The Covered Deep by Brandy Vallance

The Covered Deep was so much more than I was expecting.

When it arrived in the mail, I took it out of the packaging and stared at it a moment. My mom was walking by and saw it. “When you’re done, I want to read that.” The cover is that beautiful.

The inside is pretty beautiful, too.

Bianca is a unique heroine. For someone who reads a lot of historical romances set in times when the main goal of young women was to find a husband, I can’t remember the last book I read where this was the main goal of the heroine. Often authors set semi-femininistic goals in the minds of the heroines: be a lawyer or a doctor, write, save an orphanage or a dying family member. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind this at all.

It was just really refreshing to find that Bianca’s heart is set on falling in love, a simple yet oh-so-complicated life goal.

How she finds her way to that goal is simple yet oh-so-complicated, too. For starters, she enters an essay contest. And wins. All within the first couple of pages. This contest sweeps her away on a trip to halfway around the world, with complete strangers.

And one of those strangers doesn’t stay strange for long. Paul Emerson is the kind of hero Jane Austen or Charlotte Bronte wrote about. Deeply moving and mysterious. Quotes Shakespeare. He’s a historian, and an amazing one. I liked him immediately.

But is all as it seems? Is he? Because the gamemaster of the essay contest and the trip to the Holy Land has something (everything) up his sleeve, and Paul has a secret. Brandy Vallance weaves everything with the superior hand of a well-read author. The ending is…read this book, friends, and see for yourselves what I mean. This is a book you won’t soon forget.

About the Author

Brandy Vallance fell in love with the Victorian time period at a young age, loving the customs, manners, and especially the intricate rules of love. Since time travel is theoretically impossible, she lives in the nineteenth century vicariously through her novels. Unaccountable amounts of black tea have fueled this ambition. Brandy’s love of tea can only be paralleled by her love of Masterpiece Theater Classics, deep conversations, and a good book. Brandy is the 2013 Operation First Novel winner and the 2012 winner of the ACFW Genesis Contest for historical romance.

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Disclosure: I received this book from Worthy Publishing in exchange for an honest review. This post contains affiliate links. Please read my full disclosure here.