Someone to Hold by Mary Balogh (Book Beginnings & Friday 56)

Someone to Hold is the second in Mary Balogh's Westcott series. I adored the first one when I read it in October and I think I may just adore this one even more (which hardly even seems possible)!

We met Camille Westcott in the first book but never really got to know her and this is the story where we get to know her and, more importantly, she gets to know herself. She had always been Lady Camille -- until it was discovered that her birth (and those of her sister and brother) was illegitimate as her father had been married to the mother of our Someone to Love heroine, Anna. Now Lady Camille is just Camille and living in the place where Anna had grown up. Not only is she living in the same town, but she starts to work at the same orphanage where Anna had spent the majority of her life leading up to StL! Of course, this means she gets to meet the people who knew her half-sister the best -- including her lifelong best friend, Joel Cunningham. 

It's a lovely story of opening up to others and self and I easily devoured it in just over a day. It would have been done in a sitting, but one has to work, eat and sleep ... rather unfortunately.

Friday 56 (today is from the 56% mark of the ebook) is hosted at Freda's Voice

& Book Beginnings (share the first few sentences) is at Rose City Reader.

Someone to Love by Mary Balogh (Tuesday Intros & Teaser Tuesday)

Oh, this book! I grabbed it off the shelf as it was the only thing I physically had in my possession that was a regency that hadn't been read and reread ... and I'm participating in the OWNtober readathon for the month of October devoted to books already owned. I debated going out to buy a Julia Quinn before the end of September, but ultimately decided that it would be cheating in a way. I'm glad I went with Balogh instead for now I have another wonderful author to turn to for the blissful escapism my life so frequently seems to need now. This was a surprising read. I had figured out quite early on who was going to end up with who, but how it came about and how it played out was beyond what I had imagined. Their story made me laugh and catch my breath and panic and filled my thoughts and heart with all sorts of "if-only"s. My only regret is that it ended too soon, but I'm hopeful that the next installments in the series will revisit the characters I have come to cherish, even if only briefly.

"First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intros" is from the first paragraph or two of a book being read now (or in the future) and is hosted by I'd Rather Be At The Beach. "Teaser Tuesday" at The Purple Booker asks for a random line or two from anywhere in the book currently being read.