It wasn’t meant to have anything to do with my own work. Way back in spring 2013, as I was great with child and finishing up revisions on That Summer and vaguely contemplating beginning The Mark of the Midnight Manzanilla, I took a break by reading a novel my friend Vicki had just sent me. Bizarrely enough, this Carla Kelly novel is where The Other Daughter began. "One of these things is not like the others one of these things just doesn’t belong….Ī Regency romance in a list of 1920s and 30s novels? It may look out of place, but there’s a reason, I promise.
So, better end it with me wanting more than drag it on and leave me with a less than positive feeling on how it's wrapped up.
The only thing that struck a slightly discordant note for me was the abrupt ending, but I guess I'm accustomed to reading full-length romances instead of category-length, in which the ending can sometimes go on too long. I loved the initial circumstance that brings Polly and Hugh together on the ship from Plymouth to Portugal in the beginning and the rapport that's established between them which continues through the building of their relationship. Though the sins of the terrors that soldiers can visit upon the innocent populace are laid solely upon the French in this story, it was a good setup for what happens to Polly and Hugh in the book to be reminded that in a country at war, no one is safe. Hand-in-hand with this being an uplifting, sweet story, Kelly manages to bring in the challenges and even the horrors of this war that had ravaged the Iberian Peninsula and laid waste to much of it. one who's been at war his entire adult life and hasn't had the time or inclination to marry. I loved that both Polly and Hugh are non-traditional romance characters: Polly is the mousy, somewhat plump bespectacled illegitimate daughter of a nobleman who's had a good upbringing but always with the reminder of her status in life-and the fact that her two older sisters are beautiful and she isn't Hugh is a representation of a reality of the Georgian/Napoleonic era. Carla Kelly is quickly becoming my go-to author when I want an uplifting, sweet historical romance chock full of solid research, excellent characters, and heart-warming relationship building.Ībout a third of the way into this book, I realized it was part of a series, and I immediately purchased/downloaded the first two in the trilogy-and I plan on reading them now.
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