Katherine Kingsley

After Waterloo, Major Lord William Fitzpatrick, son of a marquess, intends to pay his respects to his best friend's widow and return her letters. But when he gets to the farm, wearing a worn borrowed set of traveling clothes, she mistakes him for a man-of-all-work, for which she has advertised. Seeing the straightened circumstances, he lets the deception ride and determines to help her, her daughter and her father out. He had been exiled from his family 10 years before and he can wait to go show more home and try to fix things. Despite his own problems Will has a 'make the best of the circumstances you have been dealt' attitude and admires that in Louisa. The two work together solving problems and being drawn together until the point where his own family situation and his deception are near exposure. I would have liked a little more honesty from him rather than a dramatic exposure, but that's a minor quibble. Well done historical romance. show less

Oh, three-star reviews. You are so hard to write. While I liked some elements of this book, the story and characters as a whole just did not work for me. The villains were really villainy. The good-guy mains were absolutely adorbs. The plot moppets were totally huggable.

One thing I was not expecting were the rape-centric plotlines. I think there were more main characters effected in some way by rape than there were those not. Rape not being a subject I like suddenly introduced into my show more romances, this greatly influenced my enjoyment of the story as a whole, so take that how you will.

You know how some books have walls of text? This book had walls of dialog. Repetitive dialog. This unfortunately made the book a chore to read after about the halfway point. A good hundred or so pages could have been chopped as being unnecessary and redundant. There were also several typos, which was surprising considering this is a re-release (originally published in 1992) but I guess that comes with translating it into e-book form.

I can see where some readers might like this book, but it just was not my cuppa.

ARC of new release version courtesy of Diversion Books, via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. show less

A very good romance. Good characterization (it's so rare in romances!), neat setting, good reasons for most of the deception/misunderstanding. Honor's trick, and the way she regrets it when it fools everyone, is really quite rich - it would be a good story if the romantic line fell out of it. I'd like to read Kingsley's other books - there's at least one with characters that appear in this one.

Okay, I know this is a bodice ripper, but I really like this book. Embarrassing to admit, but true. I think what I like most about this book is that there is chemistry between the couple, but sex is taken out of the picture to a certain extent. Unlike most current romance novels, the couple doesn't take one look at each other and fall in love. They grow to love each other through their trials and, yes, it does happen faster than I think is possible for a couple to fall in love, but still, show more it's more realistic than say, a "Loveswept" romance.
The characters are also extremely engaging. The wicked stepmother, the unflapable butler, the peasant capable of speaking perfect English and reading French [alright, that's totally unrealistic, but you have to suspend belief a bit to even begin reading these kinds of novels, don't you think?].

If you want a bit of brain candy, a bit of romance, and a happy ending, I highly reccomend this book. show less