Michelle Griep has single-handedly renewed my love for Regency Romance. A Heart Deceived is no bodice ripper, something I tired of long ago. It’s an intriguing tale of a young, unmarried woman who must keep her brother’s growing insanity a secret–or he’d end up in an asylum, and she’d end up homeless.

Michelle’s  characters are as real and complex as her plot. She included a couple of men in there who I still want to smack upside the head. But her true gift as an author is in her ability to sink the reader in the setting. Of course, nothing enhances the ability to describe a scene better than life-long study and physically seeing the country. Michelle doesn’t keep us in a pristine home with blooming flowers and birds chirping. She takes us out for a walk along the waterfront, where the danger lies and poverty abounds and the need to cover our noses with a lacy kerchief is overpowering.

This story illustrates the difference between God’s saving grace, and man’s pharisaic twisting of His laws. Definitely worth the read.

I enjoyed Michelle’s novel so much, I have her newest, Brentwood’s Ward, on my TBR list.

Place an unpolished lawman named Nicholas Brentwood as guardian over a spoiled, pompous beauty named Emily Payne and what do you get? More trouble than Brentwood bargains for. She is determined to find a husband this season. He just wants the large fee her father will pay him to help his ailing sister. After a series of dire mishaps, both their desires are thwarted, but each discovers that no matter what, God is in charge