experience herself. She had suffered a horrific rape and was damaged but out of something so bad came something wonderful....her son David. Did this mean that she really understood what he went through or was it a case of both of them being kindred spirits because of what they had both suffered ? Or maybe she had persuaded herself that she did understand him having gone through what she had gone through ? Having very limited knowledge and experience in this I do not know ! The way the story is written and my instinct tells me that she could not have understood what he suffered and was suffering still anymore than he could have understood what she went through and the tough decisions she would have had to make. Both of them were hurting in their individual way and in this she reached out to him and offered help which was accepted. When he offered his help in the same way, she rejected it and practically threw his offer in his face and, despite being his wife, distanced herself and her son from him. It took her son's comments about her family which changed things and for me, revealed that she had never got over her family's rejection of her. Far from helping her, they blamed her for what had happened before and her then fiance married her sister instead. Consequently, she left the family home and never returned until David pressed her into going. It proved to be the healing process that she needed as well as provide answers that she had in the past sought and never found until their reunion. I did wonder whether she held the opinion that because her family had not supported her, her suffering was more than his . She was not dismissing what he had had to endure but he came from a rich family, a family that unlike hers, loved and supported him. She was mistaken about that because it brought him a whole new set of problems. His parents were devastated at what he had had to suffer The relationship between him and his brother Kit became awkward whereas prior to them taking part in the war, their relationship was close and easygoing. Kit felt enormous guilt for what had happened and tried to take on things on his behalf; a situation Sydnam greatly resented. It took the actions and understanding of someone who became part of the family...Lauren, his stunningly beautiful new sister- in-law. She amazed him by getting to the route of his problems and showing that she too had blemishes, only hers were on the inside.Out of all the male characters MB created, Sydnam is my overall favourite because he is complex, clever, talented, his mental strength is amazing and, all in all, so interesting. He was exceptionally handsome and yet the physical mutilation he suffered did not detract from him becoming the amazing man he was to be. At the end I understood why he and Anne were ideally suited and was happy to give a five star rating. A huge ten out of ten to Mary Balogh for his creation !

Mary Balogh never disappoints. Her books are self-recommendable.

Da quando ho cominciato a leggere romanzi, ho sempre sgamato ed evitato a fiuto i cosiddetti 'libri istruttivi' o 'edificanti'; figuriamoci adesso, a un'età in cui non credo resti più spazio per edificare alcunché. Potevo mai immaginare che Mary Balogh (Mary Balogh!) mi tirasse un bidone simile? Il romanzo – come sempre molto ben scritto - comincia con il solito eroe malridotto dalla guerra, che incontra un'insegnante di scuola col figlio, conseguenza di uno stupro; ma ben presto, la sensazione di subire prediche su prediche mi ha sopraffatto: alle ovvie lezioni che "non bisogna arrendersi mai"; che "non bisogna dar troppo peso alle apparenze", che "l'amore trionfa sempre" si è aggiunta, alla fine, quella per cui "la famiglia è la cosa più importante nella vita", anche se ti ha ripudiato e trattato come un cane per una colpa non tua. Qui, non ho più retto; e, nonostante il piacere di ritrovare il mio amatissimo Duca di Bewcastle con la moglie Cristina, ho ritenuto di non potere in coscienza andare oltre le due stelle.