New Favorite Author

If You Dare by Kresley Cole
(MacCarrick Brothers Book #1)

I've had the best book related experience there is -- I've discvoered a new author, and her name is Kresley Cole! Not a new author you say? Well, no you are correct. Ms. Cole has been publishing since 2003, according to http://www.fictiondb.com/. However she is new to me, having published during the years I was in the babycave. Ms. Cole has won this new fan on the strength of one book, If You Dare.

This historical romance has a very unusual setting -- the tiny country of Andorra in the Pyrenees in the 1850s. Courtland MacCarick has been working as a mercenary in this politically unstable country but has angered the dictator. Court escapes execution by jumping into a river, barley survives, and washes ashore to be found by the aristocratic Annalia. Against her better judgment, Annalia takes him home to heal. Meanwhile the dictataor is holding Annalia's brother prisoner in an effort to blackmail Annalia into marriage to cement his political power. After Courtland is well, Annalia attempts to hire him to rescue her brother. He puts her off at first but then ends up helping her and taking her to London.

Annalia is a great heroine, she is related to the royal family and acts the aristocrat. She does not nurse Courtland, doesn't really get to know him while he is in her home and does not trust him. Even as he is helping her she doesn't trust him or believe that he is acting in her best interests. They are strangers. I found this refreshingly realistic. In many novels the hero and heroine fall in love/lust way too quickly and easily. The best part of the story for me was gradually watching Annalia come to trust Court and Court accept his feelings for Annalia.

With action and intense emotion, the historical romance If You Dare was a great read and introduced me to a fabulous new author.

Grade: A