New Review: Pamela Clare’s SWEET RELEASE – 1st in a great trilogy set in America before the Revolutionary War

This is the first in Clare's Blakewell/Kenleigh family trilogy--stories set in the 1730s to 1760s in the American Colonies in a time when farms dominated the landscape. Eventually they were replaced in the South by growing plantations. It's also a period when colonists came to see themselves as Americans, distinct from the English.

This first story tells of Alec Kenleigh, head of an English shipbuilding empire, who was beaten and thrown aboard a ship transporting criminals to the colonies as indentured servants. Alex wakes up in the Virginia Colony with no idea who is behind this. He has a derelict brother and an angry ex-mistress but he can’t see either of them doing something as horrible as this.

Meanwhile, in Virginia, he is told his name is Cole Braden, a convict convicted of ravishing women, and his 14-year contract has been purchased by Cassie Blakewell, a young woman left in charge of her family’s plantation by her father who is in England. When Alec heals, she realizes the half dead convict is a very handsome man, one who claims to be a wealthy Englishman.

Alec is desperate to get home to London and his shipping enterprise, but he is attracted to Cassie to whom he has vowed to serve until his name is cleared.

Clare has created a wonderful story of life in the colonies with some exciting scenes and some worthy characters. The love scenes are very sensual as Cassie and Alec find they are unable to resist each other. Cassie is a strong woman determined to make it on her own; Alex is an intelligent hero who believes he can rise above this to return to the life he once had. Both will be wrong.

Included in the action is a suspenseful murder trial when Alec’s life is on the line. I recommend this one and the others in the trilogy, which I'll review in days to come.

Blakewell/Kenleigh family trilogy:

[Note: the author has changed the second book to add material in her new eBook edition. I read the paperbacks.]

Sweet Release, set in 1730, Cassie Blakewell and Alec Kenleigh
Carnal Gift, set in 1754, Jamie Blakewell
Ride the Fire, set in 1763, Nicholas Kenleigh