EDGE OF REGRET

Author: Janet Woods ISBN: 9780727866264 3/2008 (UK) 7/2008 (US) HISTORICAL Publisher: SEVERN HOUSE
Time Period: Victorian - 1860

In Edinburgh, Kenna Mackenzie is cheated out of her inheritance by her brother-in-law. When she refuses to marry Rory Challenor—the Scottish Laird picked out for her—the stubborn Kenna finds herself on the streets with only the clothes she stands up in. She survives for a while, but as winter sets in she becomes desperately ill. A widowed English doctor rescues her—but Dominic Sterne considers Kenna to be a street woman, despite his growing feelings towards her. When he leaves to take up a new position in the South of England, Kenna is broken-hearted. When Kenna returns home, it’s to discover she has no choice but to accept the laird’s proposal. Although the man has a certain charisma, she discovers he has family problems as well as entanglements. In the meantime, Dominic has realized his mistake and has returned to Edinburgh to look for Kenna . . .

RRAH's THOUGHTS AND PONDERINGS:

Every time I pick up a Janet Woods book, I know that it is going to be better than the one before it. EDGE OF REGRET is a phenomenal book and its characters are so fabulous I had the hardest time putting it down when I was done. Immediately I wanted to start back at the very beginning and read the book over again!

Kenna is incredibly strong in the face of everything that she has had to endure in her young life. She has lost her parents and her beloved sister, and now she has lost her home and everything that she owns to her scheming brother and her good-for-nothing ex-maid. Suddenly, her dead sister's husband has married the maid and Kenna finds herself out on the streets with only the clothing on her back. Forced to beg and pilfer through trash just to survive, Kenna is near to death when her savior finally arrives.

Dominic is a good man, a doctor who is in town only to teach other new doctors and then return to his hometown to take care of his daughter. But when he finds a dirty, street urchin being abused, his sense of good would never allow him to let her be hurt, even if she is just a loose woman off the streets. Dominic is strong, intelligent and everything in the world that Kenna needs, and when she meets him it is the luckiest moment of her life, as she is literally about to die.

The story of Dominic and Kenna is a beautiful one, one that kept me enthralled. This story keeps in perfect line with the other Janet Woods books that I have read, not in that they are intertwined, but in that they all have the same feel—bittersweet, lovely, nostalgic and beautiful. I look forward to every single book that Janet Woods puts out because I know that she just keeps the hits coming!

Kristal Gorman