Review: Thief of Shadows by Elizabeth Hoyt

Isabel Beckinhall save the Ghost of St. Giles right when the book starts. She stops her carriage and saves a masked man from certain death by a teaming mob. Isabel takes him home and though she doesn’t unmask him she sees enough to remember him, vividly.

Winter Makepeace is the Ghost of St. Giles and is extremely happy to be alive. He left Lady Isabel’s house without detection and managed to get back to The Home for Unfortunate Infants and Foundling Children. But all is not well with regard to the Home. You see characters from previous books, as well as Winter’s sister, wanted to save the home so they put together a Society to help. The problem occurs when a young society maiden decides that Winter is not the manager the Society wants as their manager. Winter is given a chance to prove that he can show himself well in society and is to be tutored by none other than Lady Isabel.

The tutoring begins but Winter and Isabel have their minds on each other rather than rules of the ton. Winter wants Isabel which kind of freaks him out since he’s never wanted any woman before. Then there’s Isabel who had been hurt by men before and though she wanted Winter she was shocked that she could want someone so stodgy. The pair get to know each other and the more they learn, the more they want. There’s a constant electricity between the couple and it’s definitely high voltage.

While this is going on Winter is still carrying out his duties as the Ghost and he is looking for the person the St. Giles residents call “The lassie snatchers.” Young homeless girls are being taken off the street and Winter is determined to find them and bring them to the home.

The story is SO good. I just love the way Elizabeth Hoyt puts a story together. She flows all the parts and pieces together is such a way that they are so intermeshed I never feel like I’m moving from one part of the story to the next even though I am.

Winter is such a stoic person even though he feels like he has a dark side to him that he doesn’t allow to come out. He controls his emotions so much that he comes off as unfeeling at times when he is so far from unfeeling it’s ridiculous. When Winter is the Ghost he lets a part of himself out that he can’t normally and it makes up for the rest of his life, or so he thinks. As he gets to know Isabel he thinks that maybe he can let some of what he calls his darkness out with her and she’ll still accept him. I love the realizations in this story as we see Winter figure out his life and what he needs to do to make himself a happier person.

Isabel seemed, on the surface, to be a snobby lady of the ton but she was actually quite a kind hearted person – except when it came to a small boy. I understood to a point why she was treating Christopher, her deceased husbands son, the way she was but frankly I felt so bad for Christopher there were times that I just wanted to shake Isabel and make her see and understand exactly what he, and she, needed. Isabel with Winter was a sight to behold. They has sparks flying from them even when Isabel was telling herself that Winter was NOT the man she wanted.

In the end Hoyt gives us an excellent romance with all the right ingredients. The book on the whole was so very good and I loved reading it.