I quite liked the hero and heroine of this one, and for once there's no 'ridiculously innocent virginal heroine betrayed by pain' routine that all the prior books in the series suffer from. Too many Sherbrookes but they didn't annoy me as much as usual. That's not how a series usually works! This story was the best written and most coherent and cohesive yet. I liked Mad Jack more than the Brides trilogy, and I liked this one more than Mad Jack. A break with 'tradition,' and a welcome one. I was not surprised to find at least one character with an abusive past (seems to be a staple of all of Coulter's historical fiction), but I was quite pleased to have finally come to a book where one or more characters is caught in a rainstorm or gets otherwise soaked to the bone, and *doesn't* nearly die of 'the fever' afterwards, only to be nursed back to health by his or her eventual lover. I enjoyed 'The Courtship' and looked forward to each installment I listened about two hours a day, during my morning and evening commutes. Heatherington seems to be almost a 'bad guy' in the opening scene, but turns out to be someone quite likable. Helen is an interesting character, and is written fairly consistently. There were, like most in the series, some absurd plot trails, but overall, I think there was more plot going on in more layers than in most of the other books in the series, which was refreshing. I read 'The Courtship' in audio format on CD- and the last of any of the books about the Sherbrookes.

The courtship catherine coulter