So this year in the romance department I’m delving deeper into new authors with new series. Ellepkay has been recommending the Survivor’s Club series to me for quite a while now (probably close to a year), but starting in the late fall I decided to save some of these up for the hours and hours I will be sitting still under the heaviest thing in the world (although sleeping kittens are pretty much as heavy as a baby).
The Survivor’s Club is a group of men (and one woman) who survived the Napoleonic Wars, and now gather to support each other at a Cornwall estate of a duke who lost his only son in the war. Some of the survivor’s have physical wounds, but like our hero this time, Hugo, some of those wounds are mental. Hugo, middle class soldier extraordinaire, has survivor’s guilt to the extreme. Gwendoline, our heroine, is a widowed Lady who meets Hugo on the beach in Cornwall after she twists her ankle. From their meeting they work through their problems including Hugo’s guilt, Gwen’s own guilt, and their class differences.
And overall it was pretty good. I’m definitely intrigued enough to keep going in the series. This one felt in a lot of ways like Where Dreams Begin by Lisa Kleypas, but not on the same level. We have a fancy lady and a very wealthy man of a lower class being thrust into her high society. The men are much “earthier” individuals than the ladies, but need some cache in order to find matches for their sisters. The ladies are widows and agree to assist in helping the sisters, but aren’t going to give into the men’s shenanigans. Obviously shenanigans occur, and one is more successful than the other (Where Dreams Begin, go read it. SO GOOD).
But this one was good. I’m interested in where Ms. Balogh’s going next within the series, so really that’s all that matters. A decent start.