November 28, 2012

Beauty for Ashes by Dorothy Love

Beauty for Ashes is a romance novel with a historical backdrop.  Carrie and Griff are both very different, but what they have in common is that life has treated them differently than expected.  We meet Carrie Daly after she is widowed and before her luck seems to turn around.  Carrie is a post-Civil War Cinderella, seemingly bound to spend her life doing manual labor for ungrateful family members.  Her loneliness and pain not only make her sympathetic, they make us want to root for her...hope for her that one day she will have joy.

Enter Griff, the mysterious, out of towner who's stranger status brands him a bad boy.  Griff is formerly part of high society, but has been estranged from his family for years.  After some chance encounters with Carrie that show his kindness as well as his strength, we immediately want the two of them to fall in love!  Because of their pasts, Carrie and Griff have some important lessons to learn.  Many twists and turns bring them in and out of each other's lives, making the reader wonder if they will end up together.

The hope that these two could be together forever means never wanting to put the book down!