Upon Your Love by Marie Lavender

The Heiress in Love trilogy comes to a conclusion in this final book with some new and familiar faces making an appearance, but also some unfriendly ones who threaten to break apart the love these characters have found.

What’s it About?

The Hill family saga concludes as loyalties are questioned, faiths will be tested and undying love may come at a terrible cost…

Fara Hill, mother and faithful wife, is torn between her family at home and her urge to be at sea. Soon, she learns some disturbing truths. Was the past a fairy tale instead of reality?

Chloe Hill, loving wife and young mother, questions her faith when her husband sets an ultimatum she cannot meet. Will she be able to keep her marriage from falling apart?

Adrienne Bellamont Hill, born of a valiant captain and a fiery redhead, is untamed to her core and will bow to no man. Then Christian du Plessis enters her life with an offer she can’t refuse. Discovering the man behind the polished gentleman, she is drawn to him in many ways. Holding out for love is a family tradition, but can she resist the temptation of passion?

Christian finds this young woman to be a fascinating challenge, and is torn between keeping his distance from her and succumbing to her charms. A fierce battle of wills ensues as he sees she is much more than he ever imagined. But danger lurks, threatening to destroy everything…Can these two strong-willed individuals unite in the cause before time runs out?

First Impressions

Of all of the books in this series, Adrienne and Christian were hands-down my favorite couple of the bunch. A large contributing factor to this probably had to do with the fact that they spent more time in each other’s presence than the previous two couples, who were seemingly constantly separated by scheming relatives or large swaths of ocean. Aside from mere proximity however, this couple also shone brightly due to their authentic chemistry which was blanketed with a playfulness you couldn’t help but fall in love with. If the progression of Adrienne and Christian’s relationship had remained the primary focus of the book from start to finish, we could have had a real winner on our hands. Unfortunately, this read was inundated with not only romantic updates for the couples from the previous two books, but also the telling of new romances involving Adrienne and Christian’s best friends, two servants of the Hill family, and even a throwback romance relayed via the journal entries of Adrienne’s grandmother.

Each romance was sort of told in subsequent blocks, which meant that just when the going was getting good with Adrienne and Christian, we’d take a massive pause of a few hundred pages to get a glimpse at four or five other romances involving different characters before we finally got back to our main couple. At least…I’m assuming they were our main couple? Therefore, while they may not have been separated by the physical distance that was common in books one and two, instead we as the audience were separated from them by a slew of other romances. We’re not only rooting for Adrienne and Christian to find their happily ever after, but also Elena and Pierce, Eric and Claudette, and for the happiness to be maintained between Fara and Grant, Chloe and Gabriel, and if I’m being totally honest I completely forgot the names of the grandparents. There were just too many people to keep track of!

Some Shared Dramatic Details

Although we’re dealing with a slew of Hill family women across multiple generations, they do have the tendency to share a few similarities when it comes to the love in their lives. First and foremost, there’s certainly a propensity for them to be involved in somewhat compromising situations (at least for the time period) before marriage. Whether it be premarital sex and pregnancy, which was by far the most common scenario, or being caught in the midst of a passionate make-out session with a man on a balcony at a party, these ladies eventually walk down the aisle with their devilish rakes with whom they couldn’t deny their sexual attraction. As if that wasn’t enough of a shared circumstance, most of these women find themselves having the most intense of arguments and disagreements with their spouses over their overprotective natures.

The men in this novel can’t entertain the idea of any kind of harm befalling their beloveds, that they go to over-the-top extremes of sheltering and patronizing their women in a way that comes across as misogynistically caveman-ish. The fact that these women have so much crossover when it comes to some of the more contentious points of their lives makes you wish there could have been more diversity in the dramatic plot points throughout the story. Instead it came across as rather repetitive, with an intense craving for something different to occur. The few times we do get new introductions of suspense in this novel, it surprisingly revolved around one of the secondary characters, but Adrienne and Christian manage to insert themselves into the fray on more than one occasion. While these moments did help pick up the pace of the read, it also felt odd that none of the drama was borne from vengeance towards either of our primary characters. 

*A copy of this book was provided for an honest review*

Series: Heiress in Love, book 3. The sun has set on this historical romance series. 

Final Impressions: Even though I enjoyed the evolution of Adrienne and Christian’s relationship from strangers scheming to get their best friends together to ultimately becoming lovers, there were simply too many other couples highlighted throughout this story. It prolonged the novel to over 700 long, drawn-out pages, and unfortunately this book was one where you felt the length of every page. If we had been able to edit out the majority of story involving the other characters, as well as the sometimes unnecessarily overly detailed scene descriptors, this book probably could have easily come in at under 400 focused pages. 

Smut Level: We get some pretty steamy scenes of the fun happening behind closed doors, and even one involving late nineteenth century lingerie!

Get it on Amazon: Click Here. Solstice Publishing. 705 Pages.

Upon Your Honor by Marie Lavender

A tale of romance on the high seas. When Chloe stows away on a ship in order to escape a foreboding fiancé, the last thing she expects is to find safety in the arms of a dashing sailor. When her fiancé refuses to give up in getting her back, Chloe questions if her sailor will succeed in keeping her safe forever.

What’s it About?

New York City, August, 1891 – Orphaned after the death of her father, Chloe Waverly stows away on La Voyageur to escape the clutches of her cruel fiancé, Lamonte Beckett. Gabriel Hill, a strange and compelling gentleman, comes upon Chloe and promises to protect her without knowing the true circumstances of why she is running away. During their journey, Gabriel doesn’t bargain on being distracted by her fair beauty or succumbing to her many charms. As their attraction to each other grows, so does the danger and Gabriel suspects things are not as they should be. Both are determined to get to New Orleans, where she can start a new life. But, once they reach their destination, events spin out of their control and Chloe is captured by the fiancé she escaped. Gabriel is left wondering if he can overlook her betrayal. Soon he finds himself in a race against time, to reach her before Beckett can exact revenge.

First Impressions

Well, I must say I found this second installment in the Heiress in Love trilogy, and the lead couple presented, to be a vast improvement from book one! The primary contributing factor to this success was that where we saw our book one couple separated by the vast ocean for years at a time, Chloe and Gabriel spend most of this sequel traveling together on the same boat. While there may be several scenes which see them separated by Gabriel’s workings either above or below deck, they can’t help but be thrown together amidst a tumultuous storm, during a walk on deck beneath the night sky, or even during an attempted mutiny by hired assassins. Gabriel serves as the protector on whom Chloe desperately depends, and she evokes a feeling of “home” that Gabriel didn’t realize he needed so badly.

Hiding the Truth

Overall this second novel presented us with likable characters that we hoped would find a happily ever after together, but we do also see some themes carry over from book one which were less than stellar. Most discerningly was the fact that while Chloe and Gabe are clearly smitten with each other and on the verge of falling head over heels in love, neither believes the other could feel anything momentous towards them, and neither is willing to admit how much they truly care. It was a markedly frustrating aspect of the read which lent itself to some rather unnecessary drama. For Gabe, he believes Chloe deserves someone better than a sailor who spends lengthy amounts of time at sea. When he finally realizes how much he loves Chloe, and that he’d love nothing more than to spend the rest of his life with her, he still chooses to remain close-lipped about it for a long time. If the romance of his parents (who were the focus of book one and whose love story he summarizes to Chloe) taught us anything, it’s that keeping that kind of admission to yourself can only lead to misunderstanding and heartache.

As for Chloe, the silence about her true feelings and the details of her past was a bit more confusing. Chloe is on the run from a seemingly diabolical fiancé her father promised her to on his deathbed. This fiancé refuses to allow Chloe to say no to his proposal, and when she runs away he hires a group of ruthless men to get her back. The scenes involving Chloe being set upon, kidnapped, tied up and almost violated are too numerous to count, yet she refuses to reveal to Gabe that all of these incidents are at the hands of her maniacal fiancé. She believes telling him would only put Gabe in more danger, and he might even feel required to send her back to this crazy man. Darling, the man has been in countless sword fights since you came along because of confrontations with the men trying to retrieve you, I think telling him the truth behind their determination could only help matters!

*A copy of this book was provided for an honest review*

Series: Heiresses in Love, book 2.

Final Impressions: This was definitely an improvement upon the romance related in book one. However, I do wish this second book had opened with at least one scene involving Chloe and her supposedly unbearable fiancé. He is absent for so much of the read, and we primarily deal with his henchmen throughout the book, so I would have appreciated an initial glimpse into our overarching villain before diving right into the story. It was also somewhat unbelievable that Gabe wouldn’t have demanded an explanation from Chloe about the danger seemingly following her everywhere since she came onto his father’s ship. However, you can’t help but appreciate the progression of watching Chloe see Gabe as her foe, to protector, to the love of her life.

Smut Level: There’s a few moments of passionate kissing which eventually build up to some beautifully tender lovemaking.

View it on Amazon: Click Here. Summer Solstice Publishing. 361 Pages.