Barbara’s rating: 3.5 out of 5 Stars
Series: Synneful Spinsters #2
Publication Date: 7/11/23
Period: Regency – Isle of Synne
Number of Pages: 368

This is the gut-wrenching, heartbreaking, slow-moving, excellently told tale of two people whose dreams for a life together are shattered within the space of a day when both are engulfed in scandals, not of their own making. Miss Katrina Denby and Sebastian Thorne had been drawing closer and closer throughout the season and just as he was about to make his feelings known to her, he received a missive that he must return to his father’s country estate. That very same night, a man climbed into Katrina’s bedroom window causing a duel and scandal.

Four years later both Katrina and Sebastian – now the Duke of Ramsleigh, find themselves on the Isle of Synne. Katrina is there as the paid companion to the irascible Lady Tesh and Sebastian is there basically babysitting the grown brother of the heiress he hopes to marry to save his dukedom. Each is shocked to see the other because both are staying at the home of Lady Tesh. Both also realize those old feelings are still there and they also both realize that can go nowhere.

With Sebastian set to marry another and Katrina trying to weather yet another scandal not of her own making, it seems as if they will never work their way through all of their problems and find a HEA. And they almost don’t.

I liked Sebastian and Katrina okay, but I didn’t fall head-over-heels for them. My favorite characters were Lady Tesh, Mouse (a giant-sized dog), Mr. Bridling, and the group of friends known as the Oddments. Lady Tesh has been the glue that has held all of the Synne books together – both this series and the previous one, Isle of Synne. The Oddments is a group of ladies who are ‘odd’ to the world in one respect or another, but they are steadfast and true friends. I was totally surprised to like Mr. Bridling as he could have been such a dud of a character, and instead, he was bright and fun and I might have liked him better than Sebastian.

I can recommend this book because it is well written, but it wasn’t the book I needed to read at the moment. As I was reading, different adjectives kept popping into my head – mournful, morose, melancholy, misery, depressing, woe-is-me, sad, unhappy, martyr, gloom, despair, angst, angst, angst, angst, etc. and the book was all of that. I kept waiting for the happy part and it just wasn’t coming. I know it is a romance, so, of course, I knew the happy would come, but it didn’t get there until about the 90% mark and by that point, I wasn’t terribly interested.

I voluntarily read and reviewed an Advanced Reader Copy (ARC) of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

View all my reviews

Barbara’s rating: 3 of 5 Stars
Series: Synneful Spinsters #1
Publication Date: 11/8/22
Period: Regency
Number of Pages: 343

I enjoyed this author’s previous series, Isle of Synne, where we met our current heroine in the final book. Miss Bronwyn Pickering is a Naturalist who specializes in Entomology. Her selfish, social climbing, overbearing parents aren’t enamored with her bookish ways and are bent on marrying her off to a titled gentleman. Bronwyn has spent years studying, analyzing, and collecting data – she’s even discovered a previously unknown beetle and she dreams of writing a scientific paper about it. That dream comes to a crashing end when her cruel parents went into her rooms, took all of her specimens, research notebooks, written papers, instruments, etc., and smashed them – then threw them all out. The only bright spot left in her life is her friends who collectively refer to themselves as The Oddments. Her parents have also just told her she will not be allowed to associate with those ladies anymore. According to her parents, her only goal in life is to make herself into the perfect lady in order to attract a titled gentleman.

Ash Hawkins, Duke of Buckley, had a horrendous home life as a child. Nobody was spared his father’s wrath – not his wife, not his son, not the servants, not even the children on the estate. He dealt wounding and killing blows with both his fists and his words. Everyone knew of his father’s reputation and took great delight in taking it out on Ash when he was away at school. As an adult, Ash knows he can’t afford to love anyone – he’ll taint anyone who is close to him – so when he ends up with three young wards he is at a total loss in how to handle them. He hires governess after governess and the wards just run them off. Then, the two youngest wards run off as well.

Ash is sorely in need of someone to raise his wards and when he discovers that the two younger ones have befriended Bronwyn Pickering, he proposes not ten minutes after meeting her. Bronwyn is sorely in need of liberation from her parents, so a marriage in name only would work for both of them. Until it doesn’t, of course.

This was a nice read – thus the three stars – but it just didn’t resonate with me personally. I didn’t buy the chemistry between Bronwyn and Ash and, more to the issue, I think I am just done with protagonists (particularly the males) who take on the sins of their fathers. I have read several of these – my father was a brute, therefore I am a brute – stories lately and I am just tired of them. So, while this was a perfectly nice story, it just didn’t reach out and pull me in. If you decide to give the book a try, I hope you will love it.

I voluntarily read and reviewed an Advanced Reader Copy (ARC) of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

View all my reviews