I finished The Bride Thief almost at the same time. I enjoyed it, too, but it had quite a few things that bothered me. I'll give it a B-.

I liked both Sammie and Eric, but especially Eric, a beta hero who is truly heroic. I liked what he did as the Bride Thief, I felt he had excellent reasons to do it and, though he could have done it a different, less dangerous way, he did the right thing. I also liked that he gives lots of thought to the consequences of sleeping with Samantha. And so does she, even finding out how to prevent pregnancy.

My problems were the following:

1 - The "I love him so I'll let him go" - "I love her so I'll let her go" , "oh, he's letting me go, so he doesn't love me", ad nauseam in the last quarter of the book. This got tiresome.

2 - The resolution of the Bride Thief problem was much too predictable. As soon as it was implied that the magistrate had once been in love with Eric's sister, I was sure that he was going to find out that her arranged marriage had been hell, and so, when he discovered that Eric was the Bride Thief, he was going to let him off the hook.

3 - This was minor, really, but I hated Sammie's mother, and intensely disliked her father. I have a problem with characters who just refuse to listen to what people are saying. They frustrate me, and I want to kick something, so when any character in a book does this, it just puts me in a bad mood.

To summarize, I enjoyed this one while recognizing its faults. I'll probably keep reading this author.