DREAMS OF LILACS is a gentle and chivalrous romance by one of my favorite author, Lynn Kurland. Book 16 in the de Piaget series, new readers will nonetheless be able to comfortably read it without foreknowledge of Isabelle de Piaget's large family from prior books. This book felt to me more similar to her Nine Kingdoms books than to her more recent de Piaget novels, although there is no time traveling in the de Piaget series. Typical of Kurland, this is a chaste and respectful love between hero and heroine until the sacrament of marriage is celebrated.

Isabelle is the youngest child of Rhys and Gwen Piaget, who has lived in her siblings' shadows her entire life. She says of herself, "I have spent the whole of my life standing in the shadows, saying nothing at all." She receives an anonymous missive telling her to go to a particular abbey in France by herself, or her grandparents will die. Isabelle escapes her protective family and makes her way by trickery into the boat heading to France, but due to a terrible storm that sinks her ship, she washes up on shore with amnesia.

Gervase de Seger, Lord of Monsaert, is known as a beast and a despoiler of women (although he's not really either). He narrowly escaped death in a castle fire some months ago, after being shot in the leg. He is trying to find out who is trying to kill him and struggling with his residual traumatic disabilities, and this has made him very grumpy. He stumbles upon Isabelle in the road and thinks she is a servant boy. He first puts her to work laboring in his castle as a kitchen servant, although his brother, and eventually he, realize who the redoubtable and lofty Isabelle is.

While Isabelle and Gervase slowly and independently figure out who Isabelle is and why she's in France, Isabelle charms Gervase's family and helps with Gervase's recovery from his injuries. Danger continues to stalk both, however, as vipers in their midst work against them. As Isabelle and Gervase work together and separately to unravel who is threatening them, they slowly fall in love.

Kurland is talented enough to keep this love tender and sweet,rather than treacly. DREAMS OF LILACS feels gentle and warm, like your favorite fuzzy, cozy blanket you want to wrap yourself in happily before the fire. I love Kurland's writing style, too, which is so lyrical and evocative. Much of Isabelle's family arrives in France by the end of the book, and the love within each family is palpable, and the ribbing between siblings provides a good deal of humor throughout the book.

DREAMS OF LILACS is another winner from Lynn Kurland. Keep 'em coming, Lynn!

Book Summary

Isabelle de Piaget is determined to elude her overprotective family by means of a hasty escape to France. But instead of making a surprise visit to her brother there, she winds up shipwrecked on the French coast with no memory of who she is or how she came to awaken in the dark and forbidding castle of an equally brooding lord.

Gervase de Seger rescues—very reluctantly—the bedraggled urchin he finds on the road and puts her to work where he can ignore her. Unfortunately, he soon realizes that her brother is an intimidating lord who is going to be absolutely furious when he learns that his beloved sister has been laboring as a scullery maid. Yet Isabelle may be the one who holds the key to solving Gervase’s most pressing problem: that someone has been trying to finish the task of separating him from his title and his lands.

Finding the truth propels Gervase and Isabelle from the buried secrets of half-ruined keeps to the glittering French court, and to the realization that love can blossom in the most perilous circumstances—and in the most unexpected places of the heart . . .