Book Review: In Love's Time by Kate Breslin

Kimberly's Rating (out of 5 hearts)

Title:               In Love’s Tome
Author:           Kate Breslin
Published:      December 13, 2022
Series:             No dedicated series, but follows Not By Sight published in 2015
Pages:              386, Kindle Edition
Genre:             Historical Christian Romance
Setting:           London, England, Archangel, Russia, and Hampshire, England, 1918

What do you do when the man you love has no memory of you but is the only person who can help you keep your daughter?
 
Clare Danner is an unmarried mother to two-year-old Daisy, the granddaughter of a wealthy and influential couple. Clare, once a servant, is now an orderly in a military hospital. She is in love with Captain Marcus Weatherford, an agent working for Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service. However, when she comes across Marcus giving an engagement ring to another woman, Clare loses all trust in him, despite his protestations that there is a misunderstanding.
 
Marcus Weatherford is assigned a secret mission to find the Romanov tsarina and her son and determine the veracity of an assassination plot on the Russian leader Vladimir Lenin. His cover is to pose as the fiancée to a beautiful Russian ballerina. Not long after he arrives in Russia, Marcus suffers a head injury and amnesia, but his fake fiancée manages to get him home to England. Clare is enlisted to nurse Marcus back to health and agrees because she needs him to regain his memory to keep her daughter. 

What I liked about the book:
Kate Breslin does a fantastic job of blending historical facts into her fiction. She doesn't overpower the reader with her knowledge, but it is evident she has done her homework. She weaves a captivating tale of wartime intrigue, faith, and romance, with attention to detail that pulls the reader into her story world.
 
Why the book isn't five hearts for me:
Although In Love's Time can be read as a stand-alone, I wouldn't recommend it. I had not read Breslin's earlier releases and found that vital parts of the main characters' backgrounds were glossed over as though the reader should know them already. Because of this, I had a hard time getting into the book—and almost gave up—until the middle, when the story hit its stride and became one I wanted to finish. The second half of the book was well worth the slow beginning.


*You can find Kate at katebreslin.com