Welcome to British Isles Friday! British Isles Friday is a weekly event for sharing all things British and Irish — reviews, photos, opinions, trip reports, guides, links, resources, personal stories, interviews, and research posts. Join us each Friday to link your British and Irish themed content and to see what others have to share. The link list is at the bottom of this post. Pour a cup of tea or lift a pint and join our link party!

Last week, I reviewed How to be a Heroine, a book about books by a Londoner. Tina shared a memory / fantasy (with photos) about what might have been if she’d bought a business in Dunster. Jackie took us along on a walking tour of Londonderry in Northern Ireland. Becky reviewed the first season of Downton Abbey and the third season of Call the Midwife. Sim’s fantasy tour of London took us to the British Museum and Bloomsbury. Jean wrote two more posts to recap her recent trip to England: Wells and Salisbury and Stonehenge.

Book: Only Beloved by Mary Balogh
Genre: Fiction
Publisher: Signet
Publication date: 2016
Pages: 381

Source: Borrowed as an e-book from the library

A romp in the English country side and London town

Summary: Only Beloved completes the Survivors’ Club septet (link to my summaries of the first six books). Six men and one woman survived the Napoleonic Wars, but damaged in a variety of physical and mental ways. They recovered together on an estate in Cornwall owned by the Duke of Stanbrook. In Only Beloved, we finally get the story of the Duke. He opened up his home for healing because he needed it himself.

Thoughts: The Duke of Stanbrook is significantly older than the typical romance hero. Being older myself, I don’t read romances as much as I used to because I’ve moved on from many of the issues that the young heroes and heroines must deal with. So, it was refreshing to read about the older George and his heroine, Dora, who didn’t expect to marry given her advanced age for a bride at that time.

We get to enjoy the season in London plus spend time in an English village and on the rugged coast of Cornwall.

Appeal: If you’re going to read the Survivors’ Club books, I definitely suggest doing it in order. The interactions and updates of the characters across books are more fun that way. They’ll appeal to historical romance lovers and Anglophiles.

Have you read this book? What did you think?