Book #28: A Heart Revealed by Josi S. Kilpack

This book is about Amber Sterlington, the Rage of the Season in Regency-era London. She is determined to marry the richest, highest-titled man who will propose to her, and goes to great lengths to flirt with and associate with anyone who fulfills those criteria. But when she starts to lose all her hair, everything falls apart and she is exiled by her family to northern England to live in a cottage with her maid. She then undergoes a total change of heart and personality, re-evaluating her prior assumptions and attitudes and realizing how shallow and selfish she, and the rest of the elite London crowd, had been. (And, spoiler alert--she finds love, even with her debilitating fear of rejection after losing all her hair.)

I thought this book posed a very interesting rhetorical question: what would it have been like for someone in that class and time period who suffered from allopecia? I thought this was a believable scenario and I liked the about-face in personality that Amber goes through, and how she becomes humbled and willing and able to take care of her own needs to cook and clean and build fires to keep warm, etc. She goes from being pretty terrible person to very normal and even nice, thanks to the help and encouragement of her maid, Suzanne. I kind of thought the romance was a little weird, how they had their dates where he knew who she was but she didn't know who he was--but it all ended well and was pretty satisfactory in the end. I thought this book was written very well and I enjoyed the plot. Definitely a fun read.