Title: The Fortune Hunter
Author: Bonnie Dee
Publisher: Self-Published
Length: 235 Pages
Category: Historical Romance
At a Glance: Fans of this author, fans of a well written period piece, fans of a forbidden love that survives, thrives, and endures, should find a lot to embrace in this book.
Reviewed By: Lisa
Blurb: A man with nothing finds everything.
Abandoned at birth, WWI veteran Hal Stanton faces bleak employment prospects in post-war London. Desperation spurs him to reinvent himself to hook a wealthy wife, one he will be devoted to even if he feels no real passion. But when he meets his fiance’s cousin, Julian Needham, it’s all he can do to keep his heart in check and his eye on the prize.
From the moment he’s introduced to the charming stranger Margaret plans to marry, Julian suspects the man’s motives yet fights a relentless attraction. He’s determined to reveal Hal as a fraud but must handle the matter delicately to protect his sweet cousin’s feelings. A weekend at the family estate should allow time and opportunity for him to expose Halstead Wiley.
Even as the men match wits in a battle of attempted unmasking, powerful sexual attraction threatens to overcome them both and win the day. Can a true love connection possibly grow between these adversaries without destroying lives and loved ones?
Review: There’s nothing quite like a Bonnie Dee historical to remind me why I love the genre. This author ranks right alongside Charlie Cochrane, Tamara Allen and some of my other favorite writers in the historical romance category. Her latest novel, The Fortune Hunter, is a love story that evolves wrapped in familiar and reliable tropes, and succeeds in the delivery of a happy ending that remains true to the post World War I setting.
Set in 1920 England, the one-two punch of the war and the Spanish Flu pandemic adds a backdrop of pathos to the storyline. These two events cast a long shadow over the characters and the plot, the losses attributed to both events still particularly resonant for the Needham family. The stiff upper lip of the elders who still cling to the comfort of tradition as they mourn a lost son, play out against the winds of change that were strengthening at the time. Women’s suffrage was gaining traction, and Margaret Gresham blows in challenging the status quo, bringing with her a surprise—her new fiancé, Halsted Wiley.
Julian Needham and Margaret are cousins but are as close as any brother and sister, so it’s unsurprising that Julian would be suspicious of the stranger who has not only offered a quick proposal to his headstrong and progressive cousin, but is also planning to pack Margaret off to New York just as soon as Hal can get a ring on her finger and arrange for passage. The suspicions continue to grow the longer Hal spends on the family estate, and Julian makes it his primary mission to find out everything he can about the stranger in his midst, and then out Hal for a gold digger who is only after the family fortune. The fortune that no longer exists.
The slow burn works to great effect in this forbidden romance between two men of divergent circumstances. Julian and Hal are both honorable men—even in spite of Hal’s subterfuge, he truly does care for Margaret—and the lust, denial, and eventual fulfillment of their undeniable connection is a payoff worth waiting for. The secrets exposed are as poignant as the truth of Hal’s past and the horror of his own experiences in the war, and I liked the added friction and tension this caused for Julian, who wants nothing to do with the tender feelings he’s developing for the liar in his midst.
The Fortune Hunter is a lovely comfort read, and the certainty of Julian and Hal’s relationship is where the comfort of this story lies. There’s something about going into a book and knowing before you’ve read the first paragraph that the happy ending you’ll be working towards will be delivered in a setting rich in details of the time, and by characters whose trials and triumphs are genuine and enrich the story. This is reliable Bonnie Dee, and I appreciated the romantic moments entangled in the complications of Hal’s plan to marry his way into a better life.
Fans of this author, fans of a well written period piece, fans of a forbidden love that survives, thrives, and endures, should find a lot to embrace in this book.
You can buy The Fortune Hunter here:
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