I’ve been on an Anna Bradley kick ever since I got a little wild with my clicking and scrolling one day and accidentally downloaded one of her audiobooks. I tend to lean more towards miserly caution when it comes to audible, looming over my audible tokens like a greedy crow… trying the “new to me authors” on ebook first to make sure we get along…. Like a quick icecream date where you only loose three dollars if your date likes to pick his nose.
But I had her book so of course, I gave it a listen. Best accidental ADHD clicking I’ve done in a long time. Beautiful descriptive storytelling, similes that made me chuckle, likable complex characters, and a plot that sucked me right in and wouldn’t let go. I devoured the entire Swooning Virgins series with one gobble and hardly even complained (ok there was a little complaining) when I discovered that the last book was only available in ebook form. (I loved that one too, even though I had to settle for my own imagination to conjure Daniel’s Scottish brogue)
From there I listened to the Game Earls Play and Summerset Sisters series and now, Besotted Scots.
This book, however, has me pausing mid series just so I can run off to Facebook and crow my delight.
I walked into this book feeling a little salty. The last book in the previous series leaves the heroine to-be betrothed to this really nice fellow when the man she loves spurns her after a scandal, and I thought “oh goodie! I get an unexpected love grows” kind of story. I flip open and read the blurb and it’s her and the man who spurned her.
There may have been a moment of profanity and child like foot stomping at this point, but I’m invested in the story now and a loyal fan of Anna Bradley’s so I rein in my grumbling and start listening. It takes roughly five seconds for me to see that her betrothed is gay and from there I assume that I will get Isla’s love story with Hugh (the fellow who spurned her) and Bradly will allude to a happily ever after for my poor sweet Sydney as well.
But no. There was no alluding!! I got Isla and Hugh love story AND sweet Sydney is matched with a rugged farmer he meets after a carriage accident. I’ve read plenty of books with two love stories but never have I read a historical romance where the author twined queer and traditional (mostly) open door love stories together in the same novel. It was beautiful on so many levels and I am blown away- not only by quality of the novel itself, but also but by the bravery it took to write something so unconventional…. By the message it sends.
I get why authors might shy away from writing a story like this because not everyone who reads traditional reads queer. Obviously it’s risky to throw them both into the same novel. That said- it’s the way it SHOULD be because love is love and authors shouldn’t be intimidated into segregating each sub-genre into it’s prospective box as if one carried a life threatening contagion to the other.
The story is teeming with delicious anxst and told with the eloquent flair that I’ve come to expect in all Anna Bradley’s stories. I loved it so much that I was even able the overlook the narrator forgetting that Finn is English- not Scottish toward the end 
Anyway, I hope you all go buy Anna Bradley’s books now and fall into an unproductive book reading stupor.
