The Alpha of Rickett Hall by Merel Pierce

This story is thoughtfully crafted and very soft for an OV read, removing nearly all of the unsavory elements of the trope/genre, subverting quite a few of them, and slapping a rather inhibited, very restrained Wealthy Polite White veneer all over it. Riding on the high of my last read (another OV twist), I decided to finally crack into TAoRH. Well crafted and interesting premise, but something about this one just didn't excite me. So if you like historical romance, you like omegaverse, and you love a romance that intensely focuses on two people, you've got the perfect read in The Alpha of Rickett Hall!

I liked that the omegaverse aspects were presented so matter of factly it's simply part of life, a bit of an overlay onto the general rules of Regency society.Īnd how nice that these were gentried folks, but not nobility! I was thrilled that everyone was a simple 'Mr' or Miss' rather than the way, way overused Duke of Whatever.

This is a slow-burn romance, and the build to their attachment was understandable as it kept pace well with their growing personal and emotional involvement. Edmund is in a darker place, and his redemption happened a bit too rapidly for me. I frankly loved Juliana, who's both naive in her personal experiences and amazingly knowledgeable about nursing. Seeing their parents setting them up-Juliana's in hopes of a good match, Edmund's in hope that he'll stop focusing on death and failure-worked well to address that. I liked how Pierce showed both Juliana's and Edmund's parents working on bringing them together as frankly it wouldn't have made sense in Regency England for unmarried people of their class to be alone. Edmund is completely dispirited, something his parents recognize, and they engineer the opportunity for the omega Juliana to tend to the alpha Edmund with deeper hopes of attachment in mind. This is, at heart, a cabin romance, as Juliana and Edmund are basically on their own, with Edmund's home of Rickett Hall serving as the 'cabin.' Juliana becomes Edmund's nurse as he loses one of his lower legs in battle against the kingdom of Napoli (lovely play on both Italy and Napoleon there).

The Alpha of Rickett Hall by Merel Pierce