Monday, June 23, 2025

Review: Heart's Promise by Linda Hoover

 

Heart's Promise (Heart's Desire: Book Three): Gilded Age Romance



Heart's Promise (Buy now)

Linda Hoover

Linda Hoover Books

Kindle and paperback

382 pages

June 23, 2025


 


Welcome back to Jacob and Julia's Iowa farm.


In 1893, their son Justin is eleven, and daughter Annaliese is ten. When Jacob and Julia adopted Annaliese as an infant, they were told God had a special plan for her. As Annaliese grows up, she wonders if her purpose will be world-changing.

Julia's old friend, Edward Harrington, comes to visit from England, along with his wife and son, Robbie. Their time at the farm is the beginning of a like/hate relationship and later something more between Robbie and Annaliese. When the families traveled to San Francisco in 1900, a shocking revelation from Edward's wife could change everything, beginning with taking Annaliese to England.

If this is God's plan, Annaliese is disappointed. It's nothing like she imagined, and her heart's desire is to go to veterinary college. This could mean a very different future for her.

 

Reviewer’s comment:

Julie and Jacob Anderson adopt Annaliese and watch her grow into a level-headed young woman on their farm. She helps them with tending the animals and enjoying farm life in a small Iowa community. Later, family friends, Edward Harrington, his wife and son Robbie, come from England to visit the Anderson family. The Harringtons are polite but used to the cultured ways of high society. Julia’s family hailed from the Bostonian elite society, but Julia shed that class distinction for a simpler life with Jacob in Iowa. As Annaliese grew, she became a sympathizer of the Suffrage Movement, believing women were as capable and just as smart as the men. Annaliese soon learns in her relationship with Robbie that American culture and English refined culture were very different. And although she and Robbie were friends, their cultures drive a wedge between them when they try to converse and find themselves on opposite sides of the fence.

Annaliese's dream is to attend Veterinary College, but a trip to England gives her a taste of the refined life and family she’d never known before. While there, she gets to know Robbie better, and as their relationship grows into something more, they still have opposite views on issues, like a lady’s place in society. From different backgrounds, their courtship is stormy. As Annaliese’s progressive ideas hold firm, she returns to America. But will being a progressive woman win out over love and a straitlaced English gentleman? I’ll let the reader decide when they read this delightful, gilded age romance. The historical events lend a pleasant aspect to this well-written, adorable novel. Highly recommended.     


About the Author:

Linda lives in west central Ohio with her husband and grandson. She earned a degree in psychology from Anderson University where she learned the voices in her head were actually characters from stories waiting to be told.

Linda has been writing since childhood, but her publishing career started with writing columns and a middle grade serial for the South Charleston Spectator. A retired librarian, she now enjoys being a fulltime author in her home office.

You are invited to visit her website, Linda Hoover Books, to find out more about her and her books. You can stay in touch when you subscribe to her newsletter, and as a thank you, you’ll receive a novella.

https://www.lindahooverbooks.com



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