Review: An Affair at Stonecliffe

An Affair at Stonecliffe by Candace Camp
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I received this book for free in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review. 

Noelle could hardly breathe. Her heart hammered, and she stared at the pouch as if it were a snake. Thorne thought she would sell Gil to him. 

Noelle has just become a widow with a new baby, as she's laying out all her worldly goods to see what she can sell, Carlisle Thorne arrives at her door. Carlisle was the childhood friend of her husband, but like her husband's aristocratic parents, he didn't approve of her husband marrying a commoner. Thorne is hurt and grieving over the loss of his friend and sees Noelle as a gold-digger, he thinks she won't want to be weighed down with the caring of a child, so he offers her money so that he can take Gil, the baby, back to England to be raised by his grandparents. Noelle is horrified that he thinks to “buy” Gilbert and then becomes terrified Thorne will take Gil and never let her see him again. She decides to go on the run to keep Gil with her. 

“I've found her, sir.” 

After Noelle decides to go on the run, the story then jumps five years and we learn that Noelle has been on the run all this time with Thorne's man trying to catch up to her. The men that Noelle thinks Thorne has sent after her all over Europe, have tried to snatch Gil away and been rough with her. When Noelle goes back to London because of an opportunity for more stability in Gil's life, even though it puts her in the same city with Thorne, she finally gets caught and learns that Gil's grandfather has died and Gil is now the Earl. As Noelle finally settles down and stops running, she realizes that Gil needs to learn how to run his estate and that Thorne and Gil's grandmother don't want to rip him from her and that she'll be able to live with him. The prologue with the anger, animosity, and feeling of danger, did immediately pull me into the story but as the story went on, Noelle started to be annoyingly distrustful of Thorne and the Misunderstanding between the two will probably want you to tie them down to chairs to force them to sit and talk. 

“But...if it was not you who tried to abduct Gil, that means...” 

He nodded. “That someone else is after you.” 

Around 30% the story switches gears a bit and the characters and reader learn that it wasn't Thorne who was trying to snatch Gil away from Noelle but someone else and it's all tied into a tontine. A group of aristocrats, including Gil's grandfather, put money into a trust that would eventually go to the last alive male descendant of the men. This plot thread was all a little, just go along with it, especially when it was vaguely, 'they did put a time limit!'. It kept the danger feeling going throughout the book and introduced, brought in a character named Sloane, a cousin who has a shady past and obvious unsettled feelings with another character named Annabeth, but other than giving me Sloane, the whole tontine had many sections that made my eyes want to glaze over. 

Yes, she was flirting with this dour man. Even more strangely, he was flirting back. It was mad; it was exciting. 

I'm pretty far in the review and I haven't mentioned the romance yet, you're going to have to have patience, besides the distrusting animosity between Noelle and Thorne, these two don't really get going in the romance department until around the 60% mark. Then they just kind of start secretly sleeping together as they journey around England investigating the descendants of the tontine to see who would want Gil dead to inherit it. I can't say I ever felt the romance between them, either because they didn't have chemistry or because the story was muddled with all the distrust and tontine business. I wish three or four times of Noelle not trusting Thorne and scenes with the tontine descendants would have been cut; this story felt too long. Even though this couple takes until the second half to even get the romance engines revving, there was still a little bit of third act angst, which, of course, was Noelle not trusting Thorne's intentions when he asks her to marry him, even when it was fairly obvious why he was asking. 

The last 85% ramps up and brings to head the action and danger and bouncing from reveal to not so fast to reveal. It kind of felt exhausting after a longer story that had a fair amount of moments that had the aforementioned eye glazing. Then the ending gave the romance aspect a very abrupt ending with quick “I love yous” and a marriage proposal. There was too much continuous distrust from Noelle, the romance took a bit too long to get going and then didn't provide the emotions I wanted, the danger to Gil was mostly what this story was about, and by the time I got to the ending it felt exhausting. I am, however, very curious and wanting more about the black sheep cousin Sloane and the quietly suffering Annabeth, I just hope there is no tontine in their story and it's more about the romance.

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