Rating: 
Summary: A heartwrenching story about true people finding true love
Review: Roxanna Drew has been living alone with her two daughters since her husband's passing. Despite financial constraints that could lead her to homelessness, she turns down flat her brother-in-law's offer for a home if she would agree to share his bed. But Marshall Whitcomb won't take no for an answer, and Mrs Drew takes refuge in the abandoned dower house of an estate that belongs to the absentee Lord Winn.When Lord Winn arrives at Moreland in the middle of a snowstorm, he finds a shelter in the newly occupied dower house, where his encounter with Mrs Drew and her daughters radically changes his life. Despite a general wariness of females caused by a disastrous marriage and sisters who won't leave him alone, he quickly takes the Drew family under his wing, turning into a father figure to the two daughters, and a dear friend to Roxanna. Carla Kelly's inimitable style pulls the reader into the scenes she writes. She makes us part of a story that is so involving that one can think of nothing but the characters until the very last page. The banter between Roxie and Winn is witty and refreshing, but also reveals a lot about their true self. In this book we discover characters that more real and three-dimensional than in almost every regency romance. Lord Winn, deeply hurt by his wife's betrayal, is a disgraced man since his divorce; his experience with women makes him wary of them to the extreme. He has no wish to marry again, and his cynical side considers that "children should be drowned at the birth". And yet he treats Felicity and Helen Drew as if he were their father. Roxanna Drew cared for her husband throughout his lethal illness, and it's clear that she had a happy marriage. And yet Ms Kelly does something that is too rare in the world of romantic literature: she gives her heroine a second chance with love without making Roxie's previous husband look like a man of flaws: it's perfectly believable for Roxanna to love Lord Winn without betraying the memory of her late husband. It's a shame that this book is out-of-print, but if you manage to get your hands on it, it's very well worth its often-high price!
Rating:
Summary: A Must-Have
Review: This is the book that started me reading the genre, and it is still the one against which all others are judged. Wonderful, warm, funny heroine, a hero who is NOT the "arrogant rake" so often found in Regency novels, and lots of humor make this a book that can be read repeatedly. (I certainly have!)
Rating:
Summary: Still my favorite Regency Romance ever!
Review: This is the book that started me reading the genre, and it is still the one against which all others are judged. Wonderful, warm, funny heroine, a hero who is NOT the "arrogant rake" so often found in Regency novels, and lots of humor make this a book that can be read repeatedly. (I certainly have!)
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