JayneB+ Reviews / Book Reviews / Recommended Readsclass differences / England / Historical / Regency / Royal-Navy / surgeon / War / Military8 Comments
Return to her respectable life…
Or take a scandalous path to marriage?
As her snobbish aunt’s companion, penniless vicar’s daughter Jerusha Langley is sent to take a donation to the local naval hospital. There she meets dashing surgeon Jamie Wilson and embarks on a secret mission—sneaking out to help him care for injured sailors!
With his life in peril fighting Napoleon, Jamie has never considered taking a wife, yet he’s impressed by Jerusha’s nursing ability—and beauty inside and out. Jamie knows she’s risking a scandal by helping him. Can he risk his heart and save her reputation with a marriage offer?
CW – Battlefield medicine is described, euthanasia is performed.
Dear Ms. Kelly,
I had a lot of fun with the light touches of humor amidst some darkness in this book and as it’s listed as part of the Channel Fleet series, I hope that some of the characters will be returned to. Fair warning to readers, the action takes place during 1805 when the Royal Navy was taking casualties during the blockade of the French fleet and ends just after the Battle of Trafalgar with descriptions of taking care of the wounded. Secondary characters are injured and some die.
Jerusha Langley gets saved by Scotsman James Wilson twice in this book. Once when she was nine and he pulls her from a pond and once when her aunt turns her out over Jerusha’s time spent helping with the “lower orders” in the naval hospital in Plymouth. Aunt Hortensia is such a snob and Jerusha has just ruined her efforts to claw her way into Plymouth Society.
Anyway, Jershua regrets lying to her aunt but not her decision to help take care of the wounded men of the Royal Navy (regardless of its deserved rakehell reputation). When a good deed leads to a conspiracy to reunite Jerusha with her surgeon husband now serving on a 74 gun warship and suddenly the French and Spanish ships break out of Cadiz, Jersuha finds herself in the middle of a war at sea seeing such horrific sights as she never thought she’d experience.
This is, may I say, fairly typical of a Kelly book with right thinking heros and heroines who do honorable things. One thing that I enjoyed here is that a few of the characters are a bit more nuanced showing both good and bad rather than the usual one or the other. Jerusha’s actions affected more than just herself and her aunt so the reaction of the servants who stood to lose their employment make sense to me. They might like her as a person but as they have so little themselves and their security depends on their betters, what she did is not easily forgiven.
James is a sweetheart as well as a dedicated surgeon. He’s a bit astounded that Jerusha has carried an emotional load of debt for the actions of their youth but soon puts her to work being a face washer, letter writer, and hand holder for the injured men in the blockhouse where he labors trying to do what he can with the medical knowledge he has. As it’s hard to do the most meticulous job of amputations on board a heaving warship in the channel, Jamie and his fellow surgeon (who is delightful) need to re-do some of these as well as take care of patients with burns, broken bones, and injuries from which they will not survive. Things can get intense during some of these scenes.
I like that Jerusha is faced with choices, choices which she realizes at the time will change her life and that she’s not afraid to take them. At twenty five, she has faced that bane of Regency unmarried women – being a spinster at home or becoming a fetcher, carrier, and arranger of shawls to a rich woman. Jerusha puts her foot down and makes her own decisions at that point rather than continue to allow others to do this for her.
There are some things which I am not sure about in the book such as where Jamie and Jerusha marry, a Navy captain flipping off another ship (that almost hit his) or that so many men would be nonchalant about or even encouraging of Jerusha learning suturing and debriding of wounds. Of course she jumps in where needed and helps out but maybe all these things would have been more accepted by military men knowing that, in a crunch, “all hands on deck” could be needed. However even as I paused while reading and mentally said “really?” I found I didn’t care. The whole here is so lovely and I spent a wonderful time among these (mostly) caring characters. B+
~Jayne
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Jayne
Another long time reader who read romance novels in her teens, then took a long break before started back again about 25 years ago. She enjoys historical romance/fiction best, likes contemporaries, action- adventure and mysteries, will read suspense if there’s no TSTL characters and is currently reading more fantasy and SciFi.