Author: Sandra Owens
Genre: Historical Romance/Regency
Heat Level: Spicy
Number of Pages: 366
Publisher: Wild Rose PressTitle: The Letter
Blurb:
THE
LETTER is the story of a betrayal that wasn’t. Even so, it still tore apart two
lovers for eleven years.
On the
eve of their wedding, Michael Jeffres, Earl of Daventry, found his betrothed—
the woman who meant as much to him as the air he breathed—in bed with his
cousin, Leo. Diana remembers nothing of that night. All she knows is that she
was forced to marry Leo and then spent the next eleven years in hell.
When the
two lovers are brought back together by a letter from Leo a year after his
death, Michael and Diana must struggle through all the lies and secrets before
they can find a love that far surpasses the one of their youth.
Forget The
Housework, I’m Reading
Oh,
how I love that…Forget the housework, I’m reading. I think I’ll adopt it as my
motto. My favorite genre to read is historical romance, especially the Regency
era. The first three books I wrote were Regencies, two of them, THE LETTER and
THE TRAINING OF A MARQUESS, now published. There is just something about that
time in history that fascinates me. Take a trip with me back in time.
Close
your eyes and imagine you are dressed in a beautiful gown, your hair artfully
styled, chandeliers filled with candles softly lighting the ballroom. You are
tapping the toe of one of your dancing slippers, longing to be invited to dance
by a handsome gentleman. You are a mere miss, a nobody, so you don’t expect a
man of title to notice you, but surely there is a mister someone or other who
would be willing to share one dance with you.
You’ve
almost given up hope and the embarrassment of being ignored is too much so you
decide to slip behind the potted plant and hide. Just then, you catch the eyes
of a tall, gorgeous man across the room. It is the same duke you’ve seen all
the ladies sigh over, a man the marriage-minded mamas have been trying to catch
for their daughters for years. Of course, he isn’t looking at you!
Ah,
but he is. Holding your gaze, he prowls his way across the floor, stops in
front of you and bows. Just as he says, “May I have the honor of a dance?” you
hear the beginnings of a waltz. Thus the fairytale begins and culminates in a
happily ever after for you and your duke.
Sadly,
that scenario would have been a rarity, if it even happened at all. Dukes
married the daughters of peers, and usually not for love. They married for
gain, to strengthen their families, for political power and the like. A mere miss
would have nothing to offer.
I
would have to say that my books have a darker element, especially THE LETTER. I
am drawn to tortured heroes and heroines. I want them to be lost and hurting,
believing they will not find true happiness. Then I want good things to start
happening to them. I write romance because I love that happily ever after that is
a must.
In
THE LETTER, the heroine, Diana, is probably my most tortured character of all
my stories. Hers is a tale of love lost and then found, a story of lies and
secrets, and finally one of hope and forgiveness. Because the beginning of the
book was so dark, I wanted humor in the second half…a difficult thing to pull
off. Fortunately, my hero, Michael, took over, his antics surprising even me.
Here is a short example of Michael being Michael.
A yawn and a stretch, and he
lazily pushed up in his seat. “Sorry, did you say something?”
“You sounded as if you were
snarling. Why?”
He made a show of stretching the
cricks out of his neck. “I must have been dreaming of when I was a wolf.”
She stared at him as if he had
lost his mind. “I beg your pardon?”
“Didn’t I ever tell you? I’m
certain I must have.” He grinned like he thought a wolf might. “Listen. In my other
life, the one before this, I was a ferocious, furry
beast. In my dreams, I sometimes
relive those days when I was king of the woods. I think the thing I miss most
is having a tail.” He looked off into the distance,
considering. “Well, that and
howling at the moon.”
“You’ve gone mad,” she said, but
her lips twitched.
“Never say so!” He put his hand
over his heart. “You wound me, Diana. I have just shared my most secret of
secrets and you doubt me?”
She burst into laughter.
The sound of it was a melodious
symphony to his ears. “You dare laugh at the beast?” He growled and attacked.
Moving to the seat next to her, he wrapped his arms around her and nipped at
her neck with his teeth.
Her body shook with hilarity as
she tried to swat him away.
God in heaven, he hadn’t played
like this since…since her. He put his mouth next to her ear and rumbled into
it. “Beware. The wolf has you now and you are mighty tasty. I fear he is going
to gobble you up.”
She laughed so hard, she gasped
for breath. “Michael, stop it.”
He lifted away to see if he was
scaring her. No, she was biting on her bottom lip in an obvious attempt to
control her merriment. Not wanting to take the fun too far and have it turn
sour, he slipped back to his seat.
Her gaze lifted to his, her lips
still quivering. “I’m trying to picture you with a tail.”
Michael quirked a brow at the
woman who was starting to seem like the girl he once knew. “It was a very
lovely, bushy tail, I’ll have you know.”
Thank you so much for inviting me
here today. I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Sandra Owens
First thoughts after....
An interesting Regency Romance.
How distracted did I get??
The letter is a very different regency romance that was slow to begin and took off midway. The story is a different take on the regency era. It's very easy to get wrapped up in Diana and Michaels world. Little Jamie will win your heart. This is a good book for those who enjoy regency romances.
I give The Letter.......
3.5 baskets!
Author Bio:
Sandra
lives in the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. Most days, you
can find her with her fingers on a keyboard, her mind in the world of her
imagination. It's a land where romance and happy endings exist, a land where
anything is possible.
When her
husband can drag her away from her computer, she likes to travel with her very
own hero in their RV, but she always brings her laptop. There are still stories
to write, after all.
A few
highlights of Sandra's life she fondly recalls are jumping out of a plane,
flying upside down in a stunt plane, and riding her Harley in the mountains of
Southern California and along the coast of Maine. She's managed a private
airport and held the position of General Manager of a Harley-Davidson
dealership.
Although
those events in her life were great fun, nothing compares to the joy and
satisfaction she gets from writing her stories.
Buy Links: Amazon
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