About this book:
“Separated by centuries, the lives of two women intertwine through their shared pursuit of love, truth, and justice.
In 1885 London, Lillian Freemont embarks on a treacherous journey to reunite with her long-lost niece, Alice, who was abandoned at the Foundling Hospital eight years ago. Fueled by her sister's plea and armed with the gold token that identifies her niece, Lillian teams up with investigative reporter Matthew McGivern to expose the grim reality of the shadowed streets of London. As Lillian and Matthew unravel the mystery of Alice's disappearance, their partnership blossoms into one of shared purpose and undeniable attraction.
In present-day London, Janelle Spencer finds herself unexpectedly running the Foundling Museum. When filmmaker Jonas Conrad arrives to document the museum's history, their collaboration takes a surprising turn as they uncover articles from the past that shed light on a haunting connection to the present. As Janelle becomes caught between exposing the truth and protecting the museum's reputation, she must decide if she can risk everything for what she believes.”
Series: No, a stand-alone novel.
Spiritual Content- Isaiah 58:6-8 at the beginning; A few Scriptures are mentioned, discussed; Prayers, Thanking God, & Blessings over food; Church going; Singing a hymn; Many talks about God, Jesus, asking for forgiveness, turning to Him in grief, caring for others, faiths, & those in the Bible; 'H's are capital when referring to God; Lillian’s sister doesn’t think God can forgive her for what she’s done, but Lillian says that He forgives everyone who asks; Lillian’s sister doesn’t want to pray about something because it didn’t change a past event, bur Lillian encourages her to pray regardless (and also notes in her point of view that God shouldn’t be blamed for the past choices her sister made); Lillian has a very good head on her shoulders & encourages and witnesses to her sister; Janelle is greatly upset to learn about the evil people that did wrong while working at the Foundling Hospital in the historical time-period, but thinks “She shouldn’t expect the Foundling Hospital history to be spotless with no hint of selfishness or sin. They lived in a broken world, and God had given people free will. They could choose to follow Him and live a life guided by His principles of love and justice, or they could chase after their own sinful and selfish desires.”; All four main characters have a faith with both male leads recently renewing their faiths in Christ; Many mentions of God, Jesus, Providence, having faiths, & His timing; Mentions of prayers, praying, blessings over food, & thanking God; Mentions of Bibles, a Bible study, books of the Bible, & those and events in the Bible; Mentions of churches, church going, pastors/reverends/priests, services, sermons, hymnals, & missions; Mentions of children being baptized & baptismal names; Mentions of Being blessed & blessings; A few mentions of sins & the sinful world; A mention of Heaven; A mention of paintings of religious scenes;
*Note: A ‘for heaven’s sake’ is said; A couple mentions of luck & being lucky.
Negative Content- Minor cussing including: a ‘dumb’ and two ‘stupid’s; A couple mentions of curses (said, not written); Some sarcasm & eye rolling; Some grief; Lillian is a widow after her husband’s ship went down years prior & feels pain when mentioning him; *Spoiler* Lillian mentions a few times about her infant daughter being carried away “by death” a few hours after her birth & it hurts her to talk about her daughter and what could have been *End of Spoiler*; Lillian is almost arrested under the misunderstanding that she is a “woman of the streets”; *Spoilers* Lillian is told that her niece died shortly after being given to the Foundling Hospital, but a maid says that her niece has disappeared and was sent to work downstairs at a brothel; Both of these possibilities are hard for Lillian and her sister to hear, but Lillian vows to look for the truth; Lillian’s sister thinks she’ll never see her daughter again and becomes depressed; Lillian and Matthew recued a young girl from a brothel that was working downstairs and had been beaten; Matthew poses as someone trying to buy a young girl and is set-up and arrested (Matthew’s editor thinks it’s good for the paper as it shows how far they’re willing to go to confront evil and has Matthew write from jail; The charges are dropped and the evil man selling the girls confesses) *End of Spoilers*; Matthew’s father was a drunk & verbally abusive towards him (Matthew tries not to think about what his father used to say about him, but the reminders of his words come to mind); Lillian does not understand how her sister could birth and nurse her child for months and then give her up; All about & many mentions of the Foundling Hospital, children being given there by their parents because of different reasons, children being sent away in domestic work, children disappearing from their care and the abductions, & how most children were not reunited with their families; All about & many mentions of human trafficking, exploited children, abductions of girls and young women, missing girls and young women, the kidnappers, & evil intentions for them (including Jonas telling Janelle about his friend that was taken as a teenager and her escaping a week later, barely-above-not-detailed); Many mentions of crimes, arrests, prisons, young girls being “locked up” for begging on the streets, stealing, & thieves; Mentions of deaths of loved ones (including parents, a husband, and an infant daughter), dying, illnesses, & grief (up to semi-detailed); Mentions of children dying at the Foundling Hospital (which the matron blames the mothers for abandoning their children & Lillian blames the inadequate nursing at the home); Mentions of abusive situations & teens/children running away from home because of the abuse; Mentions of injuries & beatings (including a young girl being injured and beaten & it happen to other girls, up to semi-detailed on her injuries); Mentions of a drunk driver, accident, & injuries (barely-above-not-detailed); Mentions of threats; Mentions of bribes & corrupt officials including police officers; Mentions of alcohol, drinking, drunks, & pubs; Mentions of lies & lying; Mentions of eavesdropping; Mentions of hatred; Mentions of divorces; A few mentions of a child sliding down the banister and dying (after this happened, spikes were added to the banister); A couple mentions of a fire; A couple mentions of drugs; A couple mentions of gambling; A mention of a threat about skinning someone alive; A mention of a stalker; A mention of fighting; A mention of cigar smoke; A mention of jealousy; A mention of a butcher with a bloodstained apron;
*Note: Janelle’s parents both “struggled with various issues” (drugs and alcohol) and she went into foster care when she was two to a good foster family (she considers herself one of the lucky ones); Lillian is passionate about allowing women education and employment so they can “lift themselves from poverty and shame to positions of respectability and honor”, gives a speech on it (some of the women agree with her and some are uncomfortable with the topic), & there’s mentions of it throughout the book; In the modern setting, a teenager gets upset often by her father and stepmother’s plans and yells “You don’t care how I feel or what I want! I wish I’d never come!” and often slams her bedroom door (Later, she refers to her father by his first name and lies to them; She doesn’t like their rules, rebels at times, & says they’re ruining her life; She also refers to her siblings as half-brothers and accuses her dad of only taking her stepmother’s side); The teenager is talking to a guy online that has the adults around her concerned & Jonas comments on it being like the guy has an emotional hold on her or is grooming her; Mentions of premature births, concern for the babies making it, & issues arising daily in the NICU (up to semi-detailed); Mentions of Google & Wikipedia; A few mentions of a teen playing League of Legends; A few mentions of social media (Instagram); A few mentions of authors (Charles Dickens & Jane Austen); A few mentions of Uber; A few mentions of the pandemic; A few mentions of iPads; A mention of FaceTime; A mention of a young woman with a nose piercing.
Sexual Content- A fingers-to-lips touch, a hand/fingers kiss, a forehead kiss, two cheek kisses, two not-detailed kisses, a barely-above-not-detailed kiss, and two semi-detailed kisses; Wanting to kiss (barely-above-not-detailed); Touches, Embraces, Hand holding, Sparks, Nearness, & Smelling (x2, barely-above-not-detailed); Wanting to touch (barely-above-not-detailed); Noticing (including curves, x2, border-line barely-above-not-detailed // semi-detailed); Blushes & Winks; Lillian’s sister ran away with a solider years before the book starts & the only communication she’s heard from her is a birth notice of her daughter five months after she left (out-of-wedlock pregnancy and they never married; Lillian later thinks that her sister allowed herself to be wooed and bedded before they were married); Lillian and Matthew interview teen girls from a home for those who have come out of brothels, prisons, and workhouses (one fourteen-year-old shares that a man tricked her family into sending her with him under the guise of needing a maid, but took her to a brothel instead and adds that she “didn’t know anything about men, but I soon learned” and ran away after two weeks there); *Spoilers* Lillian and Matthew go to a brothel for information, but she stays in the carriage outside; Matthew meets two young girls in the kitchen who are obviously concerned about men being too “friendly” with them (one was brought there and another was born there because her mum worked upstairs before she died); Another young girl is hurt after a beating (up to semi-detailed on her injuries) and he takes her to a doctor; Lillian is almost arrested under the misunderstanding that she is a “woman of the streets” (the officers do not believe her telling them she is not); Matthew makes a plan to pose as someone wanting to buy a girl to nail the man abducting the girls and young women & does so under the guise of having a client who wants a young girl; The evil man takes the bait & Matthew finds out where Lillian’s niece is so they plan to steal her from the brothel she’s at; The first attempt is unsuccessful; The man has a girl available for Matthew’s “client” and Lillian supplies the money; *Bigger Spoiler* It was a set-up and Matthew is arrested and taken to jail; The charges are eventually dropped and the evil man selling the girls confesses; Lillian and other women organize a protest outside a brothel and demand for the underage girls to be released (they are threatened by the men there); The underage girls there (including Lillian’s niece) are released and the men involved arrested *End of Spoilers*; *Spoilers* After Matthew confesses to Lillian about his feelings for her, Lillian finds it difficult to consider opening her heart again and risking loss again; She also thinks about her age and how she would have to get married again soon to have a chance of bearing another child, but that there’s no guarantee she would be blessed and not lose that child as well *End of Spoilers*; *Spoilers* As Janelle and Jonas learn about the human trafficking from 1885, Jonas wants to share a documentary about it in a way that won’t hurt the Foundling Hospital, but Janelle’s boss doesn’t want it to happen as human trafficking is a “hot-button issue”; Janelle is stuck in the middle of the decision *End of Spoiler*; Janelle’s ex-boyfriend was cheating on her during the time they were dating & she is upset at herself for missing the signs; A teenage girl in the modern setting is talking to a guy she met online, but the adults in her life (including Janelle) are concerned about it (Jonas comments on it having similarities to grooming, but Janelle isn’t sure it’s that serious); *Spoiler* Towards the end, the teenager sneaks off to meet the “friend”, is nearly abducted by the man posing as someone younger (her father, Jonas, and Janelle catch them just in time), and is very shaken; The teen girl is told that the man was probably a professional trafficker and “used every trick in the book to lure [her] into a relationship and make [her] believe he truly cared” for her; *End of Spoiler*; Matthew comments to Lillian about not aiming to get a glimpse of her ankle (she gives him a “heated glare” for the comment); Men leer & whistles at Lillian and other women; All about & many mentions of pretty little girls from the Foundling Hospital disappearing & being sent to work “belowstairs” at brothels to do cleaning, washing up, and laundry until they’re old enough for upstairs (girls as young as eight years old working downstairs and others disappearing who are fourteen to sixteen); Many mentions of brothels, women feeling as if they have no choice but to work at one for their survival, fallen women, a home for women who have come out of brothels, women being mistreated by men, men entrapping the young women, & the goal of some good people to raise the age of consent; Mentions of The Contagious Disease Act that allowed police to arrest women suspected of being prostitutes (this is an active act in the historical setting); Mentions of dates, dating, boyfriends/girlfriends, cheating, exes, breakups, & broken hearts; A few mentions of an unfaithful man & him leaving the mother of his child and daughter (no longer claiming either of them); A couple mentions of kisses & kissing; A couple mentions of flirting; A mention of women in the 1700s and 1800s becoming social outcasts if they have a child out of wedlock; Love, attraction, falling in love, & the emotions (x2);
*Note: A few mentions of Lillian and Janelle’s curves (from Matthew and Jonas’ perspectives).
-Lillian Freemont, age 31
-Matthew McGivern
-Janelle Spencer
-Jonas Conrad
P.O.V. switches between them
Dual-Time Period (set in both 1885 & 2023)
346 pages
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Pre Teens-
New Teens-
Early High School Teens-
Older High School Teens-
My personal Rating-
Though I’ve been looking forward to this book since the author first announced it, besides the back-cover blurb, I didn’t really know too much about it. Once I started reading, however, all I could think was “please let this end happy”. (I might have trust issues with books that deal with hard topics like families being separated and human trafficking.) I’m glad to report that it does end happy and that I found myself tearing up at the epilogue.
Dual-time period novels aren’t typically my favorite because it usually feels like two novellas smashed into each other and I get pulled out of the story that I was just pulled into when the chapter ends. However, I didn’t feel that way with this book as the two meshed well. I would read another book just on what happened to our historical couple and everyone there, though, because it looked to be the start of a lovely family with one of my favorite tropes, “the found family” trope.
Both relationships/romances are attracted to the other pretty quick, but it didn’t bother me as much as it usually would because it was based on the other’s character and not their physical appearance. As far as romances go, I think I actually preferred the modern-setting relationship between Janelle and Jonas because of their faith conversations. Lillian and Matthew had their cute moments, but I’m afraid I was more invested in seeing justice happen in their time-period.
Human trafficking and abductions are hard to hear about, let alone read books on the topic. For some reason, the back-cover didn’t imply to be that this book would have the first one mentioned, though, now I can see it in-between the lines. It’s handled very delicately, but it’s still sad to see. This may make sense to very few others, but I think the historical human trafficking is sadder than the current day in some ways. In the unfortunately-still-happening modern day human trafficking, we can actively do something and fight against it. But in the historical setting—though this book’s account is fictional, it’s inspired by actual events—what’s done is done and can’t be rewritten for the victims have already passed and I hate the final-ness that it is. It can spur you into action for the current problem, but it still weighs heavy on my heart.
I’ve read multiple books by this author and while it’s not a new favorite, I appreciate her sensitivity to this hard topic. It’s not going to be a book I’ll recommend to most BFCG readers because of said topic, but for older teens wanting a look into a hard setting without being flooded with details from the actual content, this might be a book to check out.
See y’all on Friday with a new review!
*BFCG may (Read the review to see) recommend this book by this author. It does not mean I recommend all the books by this author.
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