Hannah is a typical Southern Belle who lives on a farm with her family. However, her big secret was that her best friend, Noah, was a slave. He was the only one who truly understood her and befriended her, giving her respite from the torture of her cousin. When her cousin threatens to tell about her teaching her friend Noah, Hannah has to let herself be controlled by her. This drags her into the world of espionage and the secrets of the Civil War.
Although this novel is technically a historical romance, I found that I liked the side plot even more than the romance parts. Usually, in the historical romance novels, the actual history part is simply glossed over. You can read the entire novel and get no historical background besides “the women wear dresses and the men ‘called on’ women and went to balls all day”. This story truly delved into issues of the time, such as children being raised by slave or children getting into accidents in their childhood and not having proper medical care. This type of worldbuilding made the story better for me.
This doesn’t mean that the romance in this story was sub-par. I definitely loved seeing Hannah grow closer to the detective later on in the novel. I just appreciated the fact that attention had been given to both the historically-accurate backstory and the romance.
I would recommend this to lovers of both historical fiction and historical romance novels.
I received this book for free and gave a voluntary review.
Overall Rating: 5/5
Thank you SO much, Briennai, for featuring my book with such a FINE review!! Appreciative and glad to have all my research recognized. 🙂 🙂
No problem! Thanks for writing such a great book! It’s tough finding legitimate historical fiction these days.