Book Review
Jun. 26th, 2025 01:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kenjariForbidden
by Beverly Jenkins
This historical romance is set in 1870s Nevada among the Black community of Virginia City. Eddy Carmichael is a cook who has dreams of opening her own restaurant in California. However, in the course of her travels, she is swindled and left in the desert without money or water. When she is on the verge of collapse, Virginia City saloon owner and businessman Rhine Fontaine, traveling home from San Francisco, finds her and saves her life. After she recovers, Eddy becomes the cook in a boarding house and starts building the foundations of a future business. She and Rhine are deeply attracted to each other, but Rhine grew up enslaved and is now passing as white. This of course makes things very complicated, but love does prevail.
I really liked this romance, as it was very sweet. Rhine and Eddy are both very good people who it is easy to root for. Eddy is plain-spoken and has a strong sense of herself and what she wants out of life, and these are the very things that cause Rhine to fall in love with her. Jenkins deals very well with the realities, good and bad, of post-Civil War life for Black people.
by Beverly Jenkins
This historical romance is set in 1870s Nevada among the Black community of Virginia City. Eddy Carmichael is a cook who has dreams of opening her own restaurant in California. However, in the course of her travels, she is swindled and left in the desert without money or water. When she is on the verge of collapse, Virginia City saloon owner and businessman Rhine Fontaine, traveling home from San Francisco, finds her and saves her life. After she recovers, Eddy becomes the cook in a boarding house and starts building the foundations of a future business. She and Rhine are deeply attracted to each other, but Rhine grew up enslaved and is now passing as white. This of course makes things very complicated, but love does prevail.
I really liked this romance, as it was very sweet. Rhine and Eddy are both very good people who it is easy to root for. Eddy is plain-spoken and has a strong sense of herself and what she wants out of life, and these are the very things that cause Rhine to fall in love with her. Jenkins deals very well with the realities, good and bad, of post-Civil War life for Black people.
