It's kind of interesting as a historical spy novel set in Portugal & Spain during the Napoleonic Wars, but as a romance it fails miserably. Balogh is one of my favorite historical romance novelists, but this early work of hers is awful. I should really know better than to read/listen to a romance novel written before the mid-to-late 1990s at the VERY earliest (aside from Jane Austen's novels, of course). Dalton Awards for her bestselling novels, as well as a Romantic Times Lifetime Achievement Award. She has won seven Waldenbooks Awards and two B. She has won numerous awards, including Bestselling Historical of the Year from the Borders Group, and her novel Simply Magic was a finalist in the Quill Awards.

She has written more than seventy novels and almost thirty novellas since then, including the New York Times bestselling 'Slightly' sextet and 'Simply' quartet. In 1988, she retired from teaching after 20 years to pursue her dream to write full-time. Her first book, a Regency love story, was published in 1985 as A Masked Deception under her married name. Mary Balogh started writing in the evenings as a hobby. She also enjoys watching tennis and curling. When she's not writing, she enjoys reading, music and knitting. She married her Canadian husband, Robert Balogh, and had three children, Jacqueline, Christopher and Sian. After graduating from university, moved to Saskatchewan, Canada, to teach high school English, on a two-year teaching contract in 1967. Mary Jenkins was born in 1944 in Swansea, Wales, UK.

Who plays mary in beyond puppy love