Mary Zelinsky

A convoluted mystery with lots of suspects that kept me guessing.

It’s so nice to be back with familiar faces and off on another adventure with the team. This series can stand alone but to really get to know the main characters and all the supporting ones best, this light, fun, sorta cozy type of read is well worth reading from the beginning.

I start with a smile on my face at the fun writing about Beth.

She’s quite the character. She is my favorite. I love her brash, snarky, sarcastic wit show more that puts poor Mike, who’s madly in love with her, through the wringer. She manages to find herself in uncomfortable situations, and she’s looking for a reason to get out of town..

I can’t help but laugh at Beth’s antics…even as she puts her life in danger to get to the bottom the mystery.

Old friends, new friends, a mystery solved and another mystery on the horizon. From Natchez and Pensacola, to Savannah, Beth always gets her man.

I voluntarily reviewed a free copy of Sunset in Old Savannah by Mary Ellis. show less

Cora Dearing wants nothing more from life than to advance her journalism career from fussy little featurettes to investigative reporting. Therefore, she’s less than thrilled by an assignment to write a puff piece about a romantic getaway spot in Louisiana’s bayous, even though it does include a formal introduction to the dashing gentleman who had come on to her strongly at a restaurant a few nights before.

Ethan Auxier is handsome, rich, sexy, and the scion of one of Louisiana’s oldest show more families. Cora is smitten in spite of herself, but as a mysterious disappearance takes one of the B&B’s guests, and a miasma of violence begins to fall on others, it looks more and more like her new love interest is at the bottom of them. In the best romance-novel-heroine tradition, however, she has faith in Ethan and continues to poke into the incident and its investigation to get to the real story. And, increasingly more importantly, to clear her beloved’s name.

The biggest problem most readers will have with this generally formulaic tale is that, despite Zelinsky’s nice establishment of the New Orleans milieu, the hero is not particularly heroic. He lies to Cora, manipulates her, condescends to her in the very worst don’t-worry-your-pretty-little-head-about-it style, and is utterly dismissive of her professional goals. This is the hero? This is the man she’s risking her career, and possibly her life, to exonerate?

Why?

Well, that’s a question Zelinsky never really answers. This is one of those romances where the characters love each other because the author says they love each other. And besides that, he’s a great kisser.

This is apparently enough for Cora, and perhaps for some readers. Others will look for a bit more realism, even in a romance designed for leave-your-brain-at-home summertime beach reading. show less

I've read quite a few historical romances over the years but very few can really pull you into the story in such a way that you feel you're actually living each moment of the characters' lives. "The Quaker and the Rebel" by Mary Ellis is just such a novel.

We are reintroduced to Emily Harrison, the plucky protagonist from the prequel short story "Romance on the River," who is now embarking on a whole new life. She is headstrong, determined and very independent for a woman of her status and show more upbringing and you wouldn't normally expect a woman of her times to be so resourceful. These were the qualities that made me take such a liking to her character. She was also, as all great characters should be, quite flawed as well. She was too impetuous at times, would speak before thinking and tended to see only one side of the picture. But without these failings, she might have come across as a cardboard cutout instead of the extremely delightful and multi-layered character that she was.

Mary Ellis' writing is outstanding and the plot flowed at a great pace, neither lagging nor rushing so fast that you couldn't get a feel for the time and place and immerse yourself into the story. Civil War novels abound, but I would have to say that this one did the most to really get me to think about the day-to-day effects of the war on both sides. Not only the North-South issue, but the slave vs. freedom issues as well. There were many times I thought to myself, "well, I knew that but I never really thought about it in that way before." With the exquisite detail that Mary provides, I felt like I was actually living during those times and felt for myself how things must have really been.

I would definitely recommend this book as one of the finer examples of historical romance, and Civil War romance in particular, and if you're trying to choose among the many offerings out there, you can't go wrong with this one. show less

Oh my word. Never before has a book changed my mind so strongly on any particular subject than "The Quaker and the Rebel"by Mary Ellis!

What a story!

I have never been a fan of war romances... WWII, WWI or Civil war - but here I sit, a converted FAN! And I can not wait until the next book.

 

This book will make you laugh, make you cry and it will give you an entirely new outlook on the Civil war era!

Reading about the outcome of so many tragic battles and the stealth need to help abused slaves show more escape to freedom in a dry history book simply can not give you the same impact as reading about your heroine's reaction to the horror and danger associated with the very same things.

Mary Ellis gives us all of that - first through the eyes of a staunch Quaker who is disturbed by the Southern lack of understanding as to why owning another human being is wrong, and then through the eyes of a gentile southern gentleman who is trying to do everything he can to help his precious south move into the future with as little bloodshed as possible.

It is an adventure that won't soon be forgotten and it has given me an entirely new outlook on this portion of our country's troubled past. I will never look at another Civil War battlefield the same way again, I can assure you!

Not only that... the book is extremely well-written. You can hear the skirts swish, the hooves pound and even feel the pain of corset stays. The experiences are written with such emotion attached, as well as descriptive language. And, while it is not described in the ugliest terms, nothing about the tragedy and hardship about this particular time on our bloody history is glossed over.

Mary Ellis has made a fan out of me - a new reader who is eagerly awaiting her next book and wondering if I dare read anyone else's books, for fear that they may not be in the same ballpark. I suppose I have no other choice, at least until her next book arrives in stores. I shall have to haunt the local library and find anything else that I can and hope it is equally appealing.

I received this book free in exchange for an honest review. show less