Who Brings Forth the Wind by Lori Wick. I hated this book. I hated it so much I might never read a Lori Wick book again, but I’ve said that before. THE TITLE DOESN’T EVEN MAKE SENSE. Every time I opened this book I rolled my eyes three pages in.

Stacy lives with her going blind grandfather and has never had a season in London even though she’s early twenties. Her Aunt Lucinda insists Stacy comes to London so she can find a husband or something. At about the first party, Tanner makes an appearance in his black evening clothes. The amount of times I had to read “Black evening clothes” is ridiculous. I ended up googling men’s evening in the 1850’s and found a pretty interesting article. It was better than the drivel in the book. Anyway, Tanner is drawn to Stacy, actually no, let’s call it what it is. He lusts after her and wants her for his mistress cause he doesn’t want to get married….again. Aunt Lucinda actually shows some sense and refuses to let him near Stacy because she knows he’s a rake and he doesn’t have pure intentions. However, since Stacy is a classic Lori girl, she “falls in love” with Tanner after two conversations. Tanner realizes the only way he’s going to get Stacy in his bed is to propose to her, so he does. Lucinda is skeptical but agrees to ask Stacy about it and if she says she loves Tanner, she’ll allow this to happen. 

NO NO NO. TAKE STACY BACK TO HER GRANDFATHER AND SAVE HER FROM THIS MISERABLE EXCUSE OF A MAN. 

Stacy, of course, wants to marry Tanner even though he literally has nothing to recommend him. Whatever. They get married and everything is hunky dory for a while even though Tanner has to constantly remind himself that Stacy is not his dead wife who cheated on him. Then they go to a house party and we’re introduced to a sop of a man known as Nigel. Apparently Nigel has heard all about Stacy, even though he lives in France, and loves her before he even meets her. He’s determined to woo her because she can’t possibly love Tanner. Nigel corners Stacy in the greenhaus and takes her violently into his arms. Stacy is struggling. Tanner finds them and is angry. He nearly kills Nigel and Stacy interferes. Because Stacy stops Tanner from killing a man he deduces Stacy loves Nigel. 

Mmhm. Cause she totally wasn’t struggling just ten seconds ago. 

Tanner throws Stacy out of the house and she goes back to her grandfather.

 SHE DOESN’T EVEN TRY TO EXPLAIN WHAT HAPPENED. She has bruises on her wrist from Nigel’s fierce grip she could’ve shown Tanner to back up her story, but since she’s a freaking doormat she just leaves. 

Stacy writes Tanner a letter like every week or something but doesn’t tell him she’s pregnant with his child. She has a son, but still refuses to tell Tanner she had his son and heir to the Dukedom because she wants Tanner to want her back for herself. 

Stacy’s grandfather dies and she goes back to London to stay with Lucinda. I think she secretly wanted Tanner to find out she was in London and he’d want her back. Well she got her wish cause Tanner orders her to return to “Winslow,” his country estate. She tells him she has a son, Drew, but doesn’t clarify that Drew is Tanner’s son. Tanner, of course, believes Drew is not his son without setting eyes on him. 

I just, can I yeet this book into oblivion?

Stacy and Drew arrive at Winslow, are treated like dirt by the servants and ignored by Tanner. He finally takes notice of them when Stacy tells them they were thrust into the North Wing which is freezing and he grudgingly moves them closer to his rooms. Tanner, quite by accident, sees Drew and is stunned to discover Drew is actually his son. Apparently Drew is the spitting image of Tanner aside from his hair. Stacy is smug because she knew Tanner would realize Drew was his son just from seeing him. 

I don’t know. This could’ve been resolved about ten chapters ago if she’d just trotted out Drew in the beginning instead of hiding him. I don’t even know what happens next because literally nothing happens in this book. 

Tanner is verbally and emotionally abusive and Stacy takes everything lying down. She even tells him his anger scares her. Somehow Stacy ends up in Tanner’s bed for one night and thinks their marriage is going to make it after all but the next morning Tanner finds a letter Stacy wrote the time Tanner threw her out and only reads the beginning: “I want to explain about Nigel.” So he assumes Stacy had indeed been cheating on him. Stacy knows he didn’t read the whole letter and that’s why he’s ignoring her again, but doesn’t tell him to read the whole thing or tries to talk to him. She puts up with him being a jackass Then she finds out she’s pregnant. She tells Tanner, he’s indifferent, so she leaves thinking she needs to do this to protect her child. She goes back to stay with Aunt Lucinda who somehow gets her out of the city to stay with some random people in the country and no one can track them down. Tanner is trying to find her because he finally read the letter after Stacy left and realized Stacy would never have cheated on him. Finally, she’s found and goes back to Winslow with Tanner because she’s just so happy he came for her. I guess their marriage gets better. She has a baby girl and wants to breastfeed her, Tanner is not happy with this arrangement cause he thought he would have Stacy all to himself once the baby was born. I don’t know, man. Then Tanner gets shot “accidentally” while hunting and Stacy saves him by not letting the doctor bleed him. She even goes so far as to stop feeding her baby and getting a wet nurse so she can devote every minute to Tanner’s care. Unfortunately Tanner pulls through and is amazed that Stacy put his needs before the baby’s. He tells her he loves her and she weeps. 

Then Nigel shows up again! He just wanted to apologize to Stacy. Yeah. Whatever. 

Stacy tells Tanner she’s always loved him and there’s about two more chapters of complete nonsense before we finally wrap up chapter Fourty-Nine (that’s actually how it was published), and get to the epilogue set 23 years later. Let’s do a round up of their kids’ names. From 1850. 

Andrew (Drew), reasonable. 

Alexa, eh. 

Chase  

Kendra  

Pippa

At the very, very end, Tanner tells Stacy he’s accepted Jesus Christ as his personal Lord and Savior because he realized he wouldn’t be prosperous without the Lord.