Simply Love

June 19, 2006
With more than her usual panache, Balogh returns to Regency England (Simply Unforgettable
) for a satisfying adult love story. Twenty-nine-year-old beauty Anne Jewell is an independent woman: an unwed mother who has found contentment, if not happiness, in her life as a teacher at a girls' school. Sydnam Butler, an aristocrat who lost his eye and right arm in the Peninsula Wars, has achieved a similar peace as the reclusive steward for the Duke of Bewcastle. Through her son's father, Anne is related to the Bewcastle family, which includes her friend Joshua Moore, Marquess of Hallmere, who wants to acknowledge her and her nine-year-old son, David, as kin, despite her stubborn independence. Joshua invites Anne and David to spend the summer at the Bewcastle estate in Wales, where she meets Sydnam. The kindly Bewcastle clan have matchmaking in mind, but with scars both surface and deep, will Anne and Sydnam be able to open up to each other? And if so, can they hope for any real happiness? The maturity of the novel's protagonists—who grow from their difficulties and triumphs—distinguishes this romance for the genre.

Starred review from June 15, 2006
Raped by a callous young aristocrat and abandoned by her family and fiancé when she becomes pregnant, gently bred Anne Jewell accepts a generously offered teaching position at a prestigious Bath academy and begins the process of rebuilding her life and raising her son, David. But despite her convictions, Anne's destiny is not disgraced spinsterhood. She and David are invited to spend two weeks in Cornwall, and there she finds a kindred spirit in maimed and badly disfigured war hero Sydnam Butler and a friendship and understanding that quickly become a passionate love. The second in Balogh's new series involving Miss Martin's School for Girls (following "Simply Unforgettable"), this superbly written, emotionally wrenching story of two wary people resigned to loneliness but surprised by love is classic Balogh and one of her best to date. A Welsh native, Balogh now lives in Canada. [See Prepub Alert, "LJ" 4/1/06.]

Copyright 2006 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

July 1, 2006
Balogh crafts a " Beauty and the Beast" tale, bringing together lovely Anne Jewell, a teacher at Miss Martin's School for Girls in Bath, and Sydnam Butler, the horribly disfigured steward for the Wales estate of the Duke of Bewcastle. Anne and her son have been invited on holiday with the Bedwyn clan. Neither Anne nor Sydnam is comfortable in company, he because of the injuries he sustained in the Peninsular Wars and she because as a rape victim she is the unwed mother of a nine-year-old. The two connect, and Anne soon discovers that she is pregnant. They marry, but that is only the beginning of their story. Both have had so much pain in their lives, neither one feels worthy of love. Balogh has once again crafted a sensuous tale of two very real people finding love and making each other's lives whole and beautiful. Readers will be delighted to see, once again, members of the Bedwyn family and the characters from" A Summer to Remember" (2002). (Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2006, American Library Association.)