Never Let Me Go (A Regency Romance)

Rating:
Summary: Charming, ghostly romance/mystery--Brava, Joan Smith!
Review: Sharp writing, clear and lovable characters.

From back cover:

Romance writer Belle Savage came to England looking for a hero--the kind of rakish stranger women have been dreaming of for centuries. She meets him in the misty darkness of a velvet night, a devilish charmer, perfect in every way. Except he is a ghost.

Soon Belle becomes drawn into the tragic past of a young Arabella Comstock, murdered in a fit of passion, whose spirit now roams the meadows of Chene Mow. But as the mystery of Arabella unfolds, so do Belle's own passions for her spectral suitor, Lord Raventhorpe.

Rating:
Summary: Something about this book draws you in. . .
Review: What's weird is that I almost never read this kind of book. The only reason I read this one is because it's labeled "Regency," which it definitely is NOT! If anything, it's a contemporary with a big dollop of supernatural thrown in. And I never read contemporaries anymore.

And then to learn that another reader had read this same book--long out of print--about a week before I did and had a similar reaction to it. . . well, there is something rather spooky about it.

Belle has come to England to finish writing her book, but soon finds herself engrossed in an unsolved 19th century mystery involving a young girl and her lover. Following the young girl's disappearance, it was presumed that she had been murdered by the lover she spurned, the Earl of Raventhorpe, who immediately thereafter fled the country.

When the ghost of Raventhorpe makes himself known to her, Belle finds herself drawn to him, instinctively realizing that he could not have murdered the young Arabella that he loved so much. Determined to clear his name, she sets out to find as much information as she can about the incident.

The odd thing is that Belle seems to have some sort of contact with Arabella's ghost as well, because she seems to know things without being told. Indeed, the story she writes seems to come directly from Arabella. . . nobody else could have known the very detailed events that seem to flow automatically from Belle's pen.

Even as she finds herself falling deeply in love with Raventhorpe's ghost, she fears that in the end there will be nothing but heartache for her.

Rating:
Summary: Something about this book draws you in. . .
Review: What's weird is that I almost never read this kind of book. The only reason I read this one is because it's labeled "Regency," which it definitely is NOT! If anything, it's a contemporary with a big dollop of supernatural thrown in. And I never read contemporaries anymore.

And then to learn that another reader had read this same book--long out of print--about a week before I did and had a similar reaction to it. . . well, there is something rather spooky about it.

Belle has come to England to finish writing her book, but soon finds herself engrossed in an unsolved 19th century mystery involving a young girl and her lover. Following the young girl's disappearance, it was presumed that she had been murdered by the lover she spurned, the Earl of Raventhorpe, who immediately thereafter fled the country.

When the ghost of Raventhorpe makes himself known to her, Belle finds herself drawn to him, instinctively realizing that he could not have murdered the young Arabella that he loved so much. Determined to clear his name, she sets out to find as much information as she can about the incident.

The odd thing is that Belle seems to have some sort of contact with Arabella's ghost as well, because she seems to know things without being told. Indeed, the story she writes seems to come directly from Arabella. . . nobody else could have known the very detailed events that seem to flow automatically from Belle's pen.

Even as she finds herself falling deeply in love with Raventhorpe's ghost, she fears that in the end there will be nothing but heartache for her.