A Novel with Thoughts and Ponderings

IT'S ALWAYS BEEN YOU

Author: Victoria Dahl ISBN: 9781420104844 8/2011 HISTORICAL Publisher: KENSINGTON
Time Period: Victorian 1849

It's Always Been You by Victoria Dahl
Once She Slipped Through His Fingers...

Aidan York has spent ten years mourning the woman he once loved and lost. He's filled the void in the only way he knows—by distracting himself with wild behavior and scandalous trysts. It's a hollow existence, but it dulls the pain. Until the day he encounters a ghost: the woman he thought drowned at sea, alive and as enchanting as ever...

Now He'll Keep Her In His Arms...

When Kate Hamilton sees the man she once hoped to spend her life with, she is hit with a storm of memories and longing. But though resisting Aidan's passion proves impossible, Kate must try not to love him all over again. For her seemingly quiet London life shields a dangerous secret, one that will catch up to her the moment she lets herself fall.

RRAH's THOUGHTS AND PONDERINGS: Top Pick

IT'S ALWAYS BEEN YOU is the second in Dahl’s York family series, after A LITTLE BIT WILD. It’s my first Dahl read, but it certainly won’t be the last.

England: 1849. Aiden York is the second son of a baron who has distinguished himself with an importing business. He visits Kingston-upon-Hull about a ship and finds himself faced with a ghost instead. Is the married coffee merchant he sees possibly Katie Tremont, the girl who died on her way to marry another man in Ceylon after they argued a decade ago? Could the girl he loved and wanted to marry be alive?

While the story doesn’t have quite the run-of-the-mill plot or setting, it’s the characters that really stand out here. Dahl goes deeper into the hearts and thoughts of her characters than most writers and adds more density and flavor as a result. Her rakish hero feels real shame for his ten years of debauchery when his One True Love reappears, and the requisite conflict when the heroine finds out the truth about his past doesn’t resolve like these situations usually do in romances. The heroine has more empathy for her torturers and enemies—they aren’t black and white or completely villainous, either.

A complex, romantic read, IT'S ALWAYS BEEN YOU is one of my favorite Victorian romance reads of 2011!

Heather Hiestand

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