Book Review- Blackmoore

I’m reviewing Blackmoore by Julianne Donaldson today.

From the blurb:

Kate Worthington knows her heart and she knows she will never to marry. Her plan is to travel to India instead—if only to find peace for her restless spirit and to escape the family she abhors. But Kate’s meddlesome mother has other plans. She makes a bargain with Kate: India, yes, but only after Kate has secured—and rejected—three marriage proposals.
Kate journeys to the stately manor of Blackmoore determined to fulfill her end of the bargain sooner rather than later and enlists the help of her dearest childhood friend, Henry Delafield. But when it comes to matters of love, bargains are meaningless and plans are changeable. There on the wild lands of Blackmoore, Kate must face the truth that has kept her heart captive. Will the proposal she is determined to reject actually be the one thing that will set her heart free?
Set in Northern England in 1820, Blackmoore is a regency romance that tells the story of a young woman struggling to learn how to follow her heart.

Blackmoore is published by Shadow Mountain, an imprint of Deseret Book, and it’s part of their ‘A Proper Romance’ line, which debuted last year with Edenbrooke, also by Julianne Donaldson.

And here’s the review I posted on Goodreads and Amazon:

I read this novel 2 times, each time in under 24h. I’ve been eagerly waiting for the launching. I read Edenbrooke last year, and I follow the author on FB, and *saw* her develop this story, and even had a tiny glimpse at what she went through with it (the parts she lets us see, of course).

I can say it has been worth the wait. Blackmoore is a regency novel. It starts in 1820, in England. You won’t find traditional regency language here, and this is what appeals to such a wide audience (my 13 y.o. daughter read Edenbrooke last year and loved it). It’s part of Julianne’s style, and it obviously works as a modern take on a traditional genre.
The setting is very well done and appealing, specially to anglophiles like myself—I want to take a trip to Robin Hood’s Bay and Fountain’s Abbey, and look out to the sea and to the moors, and imagine Kate and Henry, and listen to the birdcalls at sunrise, take a walk at the beach at moonlight, and know that all the problems between them will be somehow solved by the end, even though I can’t see how it will be possible.

I found the writing and characterization have grown since Edenbrooke. Kate is a very poignant character—I’m not 17, or British, have a mother that embarrasses me, or in possession of secrets that thwart my love life, and yet I was Kate, and I fell head-over-heels in love with 20 year old loyal Henry, and felt their frustrations and their passion, their first-time love and their anguishing sorrow at separation. This is what Julianne Donaldson does so well, that sucked me in so totally and completely to a story that I have so very little in common. It goes without saying that I loved it.

Julianne Donaldson announced on Facebook that she’s leaving to England next month, for new research. Lucky girl. I’m seriously considering changing the genre I write, if that could get me to England every year.
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