Beauty Among Ruins (J’Nell Ciesielski) – Review + Giveaway

Posted 27 January 2021 by Katie in Christian Fiction, Historical, Review, Romance / 5 Comments

Title: Beauty Among Ruins
Author: J’Nell Ciesielski
Genre: Historical Romance
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
Release date: 12 January 2021
Pages: 416

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About the Book

In Ciesielski’s latest sweeping romance, an American heiress finds herself in Scotland amid the fallout of the Great War, and a wounded Scottish laird comes face-to-face with his past and a woman he never could have expected.

American socialite Lily Durham is known for enjoying one moment to the next, with little regard for the consequences of her actions. But just as she is banished overseas to England as a “cure” for her frivolous ways, the Great War breaks out and wreaks havoc. She joins her cousin in nursing the wounded at a convalescent home deep in the wilds of Scotland at a crumbling castle where its laird is less than welcoming.

Alec MacGregor has given his entire life to preserving his home of Kinclavoch Castle, but mounting debts force him to sell off his family history bit by bit. Labeled a coward for not joining his countrymen in the trenches due to an old injury, he opens his home to the Tommies to make recompense while he keeps to the shadows. But his preference for the shadows is shattered when a new American nurse comes streaming into the castle on a burst of light.

Lily and Alec are thrown together when a series of mysterious events threatens to ruin the future of Kinclavoch. Can they put aside their differences to find the culprit before it’s too late, or will their greatest distraction be falling in love?

Excerpt

“Are you lost?”
Lily jumped, banging her forehead on the glass. She spun around to find a man with the most striking cerulean eyes boring into her. He was tall with burnished wavy hair combed to the side without a hint of fashionable pomade, and an angular jaw bristling with a full day’s growth of whiskers. He held a light wood cane next to his left leg. A black-and-white collie sat on his right side.
Lily rubbed her throbbing forehead. “I didn’t hear you behind me.”
“Clearly.” The soft burr of his deep voice reverberated in the heavy air. “Are you lost?”
“Lost in the dust.” She smiled as dust swirled around her head again. “Must be the maid’s year off.”
“Here to replace her, are you?”
“Replace?” Lily’s laughter bounced around the empty hall and skidded to a halt on the straight line of his mouth. “Heavens, no. I wouldn’t know the first thing about cleaning drapery. I’m a nurse, or at least I took training to be one, though I won’t claim expertise in that either.”
A long, blunt finger tapped against the top of his cane. “Are all Americans so modest?”
She refused to let the man’s cool tone ruffle her. Those unblinking eyes were another issue. She turned her smile to the dog happily wagging his tail. “I was looking for the main stair and seem to have taken a wrong turn somewhere between the Rembrandt and a deer head, though which one I couldn’t tell you. After the fourth set of mounted antlers I lost count. Wouldn’t happen to have a map would you?”
“No.”
How about a sense of humor? Leaving the stoic English behind, she had hoped their neighbors to the north would know how to crack a laugh. Apparently the stiff upper lip ran the length of the island. “Well, if you’ll excuse me I need to find the main hall before that dragon hunts me down.”
“Matron Strom.”
“I’d steer clear of her if I were you. I was sure I saw smoke curling out from behind her ears.”
“I’ve never noticed this curling smoke. Mayhap it’s you who provokes it.”
“Absolutely not. But honestly, how can one pack her entire belongings for an indefinite trip into one tiny suitcase?”
“She has her rules.” He tapped the top of his cane. “Like the one to keep out of the family’s private wing.”
“Is that where I am?” Running a hand down the damask drape, Lily fluffed it to pool in gentle folds on the floor. Though old and worn, craftmanship winked in the silk threads. “Not a surprise. I always end up exactly where I’m not supposed to be.”
Taken from Beauty Among Ruins by J’Nell Ciesielski
Copyright © 2021 by J’Nell Ciesielski
Used by permission of http://www.thomasnelson.com/

Review

Who doesn’t love a Beauty and the Beast retelling? Not that this is a retelling per se, but it has all the essential points of the story, most importantly a beauty, a beast, and a castle! Alec and Lily are the kind of characters you can’t help but love, flaws and all, and they’re such opposites in personality that the tension is all kinds of wonderful. A big part of the enjoyment in this story was watching them grow to understand each other little by little—a process that was by no means smooth!

Even if one puts aside the Beauty and the Beast trope, this story has so much going for it. The Scottish setting comes alive both in Ciesielski’s descriptions and in the characters’ interactions with their surroundings, and the many facets of Lily’s winsome personality are reflected in her interactions with a varied cast of characters: her cousin Bertie, the dragonish Matron Strom; the catty nurse Esther Hartley; Alec’s frail and sickly sister, Viola; and a multitude of other characters from convalescing soldiers through to the slimy journalist Richard Wright.

My heart went out to Alec in his struggle to keep his family home amidst the other burdens weighing on him: his sister’s health, his own inability to enlist, a mother who sees what she wishes to see rather than the reality of her circumstances. There are a few other things I won’t mention here for spoiler reasons, but suffice it to say there’s a lot more going on in this story than just a Beauty and the Beast retelling.

I did feel as though everything came together in a bit of a rush at the end—or maybe it was simply that so many things fell into place at the one time, some of them quite coincidentally at the eleventh hour—but overall, a story I would readily recommend to historical romance lovers.

I received a copy of this novel from the publisher. This has not influenced the content of my review, which is my honest and unbiased opinion.

More from J'Nell

Inspiration for Beauty Among Ruins

Once again, blame it on Downton Abbey. This time on Lady Rose. She was impulsive, spoiled, a free spirit, yet with a good heart. I knew I wanted to take on the challenge of writing a heroine like her. A character who starts off one way and by the end of the book has completely charmed you over. So I started writing and everything was going great until … it wasn’t. The plot just stopped on me. No matter how hard I tried the story refused to reveal itself to me which is incredibly frustrating for someone who doesn’t like to give up once they’ve started something. But I had to. In the end, I had to put the story, affectionately titled Love on the Limp, away for several months while I wrote The Socialite. Then one day the story clicked. It was meant to be a WWI telling on the classic Beauty and the Beast story. Everything fell into place and the story and characters burst onto the page in glorious technicolor.

Lily and Alec took me by surprised with how much I fell in love with them. Bubbly Lily and brooding Alec. Never had two more opposites been so perfect for one another (at least in my writing experience). They had so many obstacles to overcome, many of them self-imposed, that I often found myself in tears over their heartaches, but golly gumdrops when they came together, boy o boy were there fireworks!

You may have also noticed that the story is set in Scotland because I happen to believe that every good story is set there. I had the privilege of staring at pictures of this breathtaking landscape for months so I could imagine the characters strolling among the heather and watching the river twist through the green moors. To me, nothing rivals the awe inspiring beauty of a certain place, and hopefully readers will feel that through these pages.

About the Author

With a passion for heart-stopping adventure and sweeping love stories, J’nell Ciesielski weaves fresh takes into romances of times gone by. When not creating dashing heroes and daring heroines, she can be found dreaming of Scotland, indulging in chocolate of any kind, or watching old black and white movies. Winner of the Romance Through the Ages Award and the Maggie Award, she is a Florida native who now lives in Virginia with her husband, daughter, and lazy beagle.