Hallie Reads: Everything I Hoped & More | An Hour Unspent by Roseanna M. White

ABOUT THE BOOK

Once London’s top thief, Barclay Pearce has turned his back on his life of crime and now uses his skills for a nation at war. But not until he rescues a clockmaker’s daughter from a mugging does he begin to wonder what his future might hold.

Evelina Manning has constantly fought for independence but she certainly never meant for it to inspire her fiancé to end the engagement and enlist in the army. When the intriguing man who saved her returns to the Manning residence to study clockwork repair with her father, she can’t help being interested. But she soon learns that nothing with Barclay Pearce is as simple as it seems.

As 1915 England plunges ever deeper into war, the work of an ingenious clockmaker may give England an unbeatable military edge—and Germany realizes it as well. Evelina’s father soon finds his whole family in danger—and it may just take a reformed thief to steal the time they need to escape it.

Publisher: Bethany House Publishers

Release Date: September 4, 2018

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OTHER BOOKS IN THE SERIES

A Name Unknown

A Song Unheard

MY REVIEW

I have been waiting and hoping for Barclay Pearce’s story ever since starting A Name Unknown. Finally, Roseanna M. White delivers it in An Hour Unspent, and let me tell you, it does not disappoint. It is everything I hoped—and more. Perfection.

From WWI history, intrigue, and suspense to clockwork, romance, and a ragtag family full of love and witty banter, An Hour Unspent is an utter delight to read. I don’t want to say too much and risk spoiling the story, but Barclay and Evelina are well-developed, complementary character leads, and the twists and turns their story takes kept me quickly turning page after page. I loved getting to know Barclay better, as well as seeing his interactions with Evelina, and the faith elements they learn and share are beautiful and encouraging.

I loved An Hour Unspent, no question, and I highly recommend it to readers of historical romance. (Read the rest of the Shadows Over England series, too—you won’t regret it!)

★★★★★

Thanks to Celebrate Lit, I received a complimentary copy of An Hour Unspent and the opportunity to provide an honest review. I was not required to write a positive review, and all the opinions I have expressed are my own.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Roseanna M. White is a bestselling, Christy Award nominated author who has long claimed that words are the air she breathes. When not writing fiction, she’s homeschooling her two kids, editing, designing book covers, and pretending her house will clean itself. Roseanna is the author of a slew of historical novels that span several continents and thousands of years. Spies and war and mayhem always seem to find their way into her books…to offset her real life, which is blessedly ordinary.

Website

GUEST POST FROM THE AUTHOR

Last year, as I finished up the writing of An Hour Unspent, my great-grandmother passed away at the age of 103. As I sat at her funeral service and listened to the heartfelt memorial raised up to her by her kids and grandkids, I realized anew that this woman had been a matriarch in the truest sense of the word. She’d taught my family for generations how to love the Lord and each other, how to serve the Lord and each other, and how to trust the Lord and each other. Grandma Seward was, in so many ways, the one who instilled in me my idea of what family really is.

That idea—that it’s those knit together by love more than blood, and that faith is the strongest foundation—is what I built my unusual family of thieves upon in the Shadows Over England series. And strange as it is to liken my twenty-something reformed-thief hero to my 103-year-old-grandmother, Barclay Pearce is very much to his family what Maxine Seward was to mine.

The founder. The caregiver. The leader.

I knew as I began the series that I would write about Barclay in book three, and as I got to know him better throughout the series, I grew so excited to share his story! This is a man who led his family first into and then out of a life a crime, always for the right reasons—so he could provide for the children under his care. All he ever wanted to do was give them what he himself had lost. To show them love. To prove to them that they were worth any sacrifice.

It was truly a blessing for me to get to write the story in which Barclay found someone to come alongside him, to appreciate and learn to understand him. To finally share what started him down this path. I loved the idea that only a reformed thief could steal the time another family needed to overcome their own trials.

There are many historical items in the book that were such fun to explore—watchmaking of the era, the suffrage movement in England, technological advancements of the war—but at the heart, this isn’t a story about any of those.

It’s a story about how far people should go for love. I hope you enjoy Barclay’s story as much as I did!

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