Miss Goodhue Lives for a Night
Kate Noble     


Genre: Historical Romance
Series:
Book:
Heat Level: Sensual

Next in the witty, sexy Winner Takes All Regency series from Emmy winner Kate Noble, author of The Game and the Governess and writer of the wildly popular web series, The Lizzie Bennett Diaries.

Cecilia Goodhue is a schoolteacher with a past, living with her sister and her husband in a tiny English village. Resigned to a quiet life, Cecilia is surprised when she finds out that her young cousin has run off with a man of no means.

Cecilia had once been a teenaged girl who also fell for a young man’s charms—only to be devastated by his betrayal. Determined to not let her cousin meet the same fate, she heads off to London to but is shocked when her investigation leads her right to the front door of the very man who broke her heart: Theo Hudson.

Together, they reluctantly embark on finding her cousin and returning her to her family. During their searching in London, it soon becomes clear that they both remember their short-lived romance differently and perhaps now, years later, they have a fresh chance at love.

Since I’m a sucker for second chance romances, the premise of Cecelia and Theo’s story intrigued me from my first reading of the blurb.

Their story is short and sweet. Ten years ago—when Cecelia was sixteen and Theo, twenty—the two were in love and ran away to Greta Green to marry. Or at least they attempted to. They didn’t quite make it. Her father and his uncle meddled and managed to keep them apart, each walking away believing the other had deceived them.

Now Cecilia is a spinster living with her sister and her family and Theo is a lawyer. When Cecilia’s cousin is feared to have run off with a gentleman in the regiment, Cecilia sets off to find her and bring her home. Who should she encounter…and join forces with in that search? Of course, Theo.

For me, this plot could only work in a novella-length book because the one biggest thing standing between was the deception that tore them apart all those years ago. The matter isn’t dealt with immediately, and one might expect that to be the case. But the longer they’re together with this…issue between them, the more restless and impatient I became in hoping they’d soon address the elephant in the room. Luckily the book isn’t terribly long and the wait wasn’t interminably long.

All in all, Cecelia and Theo made a lovely couple. And although theirs is a reunion long in coming (ten years!), a love as enduring as theirs makes their HEA particularly sweet.  

Miss Goodhue Live For a Night is a great novella to read while you’re waiting for Ms. Noble’s next book The Dare and the Doctor, which comes out November 22nd.

~ Beverley