Book Review: A Stranger at Fellsworth

In the fallout of her deceased father’s financial ruin, Annabelle’s prospects are looking bleak. Her fiancé has called off their betrothal, and now she remains at the mercy of her controlling and often cruel brother. Annabelle soon faces the fact that her only hope for a better life is to do the unthinkable and run away to Fellsworth, where her estranged uncle serves as the school’s superintendent. Upon arrival, Annabelle learns that she must shed her life of high society and work for her wages for the first time in her life.

Owen Locke is unswerving in his commitments. As a widower and father, he is fiercely protective of his only daughter. As an industrious gamekeeper, he is intent on keeping poachers at bay even though his ambition has always been to purchase land he can call his own. When a chance encounter introduces him to Annabelle Thorley, his steady life is shaken. For the first time since his wife’s death, Owen begins to consider a second chance at love.

As Owen and Annabelle grow closer, ominous forces threaten the peace they thought they’d found. Poachers, mysterious strangers, and murderers converge at Fellsworth, forcing Annabelle and Owen to a test of fortitude and bravery to stop the shadow of the past from ruining their hopes for the future.

What I Loved: Sometimes a novel is just so perfectly smooth and entertaining that you can’t even begin to explain its awesomeness. A Stranger at Fellsworth was that novel for me. From the very beginning,  I was pulled into a story of adventure, romance, and that classic Regency setting. Ladd kept my attention throughout the entire novel with a story that kept pace and the characters evolved.
I read this one without having read the first two novels of the series and it read as a standalone. If there were any characters who crossed over, I didn’t know about it so there doesn’t appear to be any obvious spoilers.

I also had the pleasure of listening to this one in audio and can highly recommend the audio version. The narrator was easy to understand and pleasing to hear.

Rating and Recommendation: I highly recommend this one to those who enjoy Christian Regency and am giving it 5 stars.

~I received a copy from The Fiction Guild. I was not required to review. All thoughts are my own.