DemonessTenebrae

Good historical romance but foreshadowing was too blatantly obvious so there was no suspense and you could see everything unfolding as it did a mile away.

Short summary:

An English noblewoman was on her way to her future husband and their wedding but one night she witnessed his soldiers carrying out his cruel commands and decided to run away which left her handmaiden and her male servant in a rather stranded situation (pun intended). Servant claimed that the handmaiden was actually the noblewoman so she would be left unharmed and that's how Sarah the handmaiden's troubles began. She had to pretend for a few days to be Rosemary, the noblewoman and that went well at the very start but then she began to witness her future husband's not to be cruelty and craziness and decided she needed to run away.

An opportunity presented itself when he took her with him and his sister along with the soldiers to the battlefield because he was so convinced he was going to win that he wanted to marry Sarah right after winning, on the very bloody battlefield itself. There, she saw on opportunity and ran into the forest where she encountered Drew, wounded Scottish warrior, and she helped him recover and on the first glance they fell for each other and the rest you can pretty much figure out from there on.

My thoughts:

I first read this author's latest novel and that swept me off my feet. So I decided to go ahead and read the rest of her work. I can now see that in this book she was still honing her craft. Although this book is very well written, it has all the elements a historical romance should have and the characters are intriguing... there is still a lot missing, or better said, everything is handed to us so that we don't really have to think or worry which is not good for keeping us tied to the story.

One of the things that immediately surprised me was the whole story missing about the English noblewoman Rosemary's disappearance. I felt like I was missing crucial information about what happened and got thrown in the middle of the story so I went to research online and found out that there is a 0.5 book in this series called Blair and I did not have that on my Amazon Kindle which contains the Rosemary story. I wish there would have been a notice or a remark about this story being directly involved with the previous one so I would first go to that one. I would recommend doing that to people reading this before getting to this series.

My greatest remark of them all is the lack of suspense and mystery. Like I mentioned before, author does not really foreshadow the events here, she puts them on a big freakin' billboard surrounded by flashing lights and puts you right in front of it. Within first two chapters, I knew exactly how the book will play out. One event let me down completely (heroes meeting for the first time) even though I knew how things will go from there on. I won't go into spoilers on every event that failed to be a surprise but suffice it to say that I knew how things will end with the cruel Lord's sister even though it was the last chapter or second last where her fate is resolved.

With all the critique I have given you might think I did not really like the book or that I would not recommend it. That is not true. I did like how it was written, the style used, the elements it possessed, I was just a bit disappointed with the execution itself. I would recommend it to historical romance lovers but as a happy light read, not as a gripping hold onto your chair and read till wee hours of the morning kind of story. As long as you know what you are getting into, you won't be disappointed.

I like Barbara Bard, I think she has huge potential and I will continue reading her books. I hope you also give her a chance, if with nothing else then with her latest novel Highlander's Honor: A Historical Scottish Highlander Romance Novel, now that is amazing. Her true colours shining through. All the best, dear author, keep them coming.