Burning Bright

Brambridge #2

by Pearl Darling

Some star-crossed love is worth waiting for… Miss Harriet Beauregard never wanted to be a teacher, but fate dictated otherwise. Despite trying to direct her pupils in Romeo and Juliet, she is very much aware that a) life is dull, and b) love as expounded by Shakespeare does not seem to exist. But then the man whom she has thought about every day for two years, her knight on his black charger, comes back to Brambridge. Only the newly returned Lord James Stanton doesn’t treat Harriet like a princess. He has just one to thumb his nose at his father’s ghost and paint the Brambridge Manor study mustard yellow. Instead he finds that as usual his father has had the last laugh. Someone or something is desperately trying to stop him inheriting the estate, whilst his anonymous superior at the War Office wants him to undertake one last mission to find out who is killing riding officers in Brambridge. It’s almost laughable that James keeps getting distracted by Harriet, the village’s dramatic school mistress, for she was the last person seen near where the first riding officer was killed… Burning Bright is a fast paced romantic mystery set against the back drop of the dazzling Regency era. It can be read standalone, or as part of the ongoing Brambridge Novels mystery series.

Genres: Romance

318 pages, Kindle Edition

Published August 9, 2016

Reviews

[Judi Easley · Rating 2 out of 5]

First thoughts: Can we just throw in one more illegitimate son here somewhere? Or maybe we can add another person not using their own name? Perhaps twist the evil plotting a bit more so the fiends can actually cackle as they gloat over the tied up love-birds? This one just is too much without the appropriate support.

[Barbara Packard · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great novel 👍

After reading this I wonder if the previous Lord Stanton had known that Harriet was Marie. Anyway, James and Harriet were fated to be together forever. What secrets everyone kept. What an awful father was the previous Lord Stanton! Thankfully it ends well 😊.

[Stacey Wheeler · Rating 4 out of 5]

Recommend

Good story with a few twists. I enjoy historical mystery/suspense and enjoyed the difference in this book as most of the story is not in a London ballroom. Look forward to reading rest of the series.

[Sherry · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really love the story depth and plotline, but the errors in the book were interfering with this story. The most glowing errors regarded the two years of James's war service with him returning in apparently 1816 or 1817. He was apparently at Corunna (1808-9), Salamanca (1812), and Waterloo (1815); how could he have been in battles spread across 6 years when he only served for 2? There were other errors that were grammatical, and outright mistakes such as was it the Friendly Society of Ottery St. Mary or Seaton and other situations where the story consistency failed. Pearl Darling really needs a good editor to fix these things prior to publication.
I also had a really hard time with the idea that a 15 year old girl (Harriet from the previous book when her parents died), didn't remember that she knew French and knew it well enough to only speak it after the shock of her parents dying.
There are several loose ends that are left after this book, but I assume that is on purpose and will be explained in later books.

[Anna · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really liked how this book intertwines with the first book in the Brambridge series, with different characters coming into the foreground. The plot is exciting and dramatic – just when you think you have an idea of what’s going to happen next, it all gets turned on its head! The romance is quite different to the first book, with their shared childhood and the fact they even tell each other how they feel (shock horror!!), and I really enjoyed that change of pace. This book has more of life outside of London which gave an interesting sense of what life was like then, especially for women without lots of money and high social standing – which makes the outcome all the more satisfying.