Monday, January 26, 2015

Review: Teardrop Lane EternitySprings #9 by Emily March

Title: How to Beguile a Duke
Author: Ally Broadfield
Publisher:Entangled
Publication date: Dec 8th 2014
Genre: Historical Romance
Rating: 4 Stars
Source: NetGalley

The spirited Catherine Malboeuf has just arrived in England to reclaim her ancestral home, Walsley Manor, and a valuable missing heirloom. Nicholas Adair, the attractive and frustratingly inflexible Duke of Boulstridge, however, is quite unwilling to sell the estate back to Catherine. Unless, of course, she accepts a small wager...
Nick will sell Walsley Manor if—and only if—Catherine secures an offer of marriage from an eligible member of the ton before the end of the London season.
Of course, Nick is certain he'll win. After all, no proper gentleman would ever marry a woman who conceals a cutlass in her skirts. Yet something about Catherine's unconventional disposition seems to ignite a need deep inside him. A need that won't just cost him the wager, but the very heart he swore to never give away...


My Review:


If you haven't read Emily March's contemporary, small town series, Eternity Springs, you are missing out! I found her contemporary books a couple of years ago, I've read plenty of her historicals' as Geralyn Dawson. I binge read her first four Eternity Springs books and haven’t missed a new installment yet! Teardrop Lane, the 9th novel in the series, is heart-wrenching, superbly satisfying read!

A little backstory on Eternity Springs. It’s small town in the Colorado Rockies that was slowly dying until Celeste Blessing came to town. It’s never stated but always hinted that she’s an angel. She builds Angel’s Rest a type of recovery spa and the town starts to rebuild itself. Always at the heart of these stories are characters that are overcoming something in their life, whether it be a horrific tragedy, a broken heart or simply finding one’s purpose in life. As they succeed on moving forward with their lives, they earn their “wings” a prettily designed silver pin that Celeste hands out.


We've met both Rose and Cicero in previous books and I was definitely on the fence with how they were going to work out. Rose is the town doctor and has a tragedy in her past that she still isn’t over. She’s anxious for family of her own, but sees no hope in sight. She immediately wants to have a fling with Cicero. 

When Cicero moves to Eternity Springs he brings along with him four very rambunctious kids. His “sister”, a woman he met in one of the various foster homes in which he’d lived, passed away from cancer and he’s determined to financially support them. The guardianship went to a couple, one to which the youngest is related. When they decide they changed their mind, he steps up and takes them in. *Swoon*  Who doesn't love a single, Casanova style man who becomes a single dad?

Hunt and Rose plan to have a fling but when Hunt gets the kids everything changes. The kids are top priority and they always put them first. The romance between them is fraught with pitfalls as they both have secrets and past mistakes to overcome. It’s wonderful to read how they overcome and watch their love come alive.

What I really liked about this book is we see how the Eternity Springs community come together and help Hunt with the children. Eternity Springs is a loving, helpful community that I would LOVE to live in!

Ally has worked as a horse trainer, director of marketing and development, freelance proofreader, and a children's librarian, among other things. None of them were as awesome as writing romance novels (though the librarian gig came closest). She lives in Texas and is convinced her house is shrinking, possibly because she shares it with three kids, five dogs, a cat, a rabbit, and assorted reptiles. Oh, and her husband.
Ally likes to curse in Russian because very few people know what she's saying, and spends most of what would be her spare time letting dogs in and out of the house and shuttling kids around. She has many stories in her head looking for an opportunity to escape onto paper. She writes historical romance set in Regency England and Imperial Russia.

Find Ally@

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