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Botany Bay #2
Alas, My Love
Can a self-made man overcome humble beginnings to romance the lady of his dreams?
Surviving against all odds, Amyas St. Ives grew up in a foundling home, then escaped to the streets of London and managed, through sheer will and courage, to make his fortune. However, money and devastatingly good looks alone are not enough to gain entry into London high society; not when Amyas is unaware of his true origins and is considered base-born among the posh Regency set. When he meets the alluring Amber, a fellow foundling and ward of a respectable family, he thinks he's met a kindred spirit--but when Amber finally discovers her true identity, the hurdles to their love become insurmountable. How can Amyas convince her family that what a man is matters more than what he was born to be?
384 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published March 29, 2005
13 people are currently reading
143 people want to read
About the author
Edith Layton
80 books103 followersEdith Layton wrote her first novel when she was ten. She bought a marbleized notebook and set out to write a story that would fit between its covers. Now, an award-winning author with more than thirty novels and numerous novellas to her credit, her criteria have changed. The story has to fit the reader as well as between the covers.
Graduating from Hunter College in New York City with a degree in creative writing and theater, Edith worked for various media, including a radio station and a major motion picture company. She married and went to suburbia, where she was fruitful and multiplied to the tune of three children. Her eldest, Michael, is a social worker and artist in NYC. Adam is a writer and performer on NPR's Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me. Daughter Susie is a professional writer, comedian and performer who works in television.
Publishers Weekly called Edith Layton "one of romance's most gifted writers." Layton has enthralled readers and critics with books that capture the spirit of historically distant places and peoples. "What I've found," she says, "is that life was very different in every era, but that love and love of life is always the same."
Layton won an RT Book Reviews Career Achievement award for the Historical genre in 2003 and a Reviewers' Choice award for her book The Conquest in 2001. Amazon.com's top reviewer called Layton's Alas, My Love (April 2005, Avon Books), "a wonderful historical." And her recent release, Bride Enchanted, is a Romantic Times 2007 Reviewers' Choice Award Nominee.
Edith Layton lived on Long Island where she devoted time as a volunteer for the North Shore Animal League , the world's largest no-kill pet rescue and adoption organization. Her dog Daisy --adopted herself from a shelter-- is just one member of Layton's household menagerie.
Edith Layton passed away on June 1, 2009 from ovarian cancer.
Graduating from Hunter College in New York City with a degree in creative writing and theater, Edith worked for various media, including a radio station and a major motion picture company. She married and went to suburbia, where she was fruitful and multiplied to the tune of three children. Her eldest, Michael, is a social worker and artist in NYC. Adam is a writer and performer on NPR's Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me. Daughter Susie is a professional writer, comedian and performer who works in television.
Publishers Weekly called Edith Layton "one of romance's most gifted writers." Layton has enthralled readers and critics with books that capture the spirit of historically distant places and peoples. "What I've found," she says, "is that life was very different in every era, but that love and love of life is always the same."
Layton won an RT Book Reviews Career Achievement award for the Historical genre in 2003 and a Reviewers' Choice award for her book The Conquest in 2001. Amazon.com's top reviewer called Layton's Alas, My Love (April 2005, Avon Books), "a wonderful historical." And her recent release, Bride Enchanted, is a Romantic Times 2007 Reviewers' Choice Award Nominee.
Edith Layton lived on Long Island where she devoted time as a volunteer for the North Shore Animal League , the world's largest no-kill pet rescue and adoption organization. Her dog Daisy --adopted herself from a shelter-- is just one member of Layton's household menagerie.
Edith Layton passed away on June 1, 2009 from ovarian cancer.
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
June 25, 2024
This was so awful that I am shocked. I have enjoyed this author's other books immensely but this one was the turkey that killed Thanksgiving.
The "hero," if you want to call him that, is a nameless orphan, turned London street kid, turned convict, turned transportee to the colonies. With luck and hard work, he turns things around and returns to London as an adult, with fortune and connections. But dressing the part of a nobleman is not enough. He wants respectability, a family, heirs, and of course, a real name, not the moniker he has invented for himself to mask his dubious origuns.
So he sets out from the big city to the provinces, with two goals in mind. Research his origins discreetly, on the off chance that he can find out something about his parents and why they dropped him off at an orphanage when he was a baby. He also hopes to snag himself a wife with a good and solid family name, since provincial girls would be less picky and less savvy than the London noble women who love to flirt with him but would not dream of taking a husband whose pedigree cannot be traced through Norman times.
This set up initially drew my sympathy, especially as it is laid out in his strong, emotional, narrative voice. But things totally fell apart when he meets the heroine, the adopted daughter of a local, wealthy bourgeois. He is immediately smitten, but then gives her the cold shoulder when he finds out she is also a nameless foundling, found on the beach as a baby after a storm capsized the ship she and presumably her parents had been traveling in, leaving no other survivors or any information as to her identity.
Instead, he courts her sister, without really caring for her, while making goo goo eyes at the heroine. He wants the heroine in his bed but he wants to marry the sister because as the real daughter of the household, she is the one who will give him respectability. The whole time, he pretends he is a London dandy, inventing relatives, estates, and a whole fabricated life, in order to fool the local gentry.
If this hypocritical, lying, cheating, mercenary, cold and calculating character wasn't enough to give you fits, the heroine is a doormat/martyr type who proudly suffers in silence the obvious insult of having this man courting her sister while avidly desiring her.
It would have been nice to have the whole con blow up in this cad's face at the altar but instead, the author inexplicably has him confessing to all his lies and deceit spontaneously, leading his intended's father to unceremoniously throw him out of his house. So not only is this character a liar and a hypocrite, he is also stupid enough to self-sabotage and too cowardly to follow up his own scheme to the bitter end.
I read enough of this story that I knew I would not be remotely interested in either of these characters ' eventual, inevitable HEA.
The "hero," if you want to call him that, is a nameless orphan, turned London street kid, turned convict, turned transportee to the colonies. With luck and hard work, he turns things around and returns to London as an adult, with fortune and connections. But dressing the part of a nobleman is not enough. He wants respectability, a family, heirs, and of course, a real name, not the moniker he has invented for himself to mask his dubious origuns.
So he sets out from the big city to the provinces, with two goals in mind. Research his origins discreetly, on the off chance that he can find out something about his parents and why they dropped him off at an orphanage when he was a baby. He also hopes to snag himself a wife with a good and solid family name, since provincial girls would be less picky and less savvy than the London noble women who love to flirt with him but would not dream of taking a husband whose pedigree cannot be traced through Norman times.
This set up initially drew my sympathy, especially as it is laid out in his strong, emotional, narrative voice. But things totally fell apart when he meets the heroine, the adopted daughter of a local, wealthy bourgeois. He is immediately smitten, but then gives her the cold shoulder when he finds out she is also a nameless foundling, found on the beach as a baby after a storm capsized the ship she and presumably her parents had been traveling in, leaving no other survivors or any information as to her identity.
Instead, he courts her sister, without really caring for her, while making goo goo eyes at the heroine. He wants the heroine in his bed but he wants to marry the sister because as the real daughter of the household, she is the one who will give him respectability. The whole time, he pretends he is a London dandy, inventing relatives, estates, and a whole fabricated life, in order to fool the local gentry.
If this hypocritical, lying, cheating, mercenary, cold and calculating character wasn't enough to give you fits, the heroine is a doormat/martyr type who proudly suffers in silence the obvious insult of having this man courting her sister while avidly desiring her.
It would have been nice to have the whole con blow up in this cad's face at the altar but instead, the author inexplicably has him confessing to all his lies and deceit spontaneously, leading his intended's father to unceremoniously throw him out of his house. So not only is this character a liar and a hypocrite, he is also stupid enough to self-sabotage and too cowardly to follow up his own scheme to the bitter end.
I read enough of this story that I knew I would not be remotely interested in either of these characters ' eventual, inevitable HEA.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 4, 2021
I don't know why it didn't get better reviews. The book was actually a masterpiece. Very well written, angst gallore,interesting story.
February 13, 2018
Not as good as the first book of the Botany Bay series, but I thoroughly enjoyed reading it and look forward to finishing the series as well as more of her books!
November 2, 2012
One of the worst Edith Layton I have ever read,and I have loved some of her other books.
The hero doesnt know where he comes from so off he goes to search for them in CornwallHe comes to visit the heroines home,where she lives with the man who took her in when she was found as a child on the beach.
As soon as the "hero" figures out shes not a daughter of the house,and has no family he decides she is of no interest to him.Even if he thinks shes very desirable.
Instead he sets out to court the heroines foster sister,the actual daughter of the adoptive father.
And this was when I started to lose hope about the book.
Hero is such a big hypocrite.
Hello,I seem to remember he was without family himself,he acted so tragic at the start of the book and wished he had a family to call his own.Because people looked down on him,even though he was rich. *plays a sad fiddle*
Then there was another very disturbing event(to me at least)
What kept me reading was to find out if the hero and heroine ever found out where they came from.But it was no reward for having ploughed through this book.
The hero doesnt know where he comes from so off he goes to search for them in CornwallHe comes to visit the heroines home,where she lives with the man who took her in when she was found as a child on the beach.
As soon as the "hero" figures out shes not a daughter of the house,and has no family he decides she is of no interest to him.Even if he thinks shes very desirable.
Instead he sets out to court the heroines foster sister,the actual daughter of the adoptive father.
And this was when I started to lose hope about the book.
Hero is such a big hypocrite.
Hello,I seem to remember he was without family himself,he acted so tragic at the start of the book and wished he had a family to call his own.Because people looked down on him,even though he was rich. *plays a sad fiddle*
Then there was another very disturbing event(to me at least)
What kept me reading was to find out if the hero and heroine ever found out where they came from.But it was no reward for having ploughed through this book.
November 5, 2021
Not as good as the first one, but I always seem to have to finish the series. Hopefully the next one will be better!!
I started to write a review on this book and realized I had written one 12 years ago. I was going to write the very same thing except now I know the next one is better.
I started to write a review on this book and realized I had written one 12 years ago. I was going to write the very same thing except now I know the next one is better.
November 29, 2022
I need to re-read this.2023. I vaguely recall it being super angsty and emotional.
January 20, 2023
Once again, Edith Layton pulls through with a wonderful plot and enjoyable characters (and another marriage proposal from an old man, lol).
I find Amyas to be my favorite of the brothers, and Amber is a nice female protagonist. I will say I think Amyas’ ambitions were unrealistic (who tries to find their family based on a name from a song???) and the way he acted between Amber and Grace was annoying. Amber I found to be an enjoyable character, Grace was meh, Tremellyn I didn’t like that much, and Pascoe I initially disliked but came around on him after the way he acted towards Amber’s refusal.
I felt the first half of the book was slow, but the second half was quite fast. Once the two were willing to admit their love for the other, the plot picked up. I initially didn't like the implications of giving Amber a rich and well-named family, but Layton’s handling of the situation turned it around for me. I liked that Amyas decided he wanted Amber before he found out her heritage, and I liked that Amber preferred her small life over her French one. I would have liked to see more resistance and/or consequence to Amber’s breakout, and I found the ending to be quite fast compared to the slow buildup in the first half.
I find Amyas to be my favorite of the brothers, and Amber is a nice female protagonist. I will say I think Amyas’ ambitions were unrealistic (who tries to find their family based on a name from a song???) and the way he acted between Amber and Grace was annoying. Amber I found to be an enjoyable character, Grace was meh, Tremellyn I didn’t like that much, and Pascoe I initially disliked but came around on him after the way he acted towards Amber’s refusal.
I felt the first half of the book was slow, but the second half was quite fast. Once the two were willing to admit their love for the other, the plot picked up. I initially didn't like the implications of giving Amber a rich and well-named family, but Layton’s handling of the situation turned it around for me. I liked that Amyas decided he wanted Amber before he found out her heritage, and I liked that Amber preferred her small life over her French one. I would have liked to see more resistance and/or consequence to Amber’s breakout, and I found the ending to be quite fast compared to the slow buildup in the first half.
May 14, 2021
Amyas wants a name. A foundling that ended up on the streets of London and only remembering his first name, he is convinced that he is from Cornwall, because of the song. Amyas is not a common name. When he passes over a "found" child, now in her twenties, for the younger "sister" of the Tremellyn family who knows her last name, only because she knows her last name, the situation is ripe for misunderstandings and mistakes. I enjoyed the second in the Botany Bay series much more than the first.
March 21, 2021
This book brings together two lost souls – foundlings who felt adrift despite having achieved material success, of sorts in their adoptive world. Amyas St. Ives is a self-made ex-con who’s on a quest to find his roots, and gain respectability through marriage to a well-born bride, while Amber, who knows little of her past before being taken in as ward of a respectable family in a coastal town in Cornwall, but yearns for somebody to love her for herself.
It came as no wonder that they should be drawn to each other even while they try to deny what’s in their heart and dreams.
What I enjoyed about this story is the use of seemingly ordinary folks, matching an ex-criminal with a ‘lost princess’, as main characters. Layton seems to truly understand the deepest emotions that grip us, and she engages you with issues that would matter most to the reader – the need for self esteem, self actualization; the craving for love and a deep seated desire of the soul to find its missing half. She paced the development of the relationship between both leads marvelously and used simple words that effectively conveyed the feelings of all the characters, not just the leads.
All in all, a touching tale that proved to be engrossing and uplifting. Read full review here.
It came as no wonder that they should be drawn to each other even while they try to deny what’s in their heart and dreams.
What I enjoyed about this story is the use of seemingly ordinary folks, matching an ex-criminal with a ‘lost princess’, as main characters. Layton seems to truly understand the deepest emotions that grip us, and she engages you with issues that would matter most to the reader – the need for self esteem, self actualization; the craving for love and a deep seated desire of the soul to find its missing half. She paced the development of the relationship between both leads marvelously and used simple words that effectively conveyed the feelings of all the characters, not just the leads.
All in all, a touching tale that proved to be engrossing and uplifting. Read full review here.
June 24, 2012
Oops, I read this book out of sequence. Now I have to go back and read the first book. 'Alas, My Love'rated only a "like" from me. The story was okay and the H/H were likable. However, I found myself skipping over a lot of the filler. It seemed that the author was on her 'women's rights' soapbox. She used this era when women didn't have any to promote her views. I don't mind being educated by filler, but I like it to flow with the story. This didn't.
June 1, 2011
This is a very slow starting story. I almost stopped reading it. I will not be reading the other books in this series. The storyline was decent, and could have been good, but it did drag on and really just wasn't worth reading. I would have given it a 1 but the story was ok, just didn't like the style of writing or how slow it progressed.
March 27, 2012
I've read these all out of order, but am enjoying them nonetheless. The only somewhat big irritation is the pathetic French towards the end. I realize French is a language perhaps few people speak (just kidding, of course), but surely someone could have helped Edith Layton get it right?? Unfortunately that sort of thing often affects the credibility of the whole book, in my opinion.
August 8, 2010
I had to stop reading this one halfway through. Just flat -- not engaging and nothing unique about the main characters.
July 6, 2011
I liked the beginning and middle more than the end. Too much going on. The resolution seemed to drag on. But a likable hero and heroine.
January 19, 2025
The leads share half a brain cell 🙄😑
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews