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Ballenrose
BLOSSOMING DESIRE
Molly Flowers was torn between two strong and proud men. One was the elegant, immensely powerful Duke of Buckingham, whose golden wealth and warm praise made this poor flower girl blossom into an exquisite young lady. The other was the duke's arch enemy, the noble and handsome Earl of Ballenrose, whose passion for Molly transformed her into a magnificently sensuous woman. Molly had to either betray Buckingham or deny Ballenrose...not realizing that one man was using her as a pawn in an intricate game of rivalry and revenge...while the other swept her up in a whirlwind of glowing ardor, where she would not hesitate to give all and risk all for love.
Molly Flowers was torn between two strong and proud men. One was the elegant, immensely powerful Duke of Buckingham, whose golden wealth and warm praise made this poor flower girl blossom into an exquisite young lady. The other was the duke's arch enemy, the noble and handsome Earl of Ballenrose, whose passion for Molly transformed her into a magnificently sensuous woman. Molly had to either betray Buckingham or deny Ballenrose...not realizing that one man was using her as a pawn in an intricate game of rivalry and revenge...while the other swept her up in a whirlwind of glowing ardor, where she would not hesitate to give all and risk all for love.
592 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published March 1, 1991
38 people want to read
About the author
Mallory Burgess
16 books7 followersPseudonyms: Mary Sandra Hingston, Sandy Hingston and Catherine FitzGerald
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
December 10, 2025
Quite literally an up and down read
⚜ This story was full of up moments:
high tension, advancing plot, character development
⚜ However, in between, there were long down periods:
no tension, stagnant plot, seasons passing
I had trouble getting through those, but overall, I liked this book.
⚜ Insta-love, but old-timey style ⚜
I think if author nowadays are going to do insta-love, it should be done in style
━━⊱Molly⊰━━
『Fear and something more, something she had not felt for a long, long time, not since those far-off spring nights when she would hear Aunt May call from the window of Number 10 Gospel Square and run, fast as her bare feet and child's legs would take her, run across Fetters Lane toward cool milk and apples roasted over the fire, ran—
Home. That was what she felt as she stood and gazed at him in the moonlight. Home, haven, rest—all were there in the depths of his world-weary eyes.』
・
・
・
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
🕮⋆˚࿔✎𓂃 𝐣𝐨𝐢𝐧 𝐦𝐲 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐦𝐮𝐧𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐦𝐲 𝐟𝐮𝐥𝐥 𝐫𝐞𝐯𝐢𝐞𝐰
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
⚜ This story was full of up moments:
high tension, advancing plot, character development
⚜ However, in between, there were long down periods:
no tension, stagnant plot, seasons passing
I had trouble getting through those, but overall, I liked this book.
⚜ Insta-love, but old-timey style ⚜
I think if author nowadays are going to do insta-love, it should be done in style
━━⊱Molly⊰━━
『Fear and something more, something she had not felt for a long, long time, not since those far-off spring nights when she would hear Aunt May call from the window of Number 10 Gospel Square and run, fast as her bare feet and child's legs would take her, run across Fetters Lane toward cool milk and apples roasted over the fire, ran—
Home. That was what she felt as she stood and gazed at him in the moonlight. Home, haven, rest—all were there in the depths of his world-weary eyes.』
・
・
・
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
🕮⋆˚࿔✎𓂃 𝐣𝐨𝐢𝐧 𝐦𝐲 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐦𝐮𝐧𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐦𝐲 𝐟𝐮𝐥𝐥 𝐫𝐞𝐯𝐢𝐞𝐰
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
June 30, 2020
Oh my stars, I loved this book, and an already planning a re-read. What first picked my interest was the vivid opening, with flower seller Molly Flowers, in her rough and tumble life in the market place of Restoration England. A run in with the watch lands her in Fleet prison (I am weak for historical prison s, I tell you, weak) and into the lives of both the Earl of Ballenrose, a nobleman with a heart for reform, and his archenemy, the duke of Buckingham, who has a plan for revenge.
More detailed review forthcoming, but I adored the writing, the secondary cast, including the duke's wife and mistress in he same house, and the often suspenseful feud between Ballenrose and Buckingham. The real star, though, is Molly, smart and strong-willed and resilient AF. There's Shakespeare and Donne and immersive historical homebuilding in both the slums and royal Court.
I did find that sloppy forms of address did take me out of the story - i.e. referring to a character as *both* Lady Firstname *and* Lady Last name (no!) and referring to a success as Lady First name (nope, nope, nope, she would be Your/Her Grace) but even that couldn't take away from what is now one of my favorite historical romances.
More detailed review forthcoming, but I adored the writing, the secondary cast, including the duke's wife and mistress in he same house, and the often suspenseful feud between Ballenrose and Buckingham. The real star, though, is Molly, smart and strong-willed and resilient AF. There's Shakespeare and Donne and immersive historical homebuilding in both the slums and royal Court.
I did find that sloppy forms of address did take me out of the story - i.e. referring to a character as *both* Lady Firstname *and* Lady Last name (no!) and referring to a success as Lady First name (nope, nope, nope, she would be Your/Her Grace) but even that couldn't take away from what is now one of my favorite historical romances.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews