Fresh Faced Friday featuring Dangerous Heart by Sara Lynn Hoyt

Today is my first addition to the blog this year.  Every Friday, starting in January, I will feature a new author (at least to me).  Most of these authors have come to me asking for an honest review.  This first feature is a fantastic historical romance.  Sara Lynn Hoyt definitely doesn’t disappoint.  If you are like me and like a little danger in her tormented hero and a bit of a plain beauty in your heroine you will love Sara Lynn Hoyt’s Dangerous Heart.  Be sure to check out my full review below.

Dangerous Heart

Philadelphia, 1838
Penelope Kincaid believes she is a unremarkable, unlovable girl, especially when she sees herself in her father’s disapproving eyes and his constant comparison to her perfect little sister. All she’s ever wanted is to be loved by her father the way he loves her sister. So when a friend’s brother agrees to marry Penny she believes all her problems are solved. Her father must approve since her new fiancé is rich and of the right social standing. Finally, her father will see that she is worthy of his love.

Cord Vandenberg believes he can never escape his own tortured past. Instead, he will save his best friend from a similar fate whom he believes is being married off to a social climbing gold-digger. Cord vows to stop Penelope Kincaid from ruining his friend’s life. In his attempts to break the two apart, he discovers that Penny’s heart is true, and her kisses are sweeter than wine. She is the only person who can pull him from his darkness, but she is engaged to his best friend. He is tortured by both the thought of hurting his friend and losing Penny forever.

Review:

Dangerous Heart is set in the early 1800’s Philadelphia.  A time not long after the war of 1812 but way before the Civil War is about to break out.  It is still a time when status and money make a difference in both a woman’s and a man’s world.  Penny is considered plain by her father.  She is the eldest of two but is not the favored daughter.  She is from Pittsburgh but is visiting Georgianna, a from school, and experiencing Philadelphian society.  This society is fashioned after the ton of English society.  Penny doesn’t have any prospects for marriage but sees marriage as a way of escaping her father’s abusive ways.  While visiting with Georgianna that she suggests that if Penny were to marry Georgianna’s brother, Thomas then both Penny and Thomas’s problems would be solved.  Seeing as Thomas sees Penny more like a sister than a prospective bedmate they both fall into the trap of possibly marrying for convenience.

Enter Cord Vandenberg, Thomas’s best friend and confidant.  Cord is a dashing handsome rogue who is more alcoholic than any woman would want in a man.  Penny first runs into Cord in the park after running after her wayward bonnet.  Not knowing who each other is they have an immediate spark of attraction that sears the image of the other in their minds.  After a horrible first real meeting and misunderstanding at Georgianna’s ball.  The begin to really develop true feelings even if Cord originally started out by trying to be devious.  Penny’s genuine nature charms Cord and Cord’s smoldering good looks and tormented  soul draws in Penny.  The love story between these two characters feels very genuine and real.  Even the obstacles that are placed in the way of their happens can’t stop two hearts that are meant to love one another.  This is definitely a historical romance for the books.  If you want to read a regency like romance set in the New World then you will enjoy Dangerous Heart.

I was extremely impressed with Saralynn Hoyt’s Dangerous Heart.  Her writing was very fluid and yet concise.  She is able to draw you into the story and drive you to want to learn more about the characters.  You feel their emotions and fall in and out of love with them just as they do each other.  Being from the Philadelphia area I really enjoyed the setting even if it was almost a couple hundred years ago.  Also, I must say that for an independently published book this was well-edited and did not have glaring errors either grammatically nor structurally that some independently published books tend to have.  I would whole heartedly recommend Dangerous Heart and the phenomenal writing style of SaraLynn Hoyt.

Author Bio:

Sheryl Hoyt writes as Saralynn Hoyt.  She has been writing nearly all her life.  She is recently published independently and is doing all of this on her own.  She was recently spotlighted in Time Magazine.  After reading about SaraLynn I don’t feel I can do her justice by summarizing her story.  So click here to see SaraLynn’s story told in her own words.