Guest Review: One Enchanted Evening by Lynn Kurland

Posted April 26, 2010 by Book Binge Guest Blogger in Reviews | 3 Comments

Tracy’s review of One Enchanted Evening by Lynn Kurland

Montgomery de Piaget attracts responsibilities like blossoms lure bees. Where other knights have bonny brides, laughing children, and noble quests, he has the task of rebuilding the most dilapidated castle in all of England. A bit of magic might aid him—if only he still believed in that sort of thing.

When Pippa Alexander is invited to England to provide costumes for an upscale party, she jumps at the chance to showcase her own line of fairy-tale inspired designs. Not even her older sister’s decision to act as Fairy Queen crushes Pippa’s hope that this time, she’ll wind up wearing the glass slippers. Not that she believes in fairy tales, or magic that whispers along the hallways of an honest-to-goodness medieval castle…

But the castle is full of more than cobwebs, and danger lurks in unexpected places. And only time will tell if Montgomery and Pippa can overcome both to find their own happily every after . . .

Pippa isn’t have a great day – but she refuses to let something like her Vespa being crushed by a trash truck and a fire burning all of her worldly goods get her down. She follows her plan and heads to England to her sisters castle to show off her line of fairy tale designs to a would-be investor. It’s total fashion domination she’s after and nothing will stop her. Until she and her sister Cindi fall through a time gate and end up in the 13th century.

At first Pippa (whose real name is Persephone – yeah, hippie parents) thinks that it’s all a joke since her sister who owns the castle, Tess, runs medieval gatherings on a regular basis. She really believes that this is just a more in depth version of a gathering. She finally realizes that she has somehow time travelled back in time and tries to deal with it as best she can. This isn’t made easy by the fact that her sister, Cindi (real name Cinderella) is on Valium and off in la-la land believing that she’s the Faery Queen.

But events are made easier by the Lord of the Manor, Montgomery de Piaget. He’s a kind man who tries to protect her from everyone, including his evil cousins and her own sister, because he knows that she is from the future. His family is known for their “paranormal oddities” even though he’s not exactly sure what those oddities are. When Pippa travels back though the time gate unexpectedly Montgomery has to make a decision – follow Pippa or stay and be miserable without the woman he loves.

This was a very sweet book. Pippa and Montgomery’s romance was very quiet and steady. It just grew throughout the book and was just a nice romance. With respect to the time gate I felt that it was used very off-handedly in this story. While in previous Kurland time travel novels it seemed that the h/h had made decisions to remain in the time they were foisted into, these protagonists used it several times and went back and forth to get to the ones they loves. While some people would like this aspect of the story because it meant that the heroine had the true decision before her – go or stay – I didn’t care for it for some reason.

All in all I thought it was a good time travel story with a good romance.

Rating: 3.75 out of 5

You can read more from Tracy at Tracy’s Place

This book is available from Jove. You can buy it here or here in e-format.