Someone To Care. Mary Balogh

Published: Hachette Australia/Piatkus
Date: 1st May 2018
Format:  e-ARC
Pages: 400
Genre: Historical Romance
Source: Hachette Aus  via NetGalley
Rating:
                       

No one has felt the death of the Earl of Riverdale more keenly than his wife, the now dispossessed countess Viola Kingsley.

On her way home alone from Bath, Viola meets an adventurous aristocrat at a country inn. Since she is being forced to stay for a day and night, she goes to the village fair with him and impulsively gives in to his suggestion that they run away together for a while-a brief respite from their lives of duty and responsibility.

What they discover together is the last thing Viola would have ever expected...

Someone to Care  is another delightful book in the Someone series by Mary Balogh. We met Viola in the first book where she had just found out she was no longer who she thought she was. Apart from being a mother and grandmother.

When the stress of the past few years catches up with Viola she escapes the family for a brief respite. She walks right into Marcel, a person she felt rather attracted to many years ago but had not acted upon it because she believed she was married.  Together now they experience a wild and passionate and joyful time until... 

What follows is a chapter of mistakes and unrevealed feelings and thoughts. Marcel makes one rather quick decision that lands him in trouble and from which there seems no return - but there is and as it turns out he reaches a turning point that will change his life and that of many others as well.

This is a story about truly caring and holding a person as someone to respect and treat well. Viola says " It seems to me there has never been anyone who cares about me, the person who dwells within the daughter and mother  and all the rest. No one even knows me. Everyone thinks they do, but no one really does. Sometimes it feels as though I even do not know myself." The novel is about discovering who you really are, not just a list of labels like wife, mother, Countess and so on.

I really enjoyed the first half of the book, a little disappointed with the second half as it reverted into the trappings of society and Marcel and Viola suddenly change from the carefree wonderful people we have come to know. However in saying that the mistakes and acting out of hurt then resulted in both characters, and especially Marcel growing and becoming the person he really was meant to be.

So a story about older characters, in their early forties and and a whole cast of beloved family characters made this book another great addition to the series.