Alverstone: Love and War Regency Novel (4 Stars)

I recently finished reading Alverstone, the first book in a new Regency series by Beatrice Knight. I’m a fan of Jane Austen, so I figured this would be a good option. This book was published in May, but I’m not sure when the next book will come out. The good news is that this book does not end on a cliffhanger.

Long-Winded Regency Novel

As a warning to readers, the print version of this book is 485 pages. I felt that during the first half of the story. The best way that I can describe this book is to say that it’s a bit long-winded. It drags on a bit in the beginning, and I felt like it took a while for the story to really take off. Once it took off, though, it was a good book.

If you are like me, you may consider giving up on this book for the first probably 45%. That’s how long it took the story to take off. Prior to that, I felt like the story was dragging on. I do feel like the first half of the book (as well as a few scenes later in the book) should be edited to make this story flow better.

To give you an idea of the pacing, the first half of the book took me about ten days to read, mostly because I just couldn’t get into the story. I read the second half in less than two days.

Can Be Confusing

As a warning to readers, this book does follow a lot of storylines. While they all connect in the end, it can be a bit hard to follow them all. If I were to read this book again, I’d probably create a chart where I could keep track of the characters and how they connect to other characters, especially since many of them were called by their first name in parts of the story and their last name during other parts of the story.

Is This a Clean Regency Novel?

I’m going to consider this book semi-clean. There is some swearing, but the swearing isn’t prevalent. When it comes to violence, the book is fairly mild. People are killed during war. There’s at least one duel. For the most part, you don’t get the gruesome details. At one point, we are told that a character’s skull was crushed in, and that’s described in a bit more detail than some readers may prefer, but other than that, the violence is pretty much mild or behind the scenes.

The area that may disturb readers the most is the sexual content. There is a character who has sexually assaulted some of the female characters or attempted to assault them. I felt like this was handled in a sensitive manner, but it might be hard for some readers to handle. The epilogue may also be a bit too steamy for some readers. The author does provide a warning prior to it that this is a “behind closed doors” scene and that it will be tasteful. It is not essential to the story. I skimmed it a bit, and it’s probably PG-13 quality. I do appreciate that the author provided the warning prior to the epilogue. Readers can choose to read this part or skip it. It’s basically our main characters’ wedding night. You can determine based on that what to expect.