Reviewer: Tracy Winning Miss Winthrop by Carolyn Miller
Series: Regency Brides: A Promise of Hope #1
Publisher: Kregel Publications
Publication Date: March 27th 2018
Format: eARC
Genres: Historical Romance, Christian
Pages: 320
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Series Rating:
Catherine Winthrop has cried out to God too many times to count. Years ago, the man who stole her heart rejected her--and she's never recovered. Now tragedy has brought him back into her life. This time it isn't her heart he's taking, it's her home and her family's good name--and she has no one to share her grief.
Jonathan Carlew's life may look enviable from the outside--wealthy, handsome, landed--but the mystery surrounding his birth has shadowed his entire life. Now as he ascends to the barony, fresh challenges await, including a scheming mama who wants him to embrace power, even at the cost of losing love. How can he remain the kind, honorable man he strives to be and still meet the demands of his new society responsibilities?
These two broken hearts must decide whether their painful past and bitter present will be all they can share, or if forgiveness can provide a path to freedom for the future.
Catherine is devastated when her father dies but shocked when her third cousin, once removed, a man she fell in love with two years earlier, becomes the new baron and moves into her house. She’s even more shocked when she finds out that her father spent all their money and they were left with almost nothing. Now Catherine and her mother are moving into the decrepit dower house and Jonathan, the man who spurned her, is taking over the barony.
Jonathan tries to help Catherine and her mother, but the mother is too proud to ask for help. Jonathan and Catherine run into each other time and again but neither ever speak of what happened previously. When it looks like Jonathan will propose to another woman, Catherine and her mother head to her aunt’s house in Bath. Bath is great for Catherine’s well-being but her reputation takes a beating. When Catherine pretends to be engaged to an older man, and Jonathan heads to Bath, will the two ever figure out what went wrong and finally admit their feelings for each other.
I have to say that I enjoyed Ms. Miller’s writing. It did falter a time or two and the story tended to drag a bit in the middle, but her characters were three dimensional and actually quite likable – except a chosen few. The characters were flawed, and I liked that. Some of them were pretty spiteful in their speaking and I was a bit shocked at that. For being a Christian novel it was surprising, but the characters who were mean and outspoken weren’t the main characters of faith in the story which was good.
Jonathan and Catherine don’t spend a whole lot of time together in the story and that’s my biggest issue with the story. Yes, they spent a fair amount of time but I thought this was a romance and you can’t have romance when the two aren’t together – or communicating in any way. Despite that I enjoyed it and the author intrigued me enough with the secondary characters that I will probably read the others in this series to see what ends up happening with them.
Rating: 3.5/4 out of 5