Review: Top-Shelf Romantic Historical Fiction
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 03 12, 2013
When I first started this book, my husband asked me how I liked it.  My response was that the hero was a terrible man, and I couldn't wait to see him reformed.  I was solidly in the corner of the heroine, Lily.  That was chapter one.  In a masterful twist, Elizabeth Boyce had me sympathizing with bad-boy Ethan to the point I was nearly in tears on almost the very next page. I never expected the character I was going to hate to be the book's heroine.  Her fears turned her into a frigid, castigating witch while Ethan was reformed and loving almost right away.  The story morphed into one of a woman who had thought she was independent learning the true meaning of independence without alienating those she loved.  A book I thought I had figured out from the very beginning turned on me and continued to surprise me in the best ways until the wonderful Happily Ever After.  Boyce's prose is among some of the best I've read; her figurative language is both original and breath-taking.  She's certainly gained a fan for life in me.