SUMMARY: The ancient Claverton earldom is no more, because Lady Catherine Claverton was born a girl. Banished to the countryside as a child and forgotten, she lives her life alone and angry.
The BookViral Review: An enthralling Regency Romance, The Portrait proves a notable debut for Cassandra Austen in a genre which often suffers from a lack of originality and a heavy reliance on well-worn tropes. Beautifully written in prose that vibrantly capture the essence of her characters, the dashing Captain Avebury and the manipulative Sir Lyle, prove the perfect foils to the Countess St. Clair’s spirited questing nature as secrets from their pasts threaten the future they hope to build. Privileged and wealthy they live in a world in which everything, including desire, seems perfectly ordered and yet Austen confidently conveys a genuine sense of how passion is lived and often lost in the real world. Desire, surges of tenderness, obsession, suspicion, jealousy and the intensity of true love, pages turn as the superficial order surrounding the Countess and Captain Avebury is stripped away and their darkest secrets are finally revealed. These alone are reasons enough for fans of the period romance genre to pick up a copy, but what really sets Austen’s novel on a pedestal is The Countess St. Clair’s innate sense of vulnerability. Judiciously avoiding a maudlin or saccharin approach to her disability and desire to be seen as perfect Austen conveys it with just the right amount of melodrama and intrigue.
A genuine page-turner, The Portrait proves an exceptional read and one definitely deserving of your attention. It is recommended without reservation.
With its relentless pace and clever plot, Zipline makes for an appealing and compelling read but it’s not a read to be rushed with it being the progress of Michael’s plot, not the process, which makes Zipline particularly intriguing.
Following on from his excellent poetry collection ‘Situationship’ which was recognised by the 2020 North Street Book Prize, Osamase Ekhator offers us ‘I Am You’, an anthology of works dissecting love, religion and social injustice.
All the best psychological thrillers have an irreducible, inexplicable element, beyond their cleverness and craft and such is the hold Terror Bay has from its opening pages with Towles her flair for gripping twists with narrative style.
A rivetingly suspenseful Urban Fantasy novel that deftly intertwines elements of Celtic myth and Christian doctrine Skellig proves a superb second release in E R Barr’s “The Tales of Conor Archer” series.
With the continued growing popularity of the short story, many good collections are released each year and yet sadly the majority go unnoticed by mainstream readers.
Heroes come and go. That’s certainly true of the fictional variety where very few linger in the mind beyond the last page of a novel. So what makes the perfect fictional hero?
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