Bittersweep by Wareeze Woodson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The year is 1897 and Elizabeth is a young woman with a haunted past, one night, when she was five years old, she and her sister and brother were packed into a wooden buggy and sent away with their father, leaving their mother behind, while their house burned down to ashes. It is a sight and smell which has haunted her memories for fifteen years, but now, she is returning to her one time home in Bittersweep, Texas to take up a teaching position and hopefully find some answers to her questions about what happened that day and why. As she arrives into the town on the steam locomotive she has travelled on, she tucks her newspaper under her arm and prepares to disembark from the train and collect her luggage, she briefly questions her sanity of returning to this place and almost turns right back around before she admits that she needs the position and everything else that goes with it. She is looking around at the small town and thinking how much has not really changed overly much, but there is more of everything now, people, horses, homes and stores and because of this she is assaulted by memories she would much rather forget.

It is while she is lost in these memories that she is bowing her head down and hoping that nobody recognises her, but this also leads to her walking into the path of a carriage and horses veering out of control and heading straight towards her, when she does, she is paralysed by fear and cannot move even if she wanted to, that is until she is grasped round the waist and pulled out of the way by an unknown pair of hands and into a very masculine body just before she is run over. When she manages to regain some of her breath and senses, she looks behind her to see the mysterious owner of the hands and body and finds a look of anger in their face and an equally angry outburst along the lines of does she have a death wish and to have some consideration of those around her, even if she has no regard for herself. This encounter brings Elizabeth back to herself and she acknowledges what happened, apologises and states that she wasn’t concentrating as she was looking for the school chairman whom she was meant to be meeting at the station, it is at this point that she finds out that the stranger who saved her is indeed the chairman of the school board and she is more than mortified at this information.

As she takes a moment to regain her composure, she is told that she hasn’t necessarily made the best first impression, however, the town is very easy going and that hopefully that shouldn’t stop her from being accepted anyway, he then offers to take her to the boarding house where she will be staying, Elizabeth is grateful and accepts the kind offer, when she is settled, they agree on a time to meet so that she can see where she will be working and make her preparations for the start of the school year, Elizabeth is now hoping that she will make a better impression the next time, but she also cannot believe that despite her best efforts to enter the town unnoticed, she hasn’t made that happen either. Will Elizabeth settle back into life in Bittersweep and find the answers she needs, or will she find that she is even less welcome now than she was then? This is a historical romance with a thrilling edge to it which will keep you guessing as to what will happen next throughout and keep you hooked until it’s conclusion.

Reviewed by @roxsannel

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