A Lady Awakened (Blackshear Family, #1)

by Cecilia Grant

[jamiereadthis]

Now this is what I’m talking about. I thought I would find good books in this romance project, I thought I would find surprising and great books, but I really wasn’t sure one would make me go, this was written for me.

This was written for me.

I need contrary and stubborn and complicated and cerebral, I need scenes that don’t go the way I think they’ll go, I need characters who don’t get the script for what they’re supposed to say and do and feel and think, I need subtlety and showing-not-telling. And I need all the romance to be backwards and unromantic and hilarious and grounded in one of those deep, transformative friendships that takes two people and turns them inside out.

And agrarian politics. Martha, bless her heart, the magnificent creature: YES. Forget the romance, let’s do agrarian politics. Debating land management is a hundred times sexier than rippling abs and ripped bodices. Unlock the brain first, then the heart.

That’s what impressed me the most, how willing Grant was to be unromantic. And cerebral. And all the things that don’t necessarily have a place when you think of romance, but are in fact the key to my heart. She’s willing to be contradictory and intractable. She’s willing to let her characters fail and change and laugh at each other and themselves. And to be honest. With each other, with themselves. Honest and intimate and ridiculous, the best kinds of things.

And despite the fact that Martha instantly won me over, I think Mirkwood is just about the best creature I’ve read in months. He’s a wild colt, all knock-kneed and clamoring, and he doesn’t need reins so much as someone to see the grace, power, and potential. Therein lies the beauty of the book, when Martha sees it, and in return he sees the unruly streak in her that no one else does.

I’d read a lot more like this one, so I hope there’s a lot more like it out there.