Stevie‘s review of What Ales the Earl (Widow’s Brew, Book 1) by Sally MacKenzie
Historical Romance published by Zebra 31 Jul 18
I must admit to a certain fondness for older or more experienced heroines in historical fiction, especially those who have been necessitated to make their own way in life due to widowhood, abandonment, or enforced separation from their first love. In some ways I prefer it when the woman in question meets either a new man to love or is reunited with a former love after she’s had some experience with others, but I’ll give all permutations of the trope a fair chance.
In this case, the lovers have been separated for a good decade due to the war on the continent in his case and good reasons to move across the country in hers – in the form of a daughter born out of wedlock. Fortune has favoured them both to some extent: Pen has made a home with other women who would otherwise have had nowhere to go and is now putting her farming talents to good use, supplying their brewery with hops, while Harry has inherited the Earldom of Darrow from his brother – a man very good at begetting children but less lucky at fathering sons within his marriage. The two might have gone on in blissful ignorance of each other’s continued existence but for the intervention of another unexpectedly elevated aristocrat, who wonders just what one of the regular payments made from his new estate is all about. Harry is dispatched to Little Puddledon to find out…
… and there he encounters Pen in a spot of bother with the local – less than devout – clergyman, who has heard unfounded rumours about the circumstances behind Pen’s daughter’s origins and thinks Pen’s supposed wayward past entitles him to get what he wants from her without seeking her permission first. Harry weighs in to rescue Pen, and the pair are reunited, while the reverend slinks off to tend to his wounds. Harry is delighted to meet his lost love again, and enchanted to discover he has a daughter, but it takes an awful lot of book time for the pair of them to decide that Pen is ideally suited to being a slightly unconventional countess to Harry, even after his sister-in-law and mother weigh in with their opinions.
Frankly, I’m not totally convinced that Pen’s happy ever after really lay with Harry, rather than with her hop plants, and while I’d love to see both of Harry’s female relatives find lasting love after their disappointing first marriages, I suspect the series is going to concentrate on the other women of Little Puddledon, who in this book seemed rather bland and insipid by comparison. Not exactly a series I’m planning to keep following, but I may change my mind once I see the blurb for the next instalment.
Grade: C
Summary:
Scandal does not define the “fallen” ladies of Puddledon Manor’s Benevolent Home. Instead, it’s a recipe for an intoxicating new future as the women combine their talents—to operate their own brewery and alehouse…
When Penelope Barnes arrived at the Home with her young daughter, she discovered a knack for horticulture—and for cultivating the hops needed to produce a superlative pint. She put her scandalous affair with Harry Graham firmly in the past, along with the wrenching pain she felt when he went off to war. After all, she’d always known a farmer’s daughter had no future with an earl’s son. Now she has the pleasant memory of their passion, and she has little Harriet, for whom she would do anything—even marry a boring country vicar…
Harry went off to fight for the Crown unaware that his delightful interlude with his childhood friend had permanent consequences. Now he’s back in England, catapulted into the title by his brother’s untimely death. He sorely misses his former life of unfettered adventure, so when he has reason to explore Little Puddledon, he jumps at the chance. But what he finds there is something—and someone—he never knew he’d lost, and a once forbidden love whose time has come, if only he can persuade Pen he’s home to stay…
Read an excerpt.
