My rating: 5 stars / It was amazing
Synopsis
Gone, but not forgotten...
Alex
Sommerville should have been dead. To the world, he had been dead for
almost five years, and with him, the secrets he had carried as Trace,
the most elusive member of the London League. When a chance to escape
finally comes, Alex finds just enough life left in him to take it, and
races off to return to the woman he loves.
...Back, but at what cost?
The
last person Poppy Edgewood ever expected to see suddenly falls into her
life again - literally. Alex is a shell of the man he once was, and on
the brink of the death she thought him already lost to. What answers
will he have for her when he recovers, and can she even bear to hear
them?
My Review
I had a small hunch while reading the previous books that Trace may still be alive, so I was thrilled to finally read his story and see where his path took him. He had some seriously traumatic experiences and returns changed, suffering from PTS, yet also beginning his healing process as Poppy and his friends provide the support he needs. It was interesting how his relationship with Poppy is full of new dynamics that are complicated, but when everything else is put aside, they are able to connect at the most basic foundational level of their personalities and find joy and laughter again. The action, adventure, and danger that is trademark to the London League series is present of course, and the story picks up speed as the suspense heightens and leads to an exiting climax and satisfying happily ever after.
(I received a complimentary copy of the book; all opinions in this review are my own)
About the Author
Rebecca Connolly writes romances, both period and contemporary,
because she absolutely loves a good love story. She has been creating
stories since childhood, and there are home videos to prove it! She
started writing them down in elementary school and has never looked
back. She currently lives in the Midwest, spends every spare moment away
from her day job absorbed in her writing, and is a hot cocoa addict.
Excerpt
Loneliness is a creeping creature, and
its pangs were deep and ravaging. In the evenings, when work was
completed and she had so much to tell, there was no one to listen. When
she missed her sister or her brothers, her parents, or her life, there
was no one to commiserate with. When she cried in the night because Alex
was gone and no one cared but her, there was no relief. When she felt
more alone than anyone ought to feel, there was no one to take away the
darkness.
No one to share her burdens with.
The only person she had in her life
with any sort of regularity was Stanton, and he would not take kindly at
all to her sharing such personal and emotional thoughts with him. It
would have made him uncomfortable and gruff, and he probably would have
told her to focus on her work and the farm and forget everything else.
He had once told her emotions were a nuisance, after all, and that the
past was only good for lessons.
Not for visiting and staying for a time.
Poppy was only too prone to spend an
extended period of time in her past these days, though she knew it
wouldn’t do her any good.
The trouble was that it was too easy.
She scrubbed at the pot harder, her
brow furrowing with the effort, and when she stopped, she looked at her
hands. Once these hands had been delicate and soft, protected by gloves
more often than not, fair and without blemish but for the occasional
pricking of an embroidery needle. Her nails had been clean and
manicured, the perfect embodiment of a fine lady. Every now and again,
there might be a scratch on the skin from getting into mischief with
Alex by climbing a tree or racing across their properties, but her hands
had been fairly perfect.
Now, they were rough and worn,
weathered by hard work and aggressive labor. She had callouses on her
palm, on every fingertip, and along the edges of each finger. Her
knuckles were often inflamed, and her skin cracked and peeled regularly.
Lines and scars and dry patches dotted every surface of her hands, and
her nails were almost brutally short, uneven, and usually had something
under them, be it dirt or food or feed for the animals.
These hands were not those of a young lady.
Then again, Poppy could hardly be
considered young anymore. Twenty-seven was not particularly old, but in
those twenty-seven years, she had lived a lifetime, and she was decades
older than anyone of her age. Her life did not even remotely resemble
what she had thought out for herself, what she had planned, or anything
like it once had.
She closed her eyes and set the pot aside, knowing it was far cleaner now than it had ever been with her excessive scrubbing.
This was what her life amounted to
now. Scrubbing the pots and plates from her own meals, feeding the
chickens and pigs, currying the horses, farming with whatever help she
could afford to pay, even grinding her own flour to make her own bread,
at times.
Oh, how far she had fallen.
Lonely and cast out, working for every
morsel of bread, sweating her days away in the sun, and mourning a man
who had never promised her anything.
Poppy’s hands curled into fists and
hot tears filled her eyes. It was wrong to resent a dead man, she knew,
but resent him she did. If he hadn’t have died, if that was what had
truly happened, she would not be in this situation. He could have just
broken off their impending engagement, and she would have been with her
family now. She should have been wiser, not giving her heart so freely
without the official connection between them.
Never mind that they had been in love
since she was fourteen and he sixteen. Never mind that they had been
planning to marry for years. Never mind that she was so utterly and
completely his that she hadn’t been whole in almost five years.
She should have been wiser.
And it was his fault she was so destitute, despairing, and dismal.
It was his fault she had grown so attached.
It was his fault she still felt the ache within her at the thought of him.
It was his fault that when she looked
out of her kitchen window and could see the shadows of Parkerton Lodge
in the distance, she still looked for a light in any window.
As she did now.
But there were no lights within, and
no lights without, and the crumbling estate looked as foreboding and
desolate as it had the day the servants had departed it.
Poppy exhaled slowly, wiping her hands
on dry toweling. She couldn’t do this anymore. Couldn’t watch for him,
wait for him, ache for him. He wasn’t coming back, and this was the life
she had chosen for herself. This was her future, and looking back would
not make it any brighter.
She was done.
She had to be.
A knock on her door brought her head
around, and she waited for Stanton to enter. When he didn’t, and the
knock came again, more firmly, she rolled her eyes as she moved to the
door.
“Honestly, Stanton,” she moaned loudly. “It’s not so cold that you had to fill your arms to the brim with wood.”
She reached for the door handle and pulled the door open, fixing her expression into one of mocking amusement.
The man who stood there stared at her
with his dark, sunken eyes, leaning both forearms against the doorframe,
his chest heaving wildly, and her amusement faded at once.
She knew that face. She knew the line
of that jaw, the dark eyes that were endless in their depths, the nose
with a slight crook in the bridge from where her brother had walloped
him with a tree branch ten years ago. He was thinner, terrifyingly so,
and his face was hollow and gaunt, sickly in color despite being tanned,
and covered with a sheen of perspiration. His dark hair was cut
brutally short, but it, and the scruff on the lower half of his face,
were as dark as his eyes, if not darker still.
All changes aside, she knew that man better than any person on this earth.
“Alex…” she breathed, her voice catching on his name.
His corded throat worked on a swallow. “Poppy.”
Her hand lashed out and struck him
hard across the face, a weak yet harsh cry ripping from her throat. He
stumbled sideways, surprising her with his unsteadiness, and a tremor
ran across his once broad shoulders and down to his legs. Slowly, he
looked back at her, pressing his left arm against the doorframe again
and almost sagging against the wood.
“Please,” he whispered, his voice fading with shocking rapidity as his eyes widened.
Then they rolled back, and he collapsed to the ground at her feet.
Giveaway
(1) winner will receive a $15 Amazon GC + an ecopy of Falling for Trace.
a Rafflecopter giveaway
Be sure to check out each stop on the tour for more chances to win. Link
to full tour schedule below. Giveaway will begin at midnight February
10, 2020 and last through 11:59 PM EST on February 23, 2020. Winner will
be notified within 2 weeks of close of the giveaway and given 48 hours
to respond or risk forfeiture of prize. Giveaway open internationally.
Void where prohibited by law or logistics.
Tour Schedule
Follow along at
SLB Tours for a full list of stops!
Don't miss the previous books in the London League series . . .
