Veena’s review of True Love (Nantucket Brides Trilogy, Book 1) by Jude Deveraux
Contemporary Romance published by Ballantine Books 09 Jul 13

I love this book. It’s vintage Jude Deveraux with a blending of supernatural elements involving ghosts and reincarnation and reintroducing us to the Montgomery-Taggarts, as she launches a new family branch on Nantucket Island. Jared Montgomery Kingsley inherits his Grand Aunt Addy’s house, which he shares with his grandfather, the resident ghost. He is deeply resentful that he has to share the house with Alix per the terms of his Aunt Addy’s will.

Alix has just graduated as an architect with flying colors. She is ready to start building her portfolio in order to find her dream job, hopefully working for her hero, Jared Kingsley. Little does she know when her mother persuades her to spend the time on Nantucket Island that she’ll get up close and personal to Jared as a bonus.

She has just visited the house from her childhood, but it seems as though she has memories that go deeper than one childhood visit. She seems to know where everything is located and remembers details that would make one feel that she has spent all her life in the house. As she talks to the portrait on the wall of the room that she’s chosen, she swears that the old man is answering her back. Clearly she must be losing her mind or there’s something else at play here.

Jared is privy to many secrets that her parents have kept from Alix and wants to avoid her. Plus, being a famous architect himself, he does not want to subject to her hero worship, but willy nilly she gets through his defenses. Not only does she make friends with his grandfather the ghost, but she also makes inroads and friends amongst his various friends and family on the Island.

Her presence on the Island sets a lot of things that have been murky and hidden for centuries into motion, and suddenly the house and the Island are ready to give up its secrets. I really don’t want to give away the story, so you’ll have to read it for yourself.

We get to visit with Mike and Kane Taggart specifically but also meet many members of the clan, including the royal family of Lanconia. Clearly the adage that the person who can tell the twins apart is their true love still holds true so many years later.

I cannot wait for the next book in the series.

Grade:A

Summary:

Just as Alix Madsen is finishing up architectural school, Adelaide Kingsley dies and wills her, for one year, the use of a charming nineteenth-century Nantucket house. The elderly woman’s relationship to the Madsen family is a mystery to the spirited Alix—fresh from a romantic breakup—but for reasons of her own Alix accepts the quirky bequest, in part because it gives her time to plan her best friend’s storybook wedding.

Read an excerpt.