Common Thread

Sometimes, nothing can beat a charming historical romance. There’s something about the romance genre that makes me able to read a book in only a couple of days rather than over a period of weeks or even months like I often do. Of course, as a lover of all things historical, period romances are my favorite. They offer that exact right dose of escapism, without me ever having to question why I’m single when the girls in contemporary books make it look so easy to land a soulmate.

A Lady’s Promise by Raneé S. Clark is certainly one of those novels that I sped through, eager to see how the heroine’s dilemma was resolved and whether or not she landed the handsome love interest by the end. (Yes, I knew that ending was inevitable, but I somehow still needed to see it for myself.)

Isabella De Vries lives in New York City with her aunt and uncle after the death of both of her parents while she was still young. She would rather be an engineer than a socialite, always tinkering on some new contraption to try to improve the lives of those around her. However, as the next Season starts, she becomes worried that her continuing lack of a husband Season after Season is wearying her relations, who would rather focus on their new grandchildren.

A solution comes in the work of family friend Preston Baxter, who shocks her by offering to marry her himself. Similarly an orphan, he has cared for her like an older brother since he first became friends with her father many years ago and wants to leave his immense fortune to her after his death. And that death will be happening sooner rather than later according to his doctors, who have diagnosed him with a fast-acting cancer much to Isabella’s dismay.

The main problem is Preston’s younger brother, Prince Baxter, whose inheritance is threatened by Isabella’s pending marriage. Preston believes his half-brother is irresponsible with money and threatens to write him out of his will if he doesn’t prove he’s turned over a new leaf. He’s also determined to ensure that Prince cannot override the money he plans to leave to Isabella. But as the young woman spends more time with both brothers, will she be able to mend the rift between them and might she lose her heart to her fiancé’s younger, handsomer, less serious brother?

As someone who actually enjoys a well-done love triangle, I was destined to like A Lady’s Promise. It’s one of the most unconventional love triangles I’ve ever seen; most of the angst occurs between the two brothers trying to sort out a resentment born many years ago, after the death of their father. Preston cares for Isabella as a younger sister and the friendship between them is genuine. Meanwhile, there’s a spark between Prince and Isabella that can’t be ignored — and I do love any story in which a man falls hard for a woman who forces him to be honest about his feelings.

Isabella, Preston, and Prince are all dealing with lingering trauma from the deaths of their parents, and I enjoyed getting to see the three of them bond over it. But as much as I liked the scenes involving Preston, I was always looking forward to another moment of romance between the other two (despite the book being very tame and smut-free).

I particularly was interested in the project that Prince takes on to convince his brother that he has changed, which ends up actually transforming him. He decides to renovate a tenement building after hearing idle chatter amongst the upper class about the poor conditions that many workers live in. I’ve just been completing a project for my work about Arab-American women seamstresses who lived in tenements in lower Manhattan in the late nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries so I’ve lots of research on those very conditions. I thought that it was a thoughtful depiction of someone aiming to help such a terrible problem that plagued New York at the time, even though I wish we’d gotten to see a bit more of the people actually living within them as real characters and not simply a canvas for Prince’s change.

Clark’s style flows well, allowing the reader to get swept along in Isabella’s world. She’s an easy main character to like and sympathize with, even though I wish we got to see even more of her love for engineering and creating gadgets. I found some of the twists and turns of the plot difficult to predict and latched onto the characters so much that I made it through in only two days. A Lady’s Promise isn’t anything particularly revolutionary within the historical romance genre, but why mess with what works so well?

I was given an ARC of this book by Net Galley and Covenant Communications in exchange for an honest review. A Lady’s Promise will be released on September 5, 2023.