So you wanted angst, huh, Sasha? You wanted heart-wrenching, you wanted overwrought, you wanted devastating; you wanted to witness a love so fierce your hands shook just by holding the book.
Go to the watershed of historical fiction, then, considered by “authorities” and many a romance novel lover as one of the best the genre has to offer, ever. Go and read Flowers from the Storm by one Laura Kinsale, begin with a practiced nonchalance, a resolve to not waver without due recompense—and let’s see where that takes you. Go ahead, dammit, read this book, and see where it takes you, see how it unhinges you. Idiot.
It’s been more than two months since I read this book. I still haven’t shaken off the urge—if it’s stayed with me that long, is still an urge?—to write a monograph on this book, and maybe give that away in train stations.