This beautiful and haunting love story marks the debut release of Laura Mills-Alcott.  It is loosely based on both the tragic ballad of “Barbara Allen” and the Irish folktale “The Briar and The Rose”.

Devan, the Marquess of Castlereagh, is haunted by his past.  Within hours of meeting his intended bride, Katherine Windham, he loses her to the flames that overtook her home.  When a young woman appears at his home, with no memory of her name or former life, Devan is enchanted by her - for she looks exactly like his lost Katherine!

Raven knows nothing prior to her waking up in Ireland, at Dahlingham.  After working at the estate, Raven finds some measure of comfort in the gardens she tends there.  That is, until the marquess requests her presence in front of him and immediately orders her to move from the servant’s quarters to her own suite - right next to his bedchamber.  Certain that he intends for her to become his mistress, Raven refuses.  Yet Devan wins the battle to get her closer to him, by giving her speech lessons under the guise of not knowing who her family is, so he can keep an eye on her.  She could be a lady for all they know and he couldn’t treat her like a servant until her identity is discovered.

Little by little, Devan becomes enchanted with Raven.  Her secretive rides and different persona, as well as his jealousy of his friend, Victor, the Duke of Brookshire, who seems to be paying quite a bit of attention to his new ward.  With Devan becoming more and more enthralled with Raven and the mystery surrounding her, he begins to fall helplessly in love with her.  But will he be able to capture this elusive vixen or lose her to another?

A tender and romantic love story that had my fingers flying across the pages, THE BRIAR AND THE ROSE is utterly captivating.  A good old fashioned romance is what I’d like to call it.  This is romance!  The mystery of Raven and Katherine isn’t hard to figure out, but this isn’t a mystery to the reader.  The characters play out their parts realistically, and even as they fall in love with each other, twists and turns keep them at arms length from one another until they both give in to their heart’s desire.  The only complaint that I had was that it was over with too quickly.  I would have liked to have seen some of the scenes drawn out a bit more, as I felt there were things that happened more speedily toward the end as opposed to the beginning.  However, it was a small selfish thing on my part because there is a mesmerizing quality to the story, with scenes tying into the love story of Seamus and Mairead, that create a wonderful moody quality to the romance.  Ms. Mills-Alcott creates such a wonderful setting, I can almost see the misty landscape of Ireland as I’m reading this.  With tragic tales as the basis for this romance, I’m certainly glad that THE BRIAR AND THE ROSE doesn’t disappoint where the ending is concerned.  I eagerly await the next book by Laura Mills-Alcott - I just hope she has something planned for Victor!