Review: Love's First Light by Jamie Carie

One of the books I rotated into my reading was a book I won about a year ago from Allison's Attic of Books, called Love's First Light by Jamie Carie.  I hadn't even really heard much about the book, so I had few expectations and was pleasantly surprised by the nice read that it turned out to be!  Thank you to Allison for providing me with this book.

Synopsis:  Set in the time of the French Revolution, Christophe St. Laurent has just lost his entire aristocratic family to the revolutionary Robespierre.  Years after their annihilation, Robespierre still vows to have the head of any remaining aristocrats or their children, as he feels they have taken from the poor for much too long.  This forced Christophe into hiding, avoiding any possibility of running into Robespierre or his revolutionary followers.  One night as Christophe is out alone, he sees a beautiful young woman at a local cemetery, and after paying attention, notices her returning their night after night.  One day, the two lock eyes and feel a spark of interest.  The young woman was the widow Scarlett, pregnant and widowed by none other than Robespierre's younger brother.  The two fall in love, but the past lives and interests of them both could shatter their hope for a future together.

Review:  From the beginning, I really liked the easy manner in which Carie pulls the story together.  I found her sentence construction and story telling to be straight forward, yet engaging.  Honestly, it was an easy read that had me caring about the characters in such a way that I had to keep reading to know what was going to happen next. 

Although I know some of the history of the French Revolution, it was interesting to have a story that approached it, sympathetically, from the aristocrat's side.  This direction in story telling made me feel much more sympathy for those who lost their lives as children, who had nothing more than their family lineage to blame for their deaths.  I thought that Christophe's story, and the painful loss of his family made it all the more important for us as readers to see him happy again.  Having him fall in love with the equally saddened Scarlett seemed perfect, although the gap in their backgrounds definitely complicated the story and kept it moving.

Altogether, I found the novel to be a fun, engaging read.  Some of the "instant" falling in love sequences, when characters simply looked at someone and fell in love had skeptical me scoffing a little, but it was sweet.  I can't say that I know how that whole eyes locking from across the way and knowing you're in love thing would actually work, or if that exists, but it did seem to pull characters together that you genuinely cared about and wanted to see happy.  Who am I to drag my jaded views of love into the formula, right?  In the end, I would say it was a good, fast read, and an engaging story that I can recommend to anyone who enjoys a little historical fiction, and a clean, sweet romantic story.

*FTC Disclosure:  This book was won from another book blogger.  No monies were exchanged or earned for this review.

This book also counts as my 3rd and final book for the "Books I've Won Challenge."  That means I can officially say I've completed two book challenges for 2010!  I am pretty modest in the number of challenges and books I will commit to when I enter a challenge, so I can't say this is amazing, but nice to complete another challenge.  Thanks to Allison again for providing me with this copy of the novel to read!