Overseas

Starred review from March 5, 2012
Wall Street analyst Kate Wilson is good at her job, good looking, smart, and while she’s somewhat out of place in her shark-filled firm, she’s hardly the sort of woman the handsome billionaire investment genius Julian Laurence would be expected to take an interest in. Yet from the moment he sees her, he’s smitten. Equal parts mystified and attracted, Kate’s left to wonder why he backs off as suddenly as he appeared. Is he just some rich jerk blowing hot and cold? No, he’s deeply in love and stuck with a secret: he’s from a different time, and they’ve met before. Williams’s pacing is excellent: as one question is answered, another arises, and soon, like Kate herself, readers are in too deep to argue. When the book starts moving between Wall Street (where Kate is accused of leaking information to Laurence’s firm) and the WWI front (where Julian is an officer in the British Army), and the lovers face difficulties on all sides, we’re happy to suspend disbelief. Some of the book’s many plot threads get dropped, but it doesn’t matter; at heart this is a delicious story about the ultimate romantic fantasy: love that not only triumphs over time and common sense, but, once Kate overcomes Julian’s WWI-era ideas about honor, includes mind-blowing sex. Agent: Alexandra Machinist, Janklow & Nesbit Associates.