From This Moment On
By Lynn Kurland Book Review by Miranda Fraser ISBN: 978-0425248461 This is the second romance novel book review I’ve done, in the first one I mentioned that not all romance novels revolve around sex. This I have found to be especially true with Lynn Kurland’s romance novels. She weaves these intricate tapestries of the characters and their time periods that absolutely enthralls her readers and when she does finally mention intimate relations, it is brief and classy. It does not take from the story in anyway, so if you are a person looking for a good love story, minus unnecessary erotic chapters, I highly recommend looking into her novels! Also worth mentioning, Kurland’s romance novels actually have a ‘family tree’ of sorts showing where the books line up. For instance, this novel is in the De Piaget family tree, and the first novel I read by her was ‘This Is All I ask Of You’ (A PHENOMENAL NOVEL!!!) and ‘From This Moment On’ actually takes place a few years after that one, and revolves around characters from that novel. Which, made it all the more exciting for me because I already loved that world. BUT if you were to pick this novel up and read it without ever having known about her ‘series’ you can do so and the story would still make sense. No worries! Now, that the background is laid out, let’s discuss ‘From This Moment On’. Our hero is Colin of Berkhamshire, a Lord, skilled swordsman, and a man with such a fierce reputation that only a fool would battle him, and no woman dares marry him. After all, they do call him the Butcher of Berkhamshire! Our heroine is a lady named Alienore of Solonge who has a bit of a Cinderella situation at home. Her father adores her, her step-mother abhors her, and to make it worse, she is to marry the very man all of Europe fears. With few options in her life Alienore flees for her freedom, infuriating The Butcher, and disappearing without a trace. Two years later it is believed that she is dead, or possibly became a nun, and Colin finds himself with another forced betrothal at the hands of his impatient father. This woman is so afraid of him that when she arrives at his home, she locks herself in a food cellar of sorts and refuses to come out to wed him. Leaving Colin to entertain himself with his true love, sword fighting, and working on training a particularly puny knight in his betroths army. Constantly questioning how this scrawny, far-too-femine lad became a knight, Colin vows to beef him up and teach him to be more manly. Much to the horror of the ‘lad’ who is really Alienore in disguise. Now, Alienore does make some allies during her daily-routine of praying Colin does not find her out, and they vow to keep her secret, but loose lips sink ships and the more people who know the worse things become. She quickly finds herself with far more fearsome enemies than The Butcher (if one could imagine that)! If her secret is revealed will Colin make good on his reputation and destroy her? And what of her evil step-mother, is she really that evil? Will Colin’s betrothed ever stop eating and face him? There are so many questions that start piling up, but the main one is: WHEN WILL COLIN SEE WHO HE’S REALLY TRAINING?! I was on the edge of my seat trying to figure out in my head how it was going to go down. I mean, the story obviously won't end with him being in the dark forever, right? I will tell you that he does eventually begin to see that his knight is not a lad and goes a little easier on her, all while admiring not only her beautiful facial features, but also her courage to wield a sword. At this time things really start picking up, the villain(s) are starting to move and change their plans, Colin is putting more and more clues together, and it’s only a matter of time before something major happens in the story! But Lynn Kurland’s masterful writing keeps you on edge waiting for the next wave of things to come. Even when you think it’s safe to assume the happy ending has arrived THINK AGAIN! PLOT TWIST CENTRAL! I’m honestly afraid to give away too much about the actual story if I go on any further. So I will just say that the characters are a delight, there were several pages that shocked me [193, 295, and 355 to be exact], and the villainous plotter(s) are VERY determined to get what they want. It’s almost maddening! Plus the revealing of the true natures and hearts of our heroes as they slowly learn about the other, having never met before their betrothal, shows an important lesson- ‘reputations’can be as lethal as any rumor.
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Romance Novels
The big secret of many woman... and men! But why hide it? These stories are full of so much more than raunchy sex scenes and I for one LOVE them! Archives
May 2018
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