The Heiress of Winterwood

I really wanted to like this.

As a christian, i haven't read a lot of christian literature and i really wanted to explore it, especially a romance. So i gave this book every chance.

However, my expectations might've been off. I expected a sweet romance, this was not! I could not in any way discernable find a reason for these two to be into each other, no chemistry, very very wooden heroine and suddenly the hero loved her?... They say they love each other in the middle of this mess they're in, and frankly, they spend two minutes together overall.

So to me, a romance book lives and dies on its romance and nope, i just didn't buy it.

Then we have the christian aspect, prayer, psalms. It felt superficial at best, i didn't feel the spiritual struggle that they were meaning to convey.

And then the plot. Predictable, which i didn't mind, but really, the mistery wasn't a mistery at all, the mustache turning bad guy's motivations were certainly over the top. The character of the cousin... Nevermind her mindset... Anyway, the plot didn't sell it for me either.

I don't think it was all bad. The psalms were nice to hear, and i guess it's nice to see a happy ending, it just doesn't feel very earned, nor do we get the character development i wanted, to really grasp why lucy meant so much to emilia and how graham fell for her at all. To me the best character was william.

If you like a bit of predictable mistery, a bit of forced romance and a good enough wrap up, then this is for you. The writting is good, I might still try the sequel, since it follows william.

The Heiress of Winterwood is an enchanting debut novel. It has a slow start, but once the action starts, everything comes together beautifully. Amelia and Graham really began to click for me as they came together to save Lucy.

This was soooooo boring. EVERYTHING except for one tiny thing was completely predictable, the love story was non-existent until it randomally popped up at the end and then it just came out of NOWHERE then the book ended. Nope.

I read it in a day!


I cannot wait for A Lady at Willowgrove Hall (October 2014), I cannot wait to see what that cover will look like! In December when my copy of The Headmistress of Rosemere arrived, I realized that I was still wanting to read The Heiress of Winterwood but had not yet quite found the time. I started into it not knowing what to expect as Sarah Ladd is a new-to-me author and was amazed. The mystery, the romance, the page turning desires and the ultimate cannot put it down was what I found within the covers of that ARC. So I was definitely intrigued and delighted to continue the Whispers on the Moors series with the second installment of The Headmistress of Rosemere.

I received this product free for the purpose of reviewing it. I received no other compensation for this review. The opinions expressed in this review are my personal, honest opinions. Your experience may vary. Please read my full disclosure policy for more details.

posted within review of book, #2: http://creativemadnessmama.com/blog/2014/01/25/the-headmistress-of-rosemere/

I finally got around to getting the ebook and reading it after it's sat for months on my to-read list. I couldn't put it down! It is a romance, but a decent and good one. The descriptions were good and drew me into the story.
There were some occasional grammatical oopses, one of which was a memorable “fewer than two hours” instead of “less than”, but not enought to ruin my enjoyment of the story.
I will definitely be interested in reading more by this author.

Started this without realizing it was Christian fiction, which is not a genre I enjoy. Made myself finish reading it, and it wasn't my cup of tea, but wasn't completely abysmal either.