Audiobook novellas for the win again today, with Alyssa Cole’s “Be Not Afraid” (which you can get in a bundle of four novellas from Audible, by the way). This is another historical, set during the American Civil War, and the meeting between Kate and Elijah is… well, it’s something. Elijah has just been on the losing side of a rout and taken off into the dark, hoping to loop around somehow and rejoin his unit, and he stumbles onto Kate as she has it out with a British soldier taking liberties who she then stabs.
Then they meet.
Things go pear-shaped (well, even more pear-shaped) after that, and Elijah ends up captured in the British camp where Kate is working, and while she tries to get him to see America is a lousy dream, he tries to get her to see the British aren’t really offering anything new, and America can be home, and—of course—they both find themselves all the more attracted to each other as time passes. Both are tempted: the British offer freedom to Elijah if he’ll swap sides, and Elijah’s discourse on what America might be gets through to Kate, but they both have emotional traumas to work through to get there.
I’m really loving these historical romances from Alyssa Cole. They’re absolutely top-notch, and the performer, Karen Chilton, does an amazing job with cadence and emotionality. I’m going to have to search out more books performed by her. I love finding amazing audio performers—it always leads to finding new authors, too.
'Nathan Burgoine 