Home > Reviews > Forever and a Day

Forever and a Day

by Delilah Marvelle

Delilah Marvelle starts her new trilogy “The Rumor Series” with Forever and a Day taking Regency readers into a whole new world. It's not very often that a Regency novel travels outside of England, but when it does happen it's usually to the continent or down to the Mediterranean. For this story Ms. Marvelle took us in a different direction, New York City.

Georgia wants one thing in life, 60 dollars. This is, of course, about more than just money. With that $60 she is going to move west and buy some land that she can farm on. She's lived in the slums of New York all her life and she is ready for clean, fresh air and wide open spaces. Despite the fact that she is positive bringing Roderick into her life is disastrous to her plan, she knows she can't leave him to his own devices. The man got run over by a carriage because he was trying to get her reticule back from a pickpocket. Now he can't remember anything about himself, how can she leave him to fend for himself?

Roderick doesn't know where he came from, but he knows he wants nothing more than to be with Georgia. Everything she does appeals to him on a basic level that transcends his brain functions. Now, he just has to convince her to take him with her when she goes west.

Georgia is trying to keep her distance from Roderick, knowing good and well that he has the power to change her mind, but staying away from someone when you are living together in a one room apartment is incredibly difficult. It becomes especially hard to ignore someone that is so incredibly helpful, to the point of injuring himself to save her hands from pain.

Life as they both know it is completely flipped upside down when Roderick's past catches up with him. Once it does, Roderick refuses to let Georgia go, despite knowing that she could never fit into his life.

It has been an incredibly long time since I have had a book keep me up at night. This one would not let me sleep until I had it finished. Not only did I get to read about New York City, but I got to read about the poor side of town, which I hardly ever get to read in romance novels. The description and history was vivid in detail, but wasn't so overpowering that I lost the story.

The Prince and the Pauper fairytale has been told many times, but somehow is one that we still enjoy reading. There is always some hesitation within readers that an author is going to make us believe someone so poor and someone so rich can figure out how to make life work. But the resolution in this story was believable, because it wasn't easy. Everything didn't just fall into place, they both had to work hard.

The only downfall to the book is that because there was so much that had to be accomplished to resolve the story, Roderick and Georgia had to fall in love very quickly. And not just the “I look at a person and it makes me smile” kind of love, but the “living without you would make me die” kind of love. That's the only way that we could believe these characters would be willing to go through everything they needed to go through in order to have their HEA. While I believed they had fallen in love with each other, I didn't believe they were as deep in love with each other, and as quickly, as they were portrayed.

Forever and a Day is a good start to a series, with just enough story to get your interest hooked into the mystery, but not enough that you know where it's all going. I'd say the book is worth a read, especially if you are looking for something a little off the beaten path.