Julia Broeder is only six months shy of graduating from the Women’s Medical College of Pennsylvania when one small decision spirals out of control and results in her expulsion. Hoping to travel the world as a missionary doctor, her only choice is to return back home…or throw herself upon the mercy of Ashton Carlyle. Formal and straight-laced, Ashton Carlyle is not pleased to see an expelled … expelled Julia arrive at his Manhattan office. His position as a junior attorney for the Vandermark family’s world-famous shipping empire entails taking care of the Broeders, longtime employees of the Vandermark family. But Ashton has no intention now of using his employer’s resources in defense of Julia’s impulsive and reckless actions.
What Ashton did not expect was a scathing reprimand from none other than the Vandermark family patriarch or the bewildering resistance from Julia herself when he’s forced to change his tune. At an impasse, Ashton and Julia never anticipated the revelations that arise or the adventure that awaits them.
In this novella, award-winning novelist Elizabeth Camden introduces readers to the world of the grand Hudson River Valley estate Dierenpark and the enigmatic Vandermark family. Includes an extended preview of Until the Dawn, Camden’s full-length Dierenpark novel.
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Elizabeth Camden novellas are usually a set up for a series, and this one does a lovely job! Makes me want to reread Until the Dawn!
I normally quite enjoy Eliabeth Camden’s books and I knew this was a novella, so I didn’t expect as much from it, but I was still disappointed. I really liked Ashton, I thought he was honest and well-meaning and an overall a great character. I didn’t, however, care much for the heroine, Julia. I found Julia to be childish and very one-sided. Her reasoning for saving the dog was admirable, but still illegal. So the fact that she lashed out at every board member and her dean during her hearing to determine whether or not she would be able to continue on at the college was incredibly reckless and immature. Her entire education had been funded at the expense of a vastly wealthy, older man who owned the estate, on the grounds which her family had lived for generations, and whom she had never met. The idea of a young, orphaned woman during this time from a humble background being able to attend college to persue her dream to become a surgeon and travel the world in order to help others was a one in a million chance. A chance she recklessly threw away and, at the same time, disregarded all the funding and effort others had put in on her behalf. But she seemed to not really see the magnitude of her actions. She believed she would merely be able to ask for the funding and help of an attorney that would be required to petition for her spot back and that no one would bat an eye and her needs would be met. Then once the help is offered to her she drags her feet about it claims she doesn’t even wish to finish the remaining six months of her education because she doesn’t want to face the board and admit that she had behaved in a shameful manner.
Further the romance was very rushed and was mostly just glossed over by saying they got along very well while at the barn together. Even though they never would have been able to spend so much time together without her reputation being left in tatters.
But it is a novella and I know that details and plotlines can’t be fully fleshed out and explored and even as far as novellas go this one was quite short. This novella was a good way to pass some time in reading, but not one that I particularly enjoyed and I don’t believe that I will be continuing on to read the book that this is the prequel to.
“Sometimes ten seconds is all it takes to change the course of a life.”
Julia Broeder’s rash, albeit compassionate decision to save a life, has brought her to this point; waiting nervously outside the conference room at the Women’s Medical College of Pennsylvania, while twelve people determine the course of her future. Would she finish her final semester and sail towards her dream of medical missions, or would she be banished back to her former life on the grounds of a vast estate, with only goats as patients?
It seems that God will provide an unlikely ally; a young attorney who sees Julia through the eyes of his own boyhood dreams, as he encourages her to press forward, ” This is your first test, there are going to be more, and it’s going to be hard . . . . . but I have never seen someone run toward a dream with as much passion as you.”
A lovely story with a subtle hint of things to come.