Review by Malcolm Reid
The prospect of passion and possession in 19th Century Whitby doesn’t seem remotely appealing at first… However, call me old-fashioned if you will, and a sucker for historical romance, but Ann Victoria Roberts hooks and nets you into her novel, involving you in the life and loves of her feisty heroine.
The main bait is the identity of our fishergirl’s married lover. A theatrical gent and friend of Henry Irving, he’s up from London with aspirations to write a Gothic novel. Whilst she introduces him to the côte sauvage and the wilder parts of Whitby, her in turn reveals to her the wilder and more savage aspects of human nature… The inevitable happens. He is seduced back to London by his actor chums, aboandoning her with a couple of leaving presents that could make or break her.
Tragic failure is not an option for our heroine. How will she multiply those talents a thousandfold and be accepted as the bonny young lady of Threadneedle Street? And will there be true love at the end of it? You’ll just have to find out.
Roberts, with a crafty mixture of fiction and fact, is a great storyteller.