Review: Beautiful and satisfying!
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 03 3, 2014
Another wonderful book in Becky Lower’s Cotillion Ball Series. The series follows the love adventures of the sons and daughters of the Fitzpatrick family. It is the 1858 debutante season in New York and Halwyn Fitzpatrick is relieved he has no more sisters, ready for the marriage market, to escort to the round of balls this season. However, his mother has determined it is time Halwyn married and settled down; she has a line-up of shy debutantes to parade before him, especially now he has his new eye glasses. Grace Wagner is attending her third season but this time it is imperative to find a husband before her twenty-first birthday. Her father’s will states her inheritance passes to her mother and therefore her gambling addicted stepfather if she is not married by this time. Of course her stepfather is equally determined to destroy any opportunity she may have of finding a husband and will go to murderous lengths to claim her inheritance. Grace has loved Halwyn since she was thirteen but he seemed not to have noticed her. Courageously, she makes him a business proposal of a marriage of convenience, unwittingly placing them both in danger, from her stepfather, and their growing desire for more than a sham marriage.Like all Becky Lower’s heroines, Grace is smart, beautiful, sensitive and resourceful. Halwyn is portrayed as strong, talented, masculine and vulnerable - a hero to admire and covet. Lower has the skill to take the reader into the heart and mind of her characters and keep you riveted until the last page. This book is filled with twists and turns, adventure, danger and, of course, love. The language and settings are authentic to the period and the fashions are described in such glorious detail, it is easy to visualise them.  I didn’t want this book to end but at least I know there are more coming! A beautiful and compelling series, Becky Lower.