Review: The Potential for Love by Catherine Kullmann

I'm delighted to share my review of a beautiful novel with you today: The Potential for Love by Catherine Kullmann. If you enjoy regency romance novels with added adventures and gripping twists, this one's for you!

My thanks goes to The Coffee Pot Book Club for an ebook copy of the novel. It won't be the last I'll be reading from Mrs Kullmann. 

Review:

Arabella Malvern is still searching for the ’right’ husband – this is her fourth season, and it's about time she found a husband! She has several suitors, including one very determined lord who stops at nothing in his pursuit of her, but none fill her with thoughts of family, mutually-respectful companionship – and acceptance. In an era when women's roles are clearly defined, their lives revolving around marriage, children, running households and adhering to their husband's wishes – whatever these may be – Arabella seeks that little bit of reassurance. But where can she find it? Then she meets Thomas... 

The Napoleonic Wars as good as over, Major Thomas Ferraunt returns home from France, injured, feeling he has lost his sense of purpose. After a life spent with the army, what is he to do? A rector's son, his marriage prospects are respectable, but not in the same league as Bella's  family. And what would he do for a living, to provide for a wife and children? Be a soldier in peacetime, on beck and call yet without a sense of doing something? Strangely, Bella seems to be the only one who understands him. But she is way above him in station.

But as Thomas holds back in his endeavour to woo Bella due to his low chances of gaining acceptance from Bella's father (and his own insecurities about his financial future), Lord Henry Danlow's dogged pursuit of Bella, and an unexpected inheritance, both make him realise that social norms are important – but not everything. But has he left it too late?

The Potential For Love paints a vivid picture of society of the day, and Mrs Kullmann goes to great lengths to portray her characters, and their societal setting, as accurately as possible. And she clearly knows what she writes about. 

As a reader, you get a true sense of watching events unfold in front of your eyes, as you can easily imagine characters, locations and events. Full of clever and unexpected twists – not least in part due to Lord Henry Danlow's increasing obsession with Bella and a stroke of good fortune for the Ferraunt family – The Potential for Love sweeps you off your feet, and you'll be happy to spend many hours turning the pages.

The Potential for Love is a must-read for lovers of Regency romance with a twist. Engaging, witty and thoroughly enjoyable, it keeps your attention throughout. Highly recommended.

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The Potential for Love: A Regency Novel

By Catherine Kullmann

Blurb:

1816

For over six years, Thomas Ferraunt’s thoughts have been of war. Newly returned to England from occupied Paris, he must ask himself what his place is in this new world and what he wants from it. More and more, his thoughts turn to Arabella Malvin, but would Lord Malvin agree to such a mismatch for his daughter, especially when she is being courted by Lord Henry Danlow?

About to embark on her fourth Season, Arabella is tired of the life of a debutante, waiting in the wings for her real life to begin. She is ready to marry. But which of her suitors has the potential for love and who will agree to the type of marriage she wants?

As she struggles to make her choice, she is faced with danger from an unexpected quarter while Thomas is stunned by a new challenge. Will these events bring them together or drive them apart?

We are celebrating the release of the special hardback edition of The Potential for Love during this tour. With a beautiful dust jacket over an elegant laminated cover, it will enhance any library and is the perfect gift for lovers of historical women’s fiction and historical romance.

Buy Links:

The Potential for Love is available in Paperback and as eBook and is free to read with Kindle Unlimited subscription.

Amazon: mybook.to/PfLhardcover

Amazon Kindle: mybook.to/ThePotentialForLove 

The Potential for Love HB Waterstones: https://bit.ly/2XdXjzx

The Potential for Love PB Waterstones: https://bit.ly/2WWqtmt  

The Potential for Love HB Barnes and Noble:  https://bit.ly/2OXTE45 

The Potential for Love PB Barnes and Noble : https://bit.ly/3f9kxNn  

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Author Bio:

I was born and brought up in Dublin and moved to Germany on my marriage in 1973. Before my marriage, I was an administrative officer at the Department of Finance in Dublin. I worked as attaché at the Irish Embassy in Bonn until my eldest son was born. Following a twelve-year stint as a full-time mother, I joined the New Zealand Embassy in Bonn, where I was administration officer. My husband and I returned to Ireland in 1999 and in 2009, following a year’s treatment for breast cancer, I took early retirement from my position as Director of Administration and Human Resources at a large Dublin law firm.

I have always enjoyed writing, I love the fall of words, the shaping of an expressive phrase, the satisfaction when a sentence conveys my meaning exactly. I enjoy plotting and revel in the challenge of evoking a historic era for characters who behave authentically in their period while making their actions and decisions plausible and sympathetic to a modern reader. In addition, I am fanatical about language, especially using the right language as it would have been used during the period about which I am writing. But rewarding as all this craft is, there is nothing to match the moment when a book takes flight, when your characters suddenly determine the route of their journey.

The first quarter of the nineteenth century was one of the most significant periods of European and American history, a period whose events still resonate two hundred years later The Act of Union between Great Britain and Ireland of 1800, the Anglo-American war of 1812 and the final defeat of Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 all still shape our modern world. The aristocracy-led society that drove these events was already under attack from those who saw the need for social and political reform, while the industrial revolution saw the beginning of the transfer of wealth and ultimately power to those who knew how to exploit the new technologies.

I write historical fiction set against this background of off-stage wars, of women frequently left to fend for themselves in a patriarchal world where they have few or no rights but must make the best lives they can for themselves and their families. While real people sometimes have walk-on parts, the protagonists and their stories are pure fiction. As well as meeting their personal challenges, they must also cope with external events and the constraints imposed by society. The main story arc is romantic. I am particularly interested in what happens after the first happy end—how life goes on around the protagonists and sometimes catches up with them. 

Social Media Links:

Website: https://www.catherinekullmann.com/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/CKullmannAuthor

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/15549457.Catherine_Kullmann