Kindred Spirits

Col Jack Caldwell moves in a recently inherited estate just to find out that the young lady next door is the same girl he saved years ago in a mission. Marianne cannot believe her luck when she reencounters her 'Jacques', the brave soldier who helped her and her maid out of France so many years ago. But he is clearly tormented and after she foils an attempted suicide she decides to help him. When Jack finds out that Marianne is accused of being insane (actually she has agorafobia due to the shock she had in France when she lost her family) so her greedy uncle can get her fortune, he is driven to action and they each are forced to face their own demons in order to help the other. This is as cute as romance goes, with the tormented hero and heroine helping each other overcome their difficulties.

A word of warning: while I really did enjoy reading "Kindred Spirits," quite a bit, I must confess that the novel did drag a bit halfway through the book, and that while (for the most part) I did find myself sympathising with the heroine, Marianne Barnett, I did also find myself growing mildly exasperated with her inability to come to grips with her fears -- and perhaps this was because Allison Lane dwelt a little bit too long (and too often) on this subplot!Colonel Jack Caldwell, haunted by what happened at Waterloo, and afraid that he had finally succumbed to his family legacy of brutality and cowardice, has decide to try and end his life. However when he finds the spot from which he will hurl his body off, he's interrupted by Miss Marianne Barnett, a young lady he rescued from the horrors of the French Revolution twelve years ago. It appears that Marianne owns and has been living on the estate next to the one he has recently inherited. Now, Marianne has her own share of demons. Twelve years ago, Marianne watched her family die at the hands of a French mob. That, together with the unkindness she experienced at the hands of her remaining family has given her a fear of strangers, and she's spent the past twelve years living in seclusion at her family estate. Now, however, with her trust about to end, Marianne will have full control of her inheritance, and she realises that she will have to learn how to overcome her fears. How she wishes that there was someone she could turn to and confide her fears. And then she sees Jack and recognises him as her valiant rescuer from the past. Realising that she had interrupted a suicide attempt, Marianne quickly decides to confide her fears to Jack, hoping that she will turn his mind from thoughts of death, and that he will, somehow, rescue her again. Will Marianne diversionary tactics work? But little do Jack and Marianne realise that danger comes not from their pasts but from a desperate and unscrupulous relative out to steal Marianne's inheritance, and who will stop at nothing in order to obtain this desired result...On the whole, "Kindred Spirits" was really good read. Allison Lane has real knack for spinning a good yarn and for providing with us with sympathetic and engaging primary characters. However, while the story did unfold seamlessly for most of the book, once the scene of action changed from the country to London, I did think that things began to lag a bit. I didn't think that there was any good reason why it took until the third chapter from the end for Marianne to confront her detractors and successfully defend her right to run her own estate. Also, while I truly did sympathise with Marianne for all that she gone through (and believe me, she has survived and experienced a great deal of cruelty, brutality and grief), I found myself growing a little impatient with our heroine's reluctance to face her fears. Perhaps it is because this coincided with the sudden bogging down of the storyline? Whatever