Blackmoore is Julianne Donaldson’s second book. Her first book, Edenbrook, was released last year. I read Edenbrook within two days after I received it, and loved it! When I found out that Blackmoore would be released this year, I couldn’t wait! I again read her book within two days and loved Blackmoore even more than I enjoyed Edenbrook.

Blackmoore is about a young woman, named Kate Worthington, who has been childhood friends with Sylvia and Henry Delafield, her neighbors. Kate has had a hard childhood compared to her friends, and wants to escape from her family. On top of that she knows and has vowed that she will never marry. She’s offered an opportunity to escape when her Aunt asks her to go to India with her. Kate asks her mother if she can go, who instead makes a bargain in exchange. Kate can go to India only after she has secured—and rejected—three marriage proposals.

Kate is invited to the Delafield’s Blackmoore estate, and travels there determined to fulfill her bargain as soon as possible. She enlists the help of her friend Henry, but gets more than she bargained for when she realizes how much she really loves him and yet, must reject his proposals in order to protect him and her own heart.

As much as I loved Edenbrooke, I loved Blackmoore even more! As I read, I realized there was more depth to each character as well as a well-woven mystery. I remember that I thought Edenbrooke was funny, bubbly, and over-all light, whereas Blackmoore was more of a mysterious, tangled, and over-all deep story.

What I loved the most about the story is the depth of the characters. Whether it be the selflessness of Kate protecting Henry and Henry protecting Kate; the selfish desires of Kate’s mother and sisters as well as Henry’s mother; and the playfulness between Kate and Henry, the connection (love) you could see that Kate and Henry have for each other.

There were many things that stuck out at me while reading, but the one that shocked me, I guess, is when Kate goes down to the beaches to think and comes across some discarded clothing, men’s clothing. She then looked out to the ocean and saw a shadowy figure coming towards the beach, towards her. She immediately turned, heard the figure come up the beach, and was shocked to figure out it was her friend Henry. My 14-year-old sister and I read that part together and we both gasped and giggled with delight. Gasped because we would be shocked, embarrassed, and horrified to be caught finding someone we knew of the opposite sex skinny-dipping.

We giggled because Julianne Donaldson tastefully and innocently describes Henry’s physique and Kate’s thought process of seeing him only in his breeches:

I forced my mouth to close, and then I tried to swallow. All rational thoughts had flown from my mind, and I could not pull my eyes away from his shoulders, his chest, his…..

“Kate?”

I pulled my gaze up to his face, but that was no better, with his eyes dark as night and his lips…

“Do you…have a shirt?”

I’m sure that Kate and I are not the only women that have had that kind of thought process run through our heads when we come across a good-looking man with no shirt on. Plus, I guess you could call my sister and I hopeless romantics because we found that completely romantic too.

I would recommend this book to any woman who loves to escape to those regency/Victorian eras, who are “hopeless romantics” like my sister and I, and those who love Jane Austen or Emily Bronte novels. To make reading this book an even better experience I suggest making sure your family has gone to bed or is otherwise occupied and then doing the following. Make a cup of hot chocolate (or your choice of beverage), cuddle up in a blanket in your armchair or couch next to the fireplace, and read Blackmoore.

Fair warning though, once you begin Blackmoore it is EXTREMELY hard to put down. So I suggest reading it on the weekend when you can stay up late and not have to worry about having to wake up early for work or school the next morning.