REVIEW: The Start of the Story by Jane Lovering
Rowan Thorpe can be forgiven for living with one foot in the past.
Since having to say goodbye far too young to the future she had planned, moving on still feels a daunting task. So, when historian Connor O’Keefe strides purposefully into her office and life, looking far too handsome for his own good and threatening to undermine the local legends she holds close to her heart, she is more than a little unsettled.
Connor has a past too, and his own reasons to keep his heart under wraps. But when a combination of fate and an unexpected snowstorm mean that Rowan and Connor have all the time in the world to swap stories, it may finally be time for an end and a new beginning.
Dear Ms. Lovering,
Since I don’t really pay that much attention to blurbs for your books anymore before auto-requesting them, I went into this book blind. I like a lot of it. There are some major issues that must be and are sensitively addressed. Before the book finished, I did believe in the attraction between Rowan and Connor. But it was a long way to get there. For a book that is only 268 pages, it felt a lot longer and in this case, that isn’t great.
Rowan has a doctorate in folklore and the security of a paid position to actually make a living at investigating it and writing about it. When a visiting Irish professor who is intensely interested in possibly digging around something that is sacred to Rowan pops into her life, she is less than pleased. Handsome Connor effortlessly moves through life and has his eye on a local landmark that is located not far from the cottage that Rowan and her husband renovated. Local lore states that the Fairy Stane – a large, flat rock with no markings on it – must not be moved or the fairy folk who live under it will escape. Connor believes that it might be a former Roman marker and wants to lift it to see if there are carvings on the underside.
Rowan vehemently, and I mean vehemently, refuses to allow this, using the fact that the stone harks back to the folklore and traditions that she is recording to ensure that this oral history isn’t forgotten. The two end up in forced proximity with Connor staying in Rowan’s cottage as rental prices in York are stratospheric. Their arguments about the stone and whether Connor will be allowed to raise it continue for a long time. Rowan shuts down any attempt at Connor talking her into it. Frankly, this got boring. It’s a stone Rowan and even you don’t believe in Little People. As Connor states, it can be lifted and returned and no one will be the wiser.
But this is only part of the story. Rowan lost her husband suddenly four years ago and still hasn’t finished grieving for him. Connor believed that he had found the woman of his dreams in Dublin only to have his planned future come crashing down when he was told the truth about her. She can’t move on and he now doubts himself as how else could he have been so wrong? I can honestly agree that the issues each is still dealing with are important. I’m glad that Rowan eventually reaches the point where she feels she can move on and that Connor works through his self doubt and how the whole thing has also affected his view of his future and how his family feels. This is not only a slow burn romance, it’s a barely simmering one for most of the book. This is the part which made the book read so slow to me. It also didn’t help that Rowan spends most of the book as wrapped in grief and, at times, difficult to like. I understand why she is this way but it’s not easy to read.
Connor is the one who figures out what the stone actually is and it ties into what he knows about Irish history and what he learns about a former manor in the area. I honestly would not have put the two together but did have a small inkling – based on the little vignettes scattered through the book that it had great but unmentioned significance to people who used to live in the area. The truth is heartbreaking but the outcome is emotionally satisfying while also acknowledging the pain that people went through and how this marker helped them. I will have to look into what the stone actually is as I’d never heard of such a thing.
I ended up enjoying Rowan and Connor’s growing relationship once they’d moved past what was holding them back. After the simmering burn, what followed was a bit explosive and fast. The term that a Catholic friend of mine used to call good looking priests like Connor’s brother was Father What-a-waste. “The Start of the Story” is a slow, cozy book that taught me some new things but I wish it had moved a bit faster. B-
~Jayne
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