Mary Jo Putney is a brilliant, original writer. She doesn’t stick to the beaten track, rehashing the clichéd plots that we’ve all heard a millions times before. Instead, she tackles the hard stuff of life – alcoholism, spousal abuse, prejudice – all those things that ignorant readers of Literature think you can’t find in a romance novel. When I encounter one of those skeptics, the ones who think that romances are nothing more than bedroom farces, I hand them Mary Jo’s The Rake or The Spiral Path.
I was so delighted to find she was writing a new historical series! Loving a Lost Lord is absolutely wonderful. It is the first in a series about English lords who all grew up at the same boarding house due to their reckless, unconventional ways. Perfect! I love them already.
But while the premise is terrific, this book goes far beyond the promise of a rakish hero. Adam, Duke of Ashton, was torn away from India as a child, and brought to England to train for his position as duke. Now, years later, he’s become the perfect duke – until he loses his memory in an accident and wakes up in a strange house.
That house belongs to Miss Mariah Clarke, a young lady in desperate need of a husband. So when Adam wakes up, she promptly tells him that they’re married. The rest of the novel is enchanting and incredibly romantic. Adam is torn between his first culture, that of India, and his second, that of England. Never truly at home anywhere, it isn’t until Mariah begins unfolding the complexities of his personality that he is able to find peace in himself.
But once his memory is recovered it turns out he’s engaged to a proper young lady. And Mariah takes a look at the grand ducal mansion and realizes that she’s not duchess material.
They have to fight, not only to be together, but to bring Adam’s worlds into balance - and they win when Adam realizes that “he felt as if he had come home for the first time in his life.”
This novel will leave you with a lump in your throat and a smile on your face. It’s utterly wonderful and not to be missed!
