Been sitting on my review on this for awhile.This installment of the series is quite a bit different from the first book. Our intrepid heroes in this one are also spies for the North, but unlike Elle and Malcolm from the first book, Marlies and Ewan's spying isn't as overt. Marlie is a free woman in the south living with her white half-sister who accepts her as a member of the family. Her mother was a black conjure woman and also a practitioner of hoodoo root magic. I have to pause here and say

3.5 Stars I loved the first book in this series, so I'm happy I finally picked this one up. Marlie is working as a spy for the Union and met our hero while volunteering in a prison he was a prisoner in. She meets him again when he's escaped and injured and needs a safe place to stay. Their romance was slow and sweet, but it was my least favorite thing about the book. I much more enjoyed Marlie's journey translating her mother's journal and uncovering who her father was. There are also a lot of m...

“I’m sorry to disturb you again,” he said. He tried to think of what his brother, Malcolm, would say; something witty and dashing and perhaps slightly provocative. “I’ve got a rather small bladder, it seems.”She looked at him with raised brows and he understood immediately that Malcolm would not have said such a thing.4.5 stars rounded up.Behold, ladies and gentlemen, one of the reasons why I love Alyssa Cole’s stories. Even when writing about the brutality of the Civil War, the injustice of sla...

I really like how this woman writes! :)The heroine here was weaker and more protected than the one in the previous book, but I appreciated how he grown up, even if I, and I suppose nobody else, didn't like the reasons that forced her to!She is also a mixed race free woman, but where the previous heroine was actively fight for the Union, here Marlie is not fighting but helping either with care of the prisoners of war or with hiding the escaped slaves. Still, her help is done with the protection o...

This is my 4th or 5th Cole. Don't ask me to come up with all the titles rn bc I'm on my phone, away from home so that's not happening. Overall, I can tell you my relationship with her writing is complex. I love how incredibly smart her books are. There's no... What do you all call it? Window dressing here. She's incredible at making me feel the time and place, ultimately the sense of danger. And her covers are spectacular. They always have been. Her heroines are smart, her books are sexy, but th...

I forgot how much I loved this💜I thoroughly enjoyed this book! Marlie was charming and Ewan was a gentleman. I felt like book's storyline unfolded much more organically than An Extraordinary Union.I look forward to the next book in this series.

Such rich goodness! Marlie & Ewan’s story pulled at heartstrings I didn’t know existed. This series is just so well written and deliciously good. Painful in parts, and I couldn’t help but think of what my life would’ve been back during that awful time. Alyssa Cole blows my mind with her research, and these rich characters that she created. Marlie was a black Claire Fraser, and that made my heart so proud! Not only could she heal mixing potions, mixtures and such, but because of her one green eye...

I have read Alyssa Cole before so I came into this book with high expectations especially with it being set in this historical period surrounding the conflicts of the Civil War. For the most part there were many redeemable qualities about this story, there is great histrical context, the characters are in depth and captivating and so very unique. However for some reason the writing didn't grab me. Now I had read Cole's contemporary romance not too long ago and LOVED it. So I just didn't expect t...

One of the best books I’ve read this year. Even before I saw the bibliography at the back, it was obvious this was exquisitely researched to bring nuances of the Civil War to life. Pages 20-21 in particular set in a POW camp in the Carolinas, where noncombatants such as local Quakers, farmers too poor to own slaves and Confederate Army runaways are mixed with captured Union soldiers, reminded us the war was no simple North vs South matter. Race too is such a wonder and relief here. I basically w...

I thought I loved Malcolm and Ellen from An Extraordinary Union but I think I love Marlie and Ewan from this book even more. Like Cole's previous Loyal League novel, the action/history is the meat of the story, and the romance is just one more element layered on. (Which I love.) Longer review to come with more gushing.

I generally don't rate books I haven't read yet, but this book isn't gonna sit here with a 1-star rating because of a troll, so FIVE STARS. (Also, if you have not read the first book in this series, An Extraordinary Union, DO SO IMMEDIATELY, IT IS WONDERFUL.)update:I have now officially read this book and it was so good I failed to give Dianna directions while we were driving and we got lost because I was busy reading.

Cole hits it out of the park again with the second in an exceptional histrom series set in the US Civil War. Marlie, a herbalist, is the mixed race daughter of a freed black woman and a wealthy white plantation owner. Her sister Sarah is an abolitionist and takes Marlie into the family as an acknowledged member, but things go rapidly south when Sarah's brother and his virulently racist Southern-belle wife return home. This aspect of the story is brutally painful. Marlie moves from feeling loved

I liked this book but I do have to say that I liked it less than the first novel in the Loyal League series entitled, “An Extraordinary Union”. I found with this second novel in the series, it had a much slower pace and truly did focus on Ewan and Marlie’s journey. I felt that the first novel in the series included much more background historical information whereas this novel mentioned it periodically but didn’t really include the events that were happening in parallel. The story and the pacing...

My favorite thing about Alyssa Cole’s Loyal League historical romance series (other than the sexy bits) is the way she goes beyond the typical narratives of the Civil War and highlights characters and situations you probably haven’t read about before (but the sexy bits are great too!). In A Hope Divided, the second installment in the series, main character Marlie is a free black woman, the daughter of a former slave and her white master. As an adult, Marlie is mostly left to live as she pleases,...

I don't know why my review for the eBook landed in the paperback version, so I'm reposting the review here since they're both within my booklist and I can't fix it any other way. LOLA HOPE DIVIDED by Alyssa Cole radiates intelligence, human frailties and endurance in a tightly woven package of realistic historical adventure and love.Marlie Lynch didn’t learn about her family history from her mother, a freed slave and healer, until Marlie’s white half-sister Sarah shows up at their doorstep. Marl...

A Hope Divided is the second book in The Loyal League series, I read the first book, An Extraordinary Union last year. I think I may have enjoyed this one even more than the first book.The Civil War has always fascinated me and what I really have enjoyed about both books in the series, is the amount of research that Alyssa Cole has done for these books. This is a part of Civil War history that doesn’t get discussed in school. I don’t mean the stuff about spy's and such (and while this may be a f...