Only a Kiss by Mary Balogh Also by this author: Only a Promise, Only Beloved, Someone to Wed, Someone to Care
Series: The Survivor's Club
Also in this series: Only a Promise
Published by Penguin on September 1st 2015
Genres: Fiction, Romance, General, Historical, Regency
Pages: 400
Format: eARC
ISBN: 9780698156104
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The Survivors’ Club: Six men and one woman, injured in the Napoleonic Wars, their friendships forged in steel and loyalty. But for one, her trials are not over....
Since witnessing the death of her husband during the wars, Imogen, Lady Barclay, has secluded herself in the confines of Hardford Hall, their home in Cornwall. The new owner has failed to take up his inheritance, and Imogen desperately hopes he will never come to disturb her fragile peace.
Percival Hayes, Earl of Hardford, has no interest in the wilds of Cornwall, but when he impulsively decides to pay a visit to his estate there, he is shocked to discover that it is not the ruined heap he had expected. He is equally shocked to find the beautiful widow of his predecessor’s son living there.
Soon Imogen awakens in Percy a passion he has never thought himself capable of feeling. But can he save her from her misery and reawaken her soul? And what will it mean for him if he succeeds?
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Mary Balogh in her newest book Only a Kiss, grabbed my heart, and enveloped my soul, in a breath stealing romance. Imogen, Lady Barclay, survived her stint in the Napoleonic War, after being taken prisoner with her husband who died in captivity. She was released and she has been existing since she returned to England, existing not living. She died the day her husband died on the peninsula. Imogen, with her grief and guilt broke my heart. I was with Imogene as her husband died, and I felt her grief to my core. This is not just a book about grief and finding new love with a wayward lord Percival Hayes, Earl of Hardford, whom happens to have inherited her husbands title. This is a book about learning to live again, not just living in grief; but know that the people we have lost, want us to live full and happy lives. They don’t want us trapped in our grief or survivors guilt. Yes Balogh has set her story in a regency period romance, but the lessons that are imparted in the book could be found in any treatise on grieving, as whom amongst us has not lost someone close to them. We all grieve in our own ways, but it is important to live the new normal, and to enjoy life and live again.
The romance is beautiful and you have Imogene, the woman trapped in her grief and Percival, who honestly up until he tarries in Cornwall, had not been doing much with his life. He comes from a very loving family, but he has been floating around life and him not truly living. Both of Balogh’s characters have insulated themselves from the world around them. They discover with their growing love that they can let the world in, no matter how painful that can and will be, it is well worth the risk.
As with all of Balogh’s A Survivors’ Club novels this one can be read as a stand alone.
About Mary Balogh
Mary Jenkins was born on 1944 in Swansea, Wales, UK. After graduating from university, moved to Saskatchewan, Canada, to teach high-school English, on a two-year teaching contract in 1967. She married her Canadian husband, Robert Balogh, and had three children, Jacqueline, Christopher and Sian. When she’s not writing, she enjoys reading, music and knitting. She also enjoys watching tennis and curling.
Mary Balogh started writing in the evenings as a hobby. Her first book, a Regency love story, was published in 1985 as A Masked Deception under her married name. In 1988, she retired from teaching after 20 years to pursue her dream to write full-time. She has written more than seventy novels and almost thirty novellas since then, including the New York Times bestselling Slightly sextet and Simply quartet. She has won numerous awards, including Bestselling Historical of the Year from the Borders Group, and her novel Simply Magic was a finalist in the Quill Awards. She has won seven Waldenbooks Awards and two B. Dalton Awards for her bestselling novels, as well as a Romantic Times Lifetime Achievement Award.
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