Caught In A Cage

Caught In A Cage

• Sep 19, 2013

Blackmoore by Julianne Donaldson

Release Date: September 9, 2013
Publisher: Shadow Mountain Publishing
Pages: 282 pages
Source & Format: NetGalley; e-ARC
Amazon | Goodreads

Summary (from Goodreads)

Kate Worthington knows her heart and she knows she will never marry. Her plan is to travel to India instead - if only to find peace for her restless spirit and to escape the family she abhors. But Kate's meddlesome mother has other plans. She makes a bargain with Kate: India, yes, but only after Kate has secured - and rejected - three marriage proposals.

Kate journeys to the stately manor of Blackmoore determined to fulfill her end of the bargain and enlists the help of her dearest childhood friend, Henry Delafield. But when it comes to matters of love, bargains are meaningless and plans are changeable. There are on wild lands of Blackmoore, Kate must face the truth that has kept her captive. Will the proposal she is determined to reject actually be the one thing that will set her heart free?

Set in Northern England in 1820, Blackmoore is a Regency romance that tells the story of a young woman struggling to learn how to follow her heart. It is Wuthering Heights meets Little Women with a delicious must-read twist.

Thoughts on Blackmoore

I read and enjoyed Julianne Donaldson's Edenbrooke last year, so I was excited to see Blackmoore releasing this fall. This book is published under Shadow Mountain's A Proper Romance line, which is essentially offers "clean romances." These books want to make you swoon, but they're going to leave more to the imagination than a traditional historical romance novel.

Blackmoore is the story of Kate Worthington, a girl who feels as though she's caught in a cage. She has dreams for her future - plans to travel to far off India and to escape the path that's been laid out for her - but she's not sure she can make them a reality. Before she goes, she wants to visit Blackmoore, the home of her childhood friend Henry Delafield. Finally, after years of waiting, she receives an invitation. But her mother, a scheming and vulgar woman, has other plans for Kate. She wants Kate to marry, but Kate is staunchly opposed to the idea. She has declared that she will never marry, and nothing can sway her from that decision.

So, Mrs. Worthington strikes a bargain with Kate. Kate can go to India, but only if she can secure and reject three marriage proposals while at Blackmoore. Kate accepts and believes she'll easily accomplish her goals. But she has no idea what her mother's reputation and her sister's past indiscretions may have cost her. Failure is not an option, but Kate soon realizes that she's fighting an uphill battle for her future happiness.

One of the things I loved in Blackmoore was the friendship between Kate and Henry. It was nice to read a story where a man and woman are friends and have a history together with shared secrets, cherished moments and stolen laughs. It added an intimacy to their relationship - just from the first page. I liked the tension between them, and I enjoyed the way they played off each other. You could tell they knew each other well just based on their interactions.

I also enjoyed the setting. Blackmoore was a perfection location for this dramatic story! Kate and Henry had a love for the place that made it come alive off the page, and I really enjoyed seeing Kate explore this manor that she'd long dreamed of visiting. She'd previously only "seen" Blackmoore through Henry's stories and a gift he'd given her, so it was nice to see her encounter the place she'd loved before she even went there.

So, in regards to the setting and characters, I was really pleased. Donaldson certainly manages to accomplish the premise of a clean romance. There is romantic tension and moments of delicious swoon in a book that still maintains its subtlety and mystique. In that respect, I was more than happy with this story!

What I did struggle with was central conflict in the book. There are two things that are the driving forces behind everything that takes place - Kate's bargain with her mother and Kate's insistence that she will never marry. Her reasons for the second decision don't become clear until very late in the book, and that was something I really struggled with while I was reading. It's a decision that is very abnormal for that time period, so I wanted to better understand what had happened to make Kate feel that way. Leaving that revelation until the end felt somewhat anti-climactic for me. Instead of connecting with Kate over her difficult family and troubled history, I felt like I was constantly questioning her reasoning and stubbornness. With a little more insight upfront, perhaps I would have understood and cheered for her unusual (for the time) beliefs and decisions.

I also feel as though the bargain with her mother was unrealistic and frustrating. I understand that it added an urgency to everything, but it felt false to me while I was reading. The mother seemed villainous and mercenary from the very beginning. While she's certainly meant to be a troubling character, I did have to roll my eyes at her over-the-top actions and declarations. In fact, both mothers were very one-dimensional in a way that seemed a little too convenient for me.

It was the way these two conflicts were resolved that left me feeling a little lackluster on the book as a whole. I certainly enjoyed it, and I think fans of Edenbrooke will just find more to love in this one. However, I felt as though I knew what was coming and the inevitability of it all tempered my love for this story. I thought it was fun and sweet, but it's certainly missing the depth of Austen or the Brontës.

So Quotable

"I can never look at a bird without thinking of you," he said. "I wonder what you will do with your wings once you have found them. I wonder how far away they will take you. And I fear them, for my sake, at the same time that I hope for them, for yours."