Love and Freedom by Sue Moorcroft

Honor arrives in England wanting to escape her life from Hamilton Drives, a community all the way across the ocean in Connecticut. She has experience in finance, yet wants a regular job waiting tables. As she agrees to rent a small bungalow from Clarissa Mayfair, she soon discovers that Clarissa’s entire family is well connected within the small English community.

Not only does Clarissa pop into check on Honor at inconvenient times, Clarissa’s brother, Martin, catches Honor’s eye, as well as every other girl in Brighton. As the two individuals keep running into each other a connection begins to develop, yet Honor came to England for one specific reason: to find her biological mother who abandoned her as a baby. While this quest seems important, Honor becomes derailed by her connections back home, her growing feelings for Martin, and finding herself while in the English countryside.

While this book started off slow, it suddenly picked up the pace toward the middle. Sue Moorcroft spends the entire first half of “Love and Freedom” developing the characters and creating a realistic setting that the reader can dive into. I certainly thought this book was going nowhere as Honor began to poke around the English town and fall for a handsome man. Classic love story, right? Well by the sixth chapter, I was proven wrong and taken for a roller coaster ride with Honor and Martin, forcing me to want to know what else Moorcroft had up her sleeve.

The reader can easily see that Honor is hiding more than her feelings for Martin, and Moorcroft continues to reveal secrets and twists in the plot that certainly make up for the first 80 pages being centered on character details and a stagnant plotline. Allowing the reader to experience views from both Honor and Martin, the story suddenly takes unexpected turns and compels the reader to uncover all of the mysteries that Moorcroft has devised. I advise the reader to be warned of a slow start, but I promise that this book will not disappoint. It seems that obstacles keep popping up and preventing Martin and Honor from being together. However, this is not the only cause of tension. The reader soon discovers that the Mayfair family has drama of their own and while Honor’s quest for her mother remains on the backburner for most the story, Moorcroft ties up all loose ends. She ends “Love and Freedom” with one final unexpected turn in the last few chapters that truly turns the reader’s world upside down. 4 stars

***I received a free copy of this book to review through Choc Lit Publishing.