Once London’s top thief, Barclay Pearce has turned his back on his life of crime and now uses his skills for a nation at war. But not until he rescues a clockmaker’s daughter from a mugging does he begin to wonder what his future might hold. Evelina Manning has constantly fought for independence but she certainly never meant for it to inspire her fiancé to end the engagement and enlist in the army. When the intriguing man who saved her returns to the Manning residence to study clockwork repair with her father, she can’t help being interested. But she soon learns that nothing with Barclay Pearce is as simple as it seems. As 1915 England plunges ever deeper into war, the work of an ingenious clockmaker may give England an unbeatable military edge—and Germany realizes it as well. Evelina’s father soon finds his whole family in danger—and it may just take a reformed thief to steal the time they need to escape it. |
I've only read two books by Roseanna M. White, An Hour Unspent is the second, but I am already very much a fan. And I find myself wondering why I waited so long to check them out?!
With the 100th anniversary of WWI occurring over the last 4 years there has been a surge in interest in The Great War. This interest has brought forth quite a few books, both fiction and non-fiction, and I have to say that of the fiction variety Shadows Over England has been one of my absolute favorites. Roseanna M. White's blend of romance and suspense against the backdrop of an England at war and the turmoil of social reform on the homefront is a winning combination. Her attention to historical detail is such that the reader honestly feels transported to the time and place.
An Hour Unspent was a story that I greatly enjoyed. The setting and history are fascinating but it was the characters that really made it interesting. By turns I loved them, wanted to shake some sense into them, sympathized with their problems, and felt like giving a few of them a real comeuppance! I definitely recommend this particular book from Roseanna M. White as well as the series in general. Don't miss it!
Tell Tale Book Reviews gives An Hour Unspent by Roseanna M. White a 4.5 Bark rating.
Guest Post
That idea—that it’s those knit together by love more than blood, and that faith is the strongest foundation—is what I built my unusual family of thieves upon in the Shadows Over England series. And strange as it is to liken my twenty-something reformed-thief hero to my 103-year-old-grandmother, Barclay Pearce is very much to his family what Maxine Seward was to mine.
The founder. The caregiver. The leader.
I knew as I began the series that I would write about Barclay in book three, and as I got to know him better throughout the series, I grew so excited to share his story! This is a man who led his family first into and then out of a life a crime, always for the right reasons—so he could provide for the children under his care. All he ever wanted to do was give them what he himself had lost. To show them love. To prove to them that they were worth any sacrifice.
It was truly a blessing for me to get to write the story in which Barclay found someone to come alongside him, to appreciate and learn to understand him. To finally share what started him down this path. I loved the idea that only a reformed thief could steal the time another family needed to overcome their own trials.
There are many historical items in the book that were such fun to explore—watchmaking of the era, the suffrage movement in England, technological advancements of the war—but at the heart, this isn’t a story about any of those.
It’s a story about how far people should go for love. I hope you enjoy Barclay’s story as much as I did!
-Roseanna-
Roseanna M. White is a bestselling, Christy Award nominated author who has long claimed that words are the air she breathes. When not writing fiction, she’s homeschooling her two kids, editing, designing book covers, and pretending her house will clean itself. Roseanna is the author of a slew of historical novels that span several continents and thousands of years. Spies and war and mayhem always seem to find their way into her books…to offset her real life, which is blessedly ordinary. |
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