Review: To Catch a Raven

To Catch a Raven by Beverly Jenkins
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

4.5 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. 

“Grifters. Counterfeiters. Gamblers. Swindlers. Imposters. You name it, and there's a Moreau that fits the description. [...]” 

To Catch a Raven, at it's foundation, was about two families that were forced together to steal back a copy of the Declaration of Independence. I went in thinking it would be a caper adventure story and instead was blown away by the consuming intimacy between our two leads, Raven and Braxton. (Can we take a moment to appreciate these names, Raven Moreau and Braxton Steele. That alone should have alerted me to the heat) Intimacy is something I've been missing in historical romances lately, whether it be emotional or physical, so I ate this story up with a spoon. 

Raven was setting his normal on fire, and the flames had him enthralled. 

Braxton and his father live in Boston, with Braxton having inherited his grandfather's shipping industry and having another tailoring business. He's set and comfortable, even thinking he has his “prize winner” wife picked out. Turns out his father has a little bit of an interesting past and used to do some art forgery, which a woman Pinkerton detective, Welch, is now trying to use to force Braxton into an undercover job. Welch wants Braxton to go undercover with a Raven Moreau as a married domestics couple in a South Carolina's state senator's home and take back a copy of the Declaration of Independence that they think he stole. Welch picked Braxton because of his father Harrison's connection to the Moreau family, he used to have a relationship with Raven's mother Hazel, and Welch is pretty sure the Moreaux are a proficient grifter family. After she forces Raven and Braxton to do her bidding, she wants to expose the Moreaux and get them jailed as a hopeful step to promotion. 

He reached out and ran a slow finger over her bottom lip, and the intensity that flowed from it made her eyes slide closed. 

I thought the beginning with getting Raven and Braxton together felt a little bumpy, you kind of just have to go along with it. When the two first meet, there was some of that delicious sizzle of attraction but Braxton is a straight arrow and has some judgment about Raven's lifestyle choice of conning people and Raven can feel that. Raven's pride steps up along with her insecurities, she had to drop out of school to work and help support her family, so her reading ability isn't the best. With Braxton coming from a rich background and his, polite but obvious straight and narrow judgment towards her family, we get some of that great pride and prejudice heat. 

He realized he needed more. Wanted more, and maybe with a woman he could love like he loved breathing. 

Almost all of the first half is about Raven and Braxton getting to know one another in Raven's home city of New Orleans, and it's done in such a great way. The large Moreau family is introduced as they swoop in and out, while Braxton is a little along for the ride with Raven but also talking and getting to know her. They have alone scenes to keep the focus on them but also interact with the cast of characters to keep the plot thread going. There was also a secondary romance with their parents rekindling their romance but the focus was definitely on Raven and Braxton. 

As they took in each other in the quiet, he again wondered how he'd be able to return to Boston without her. 

About midway is when we get the shift to South Carolina and the reason Raven and Braxton were brought together comes more front and center. As someone who has watched the movie National Treasure more than once, I was somewhat disappointed at how little the actual search and caper aspect came into play. Raven and Braxton are undercover at the state senator's house for under two weeks and find the stolen copy pretty quickly. There was an immediate action blip of danger when the senator comes home unexpectedly but other than that, it all works out fairly easy for them, in terms of action plot, for them. The highlight of this time is again their intimacy as they're forced to share a bed, keep learning about each other, and growing together emotionally and physically because of this. There were high heat scenes but Braxton also makes great headway with Raven and the intimacy of trust, which I found just as sexy. 

They were lovers in every way despite the absence of a declaration. 

She was his. He was hers. 

After they return the stolen copy to Welch, the last twenty percent has Raven and Braxton mostly in Boston, Yellow fever is raging and some states have stopped trains from getting in so Raven can't head home. Raven gets a look at Braxton's life and her insecurities come roaring back. For his part, while he started off with some judgments, Braxton was always attracted to Raven and obviously intrigued and drawn to her. He had a calmness with teasing that put the strong, willful Raven at ease but still gave her some challenging. It was obvious and believable how these two went together. It's apparent that Braxton now loves her but he's a bit too slow in being blunt about it and after hearing some jealous, petty talk about her, Raven runs back to New Orleans. We get a Welch reappearance endangering Raven and a grand LeVeq cameo. This last bit felt kind of rushed, especially after the first half's more moderate pace. 

“Thank you for loving me.” 

I've read a couple Beverly Jenkins' books now and this turned out to be one of my favorites, along with Indigo. There's never anything wallpaper about Jenkins' historical settings, this takes place in 1878, so Reconstruction fighting, Jim Crow, the inclusion of Yellow fever, and danger for Raven and Braxton in South Carolina is all a part of the fabric of the story and characters. All of this enriches the world and story, it also has me taking longer with her books because I'm constantly running to the computer to read more about the historical aspects included. This didn't turn out to be quite the caper story I anticipated going in and some points of pacing were off for me, but, oh my friends, the intimacy. The Intimacy.

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