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The gun continued to be levelled at me. “Answer it…but don’t tell him I’m here or he’ll get to listen to you die.” That concentrated my mind considerably, and as I reached for my phone I came up with a plan…

Emma Grayson was left devastated when her life was torn apart by tragedy and betrayal. Now someone believes it’s time for her to start again and puts an advert for a job through her door which leads her to the Melton Estate. Despite her desire for a solitary existence she finds herself discovering a life she could never have imagined, challenging her independence, her fears and her resistance to love.

My Review

A Single Step, Book 1 of the Grayson Trilogy by Georgia Rose

Genre: Romantic suspense
Length: 317 pages

“Oh, no,” I thought when I saw the quote from Jane Eyre at the beginning of A Single Step, Georgia Rose’s first book of The Grayson Trilogy. Despite (or perhaps because of?) my appreciation for all things Austen, this particular Brontë oeuvre has always been my least favorite. I braced myself for yet another gothic— orphaned young heroine, gloomy mansion complete with turrets, sinister servants, family members who’ve met with untimely deaths, mysteriously significant piece of jewelry, foreboding weather that mirrors the frightening events.

Thank you Ms. Rose for proving me wrong! Her version of gothic does indeed involve an orphaned heroine, the grieving Emma Grayson. But from that point on, Georgia Rose grabs hold of the gothic genre with both hands and makes it her own. Emma, though deeply damaged by the loss of her child and subsequent meltdown of her marriage, has a quiet inner strength that lets her rebuild her life on her own terms. She accepts a job managing the stables on an aristocratic estate, where she is soon fending off romantic offers from coworkers, and orders from her supervisor, the enigmatic Trent.

I don’t hesitate to give A Single Step five stars out of five. While I’m not normally a fan of careful, deliberate pacing, in this book it lets readers get to know Emma, peeling back the protective layers she’s built around her wounds. We get a picture of her quietly stubborn strength. And—this part is the most fun for an American like me—we get to see it play out in that most British of settings, the estate plus neighboring village and pub. Yes, there are a few points that were unresolved, such as who actually slipped the advert for the new job under Emma’s door. But those are the kind of loose ends that the remaining books of the series will undoubtedly address. For now, A Single Step is the perfect first volume. Its story arc is resolved completely satisfactorily, while there are still questions that will demand answers in those next volumes.

If you like carefully paced, well-plotted stories which showcase the development and growth of characters, plus an irresistible glimpse into a world that most Americans would never see, I recommend A Single Step. Your only problem will be waiting to get the rest of this series onto your Kindle.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Georgia Rose

‘A Single Step’ is my first novel, and is the first book in The Grayson Trilogy. It will eventually be joined by ‘Before the Dawn’ and finally by ‘Thicker than Water’. The titles I can manage in the time I have available at the moment, the content is proving to be a little more tricky!

I love the countryside, I walk our dogs and ride horses when possible, though that hasn’t been much recently as I’m currently lacking the essential ingredient of having access to a horse! Isolation appeals so the more remote the better. I struggle with towns, cities being particularly problematic, tall buildings, crowded streets, strangely claustrophobic.

I enjoy writing (that’s probably obvious), rewriting and editing (which is just as well), then reading a bit – quite a bit (thrillers, crime though I have an eclectic taste so really anything that catches my eye!) before more writing and occasionally, when taking a break from writing, I get to watch a film, sometimes even making it as far as the cinema!

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