Customer Reviews

Just North Of Bliss (Ballad Romances)

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I've been going through every one of this author's books ever since I discovered her. I've read all her 'silent film' series and all of the 'meet me at the fair' series.

this is the 2nd book in that series that takes place at the Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Belle is a stuffy, prejudiced girl from the south who is unhappy with the fact that she had to take a job as a nanny in NYC to support her family back in GA. A photographer for the fair, Win, sees her and is struck by a desire to use her as a model for a series of photos of the all - American girl that he envisions.

However Belle is not very cooperative. I love Alice Duncan, and I love her writing, but I personally found Belle unlikable for most of the book. She was really a prig, and didn't act like a girl of her young age should act. She had been raised in poverty, true, but she had no sense of fun and lost a lot of her humanity.

Later in the book she does unwind a little- but it's never really a lot. I found myself wondering why Win would want her so much, as she was always so nasty to him. (and nasty about Northerners in general.)

The rest of the characters are great- as usual the author gives them life and unique personalities. I absolutely love the time period she writes in too.

I did like this book and it's definitely worth reading. Probably my least favorite of the series, but still a good read!

In 1893 Georgia Peach Rowena Belle Monroe realizes how poor her upper crust family has become. Having no choice, Rowena Belle becomes the first Monroe to leave Georgia except for those who fought for the South a few decades ago in the Civil War. She accepts employment as a nanny in New York City. When her employer George Richmond takes his wife and two children, to the Chicago World's Fair, Rowena accompanies them as befitting her job to care for the kids.

At the Fair, photographer Win Asher notices the beautiful Belle and tries to convince her to pose for his photographs, but she refuses feeling this is indecent behavior. As Belle and Win see one another while attending the Fair, they fall in love, but she feels he is the "paragon" of everything she believes is wrong with Yankees.

Alice Duncan's second Chicago Fair tale is an exciting historical romance that readers will enjoy as fans obtain a taste of a bygone era. The period is so well described that the audience will be surprised by Belle's authentic "puritanical" attitude towards items that we take for granted as normal. The characters are warm and amusing, but as with the previous novel, COMING UP ROSES, the history is as important if not more so than the romance, not that the latter is shortchanged, but the former is so picturesque.

Harriet Klausner