A Heart Adrift

58211239

 A Heart Adrift

Laura Franz

Revell

 It is 1755, and the threat of war with France looms over colonial York, Virginia. Chocolatier Esmee Shaw is fighting her own battle of the heart. Having reached her twenty-eighth birthday, she is reconciled to life alone after a decade-old failed love affair from which she's never quite recovered. But she longs to find something worthwhile to do with her life.

Captain Henri Lennox has returned to port after a lengthy absence, intent on completing the lighthouse in the dangerous Chesapeake Bay, a dream he once shared with Esmee. But when the colonial government asks him to lead a secret naval expedition against the French, his future is plunged into uncertainty.

Will a war and a cache of regrets keep them apart, or can their shared vision and dedication to the colonial cause heal the wounds of the past? Bestselling and award-winning author Laura Frantz whisks you away to a time fraught with peril--on the sea and in the heart--in this redemptive, romantic story.

I suppose to anyone who knows me that it won't come as a surprise that I enjoyed this book. It ticks way too many of my boxes for it to do otherwise: chocolatiers, lighthouses, sea captains....(Even the shout-out in the author's note to The Ghost and Mrs. Muir was a win in my book). The beginning is slightly unwieldy from a bit of info-dumping and the middle tends to meander a bit. But I couldn't help but feel that the atmosphere and setting more than made up for it.

But more than that, this novel was also an exploration of grief, one strangely pertinent to me. I partially requested this book because Laura Franz was one of my grandmother's favorite authors, and every time I'd get one of her books for review I'd then pass it on to her when I was finished. My Nanny passed away last month, and I'd completely forgotten about this book until it arrived in the mail. While I enjoyed it, I still finished this novel with a little bit of an ache: she would have loved it--especially since she, like Esmee, fell in love with and married a man of the sea, too.


I received this book for free from the publisher in exchange for my honest review.

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