The Love Note was so GOOD. I enjoyed the writing style and the characters and… well let’s just get to it!
Focused on a career in medicine and not on romance, Willa Duvall is thrown slightly off course during the summer of 1865 when she discovers a never-opened love letter in a crack of her old writing desk. Compelled to find the passionate soul who penned it and the person who never received it, she takes a job as a nurse at the seaside estate of Crestwicke Manor.
Everyone at Crestwicke has feelings–mostly negative ones–about the man who wrote the letter, but he seems to have disappeared. With plenty of enticing clues but few answers, Willa’s search becomes even more complicated when she misplaces the letter and it passes from person to person in the house, each finding a thrilling or disheartening message in its words.
Laced with mysteries large and small, this romantic Victorian-era tale of love lost, love deferred, and love found is sure to delight.
The Characters
Wow guys. The main character, Willa Duvall, was so three dimensional! I felt like she was real and there and actually RELATED TO HER! I usually have such a hard time relating to female characters, and especially historical fiction females. Girls that are feministic, against love and driven by pursuing their careers are like the cliche that just make me cringe. Willa was not that way. She was animated, she was a ray of sunshine with heart. She wanted so to be a doctor in a world where doctors were men, and she didn’t let it discourage her.
Willa’s need for love was true. She knew it was their. She didn’t deny it. The way that the author portrayed that need for love and what her motive was to avoid it was STUNNING! I LOVED it so much. It was beautiful. She wasn’t against marriage as a whole. She wouldn’t give up her future for a man that didn’t love her and that she didn’t love. And that was beautiful to me. I could go on and on about how amazing she was. Her heart of forgiveness and her courage was admirable. And she was stubborn, but not stupidly so, and I loved her all the more for it.
Golda Grasham was a character. She was a spoiled woman, a gifted poet and a lady full of secrets. She was the drive of the plot and well utilized. Very well done.
When I first started the book and Willa got to Crestwicke, I thought it was going to be Burke. But then Gabe blinked into the scene and disappeared just as quickly and I chased him like a lovesick girl. Gabe was a gift to humanity with his quiet words and tender attentiveness and, Willa was right when she told her father. He was only quiet in regards to his words. He was so perfectly portrayed as a quiet character, but he was powerful and relatable and 3D.
The Plot
The plot of The Love Note was so deep and threaded into each other and steady. It didn’t get lost along the way anywhere. It didn’t cut short or jump around. There wasn’t any excess information or chapters that made you just wonder why it’s there. It was like eating a good dinner with dessert and coffee and you just want to sit back afterwards and smile.
The Aberdeen heirloom was the best thing in the world. I adored it. The letter itself led each person on a journey of self discovery. Relearning hope and love. The horses where just a symbol of who Willa was and what she needed. And the little person at the end for Celeste. It was all so beautiful.
The Content.
There wasn’t any content in this book. It was a Christian fiction, and I really appreciated how the author included the faith and trust aspects into the plot without making it seem pushed or just thrown in for the sake of calling it Christian. It was quality.
This book is a romance story, but there was TWO KISSES in the WHOLE BOOK and there was NOTHING sensual AT ALL about ANY OF IT! The love between characters was SO genuine and SO deep and real and dedicated that there wasn’t any need for the physical lusts that so many books include. I LOVED the way that the author handled this topic. It makes your heart ache with happiness.
In Summary
The Love Note was basically: the movie Letters to Juliette, the three Lost Castle books by Kristy Cambron (which I also loved, but this one was just the historical POV, which was my favorite part of that trilogy). It also felt a little like Jane Eyre. As I read it I kept laughing because there were just so many different details and aspects to the story. Put together and woven into this beautiful thing, there’s really nothing like it.
I recommend this book for anybody 16 and older (because it is a romance) who loves historical romances! It was perfection. You can add it to your goodreads TBR here.
Thank you to Revell Books and Joanna Politano for sending me a copy of The Love Note. A positive review was not required and all opinions stated in the review are my own!
I SO NEED TO READ THIS!