Escape To Love

Wearing nothing but a torn nightgown, blood covering her hands, scratches lining her feet, Celine Hollingsworth is running for her life, yet she does not know why. Blindly stumbling through the forest, with no destination to guide her flight, she runs head long into Michael Aberdeen and his horse.

After years of avoiding a contracted marriage to Marguerite, a woman he has no wish to spend his life with, Michael has finally set out to do his duty. While he chafes as the agreement made between his father and his bride-to-be’s father while he and Marguerite were children, he is determined to honor his commitment to his family. It seems almost providence when he and Celine collide. At first believing the wounds that cover her body are from his horse near trampling her, he soon realizes the gashes and blood are from another source. Bringing her to Marguerite’s home, as it appears to be the closest refuge, he has his first glimpse of the woman he is bound to spend his life with.

Self-centered, petulant, mean-spirited and vindictive are but a sampling of the words that describe Marguerite. Hours in front of the mirror, practicing expressions, she is pure evil. Seeing Celine not as a poor abused victim, but competition for Michael’s heart she refuses to give aid. In desperation Michael leaves with Celine and returns to his home. Over the next several weeks Michael learns about Celine not from her waking words to him; rather from a nightmare she never seems to wake from. When she finally does, it coincides with Marguerite’s decision to join her future groom at his home. Just how malicious Marguerite is soon becomes obvious to the entire household except Michael.

Almost all of us have had a Marguerite in our lives. She was the girl in high school who got all the best guys, seemed to do well on tests and classmates bent over backwards to do her bidding. They did this not because the liked her—whoever she was—in the least, but because they were afraid of what she would do if they did not ask how high at her demands to jump. She was voted most popular in school but was, in reality, the most hated. In ESCAPE TO LOVE readers have the vicarious pleasure of seeing this nemesis finally get hers. For this reviewer, reading how Marguerite finally gets her just desserts was a vindication for all the high school girls who had one of her in their lives. It was sheer delight when her petty plan blew up in her face.

ESCAPE TO LOVE by Carol Hinchy-Wertman is a consuming love story. It is one of those books that once you pick it up, you just cannot put it down. Ms. Hinchy-Wertman does not write alpha males as are commonly seen in historical novels. Rather they are human, with their own sets of flaws and needs which makes them real. Of all Ms. Hinchy-Wertman’s male characters, it is a definite tie as to who whether it is Heath from DEADLY ATTRACTION (readers will have to wait until May of 2008 for this story—and while it is well worth the wait, this reviewer was delighted to be one of the first to read it) or Michael from ESCAPE TO LOVE is the more desirable. What makes reading these novels so great is you do not have to choose, you can have them all.

In ESCAPE TO LOVE the author paints an incredible visual buffet for her readers. From the images created of the waves crashing beneath the cliffs of Michael’s home to the “rose ceiling” of Celine’s home, you feel you are there with the characters. This is one story you do not want to miss.

July 2007