Search - Dearest Enemy

Interesting female lead. It's unusual to find a coldhearted heroine... but overall the book 'skimmed'. It was only 380 pages and covered 6 or 7 years. The H/H spent a LOT of time apart.

In 1859, eighteen years old Suzanna LeGrande is happy living in Virginia with her widow mom and an older brother, Matthew, a West Point graduate. Her brother introduces her to a friend from his cadet days, Ty Bellinggrath. It is love at first sight as they begin seeing one another. One year later he proposes and she accepts. By April 1861, Virginia secedes from the Union and joins the Confederate States; her brother and her fiancé join Lee. That summer as the Confederacy gains a great victory at nearby Manassas, the two men in her life die in battle. Suzanna vows vengeance on the damn Yankees.

Over the next few years Suzanna pretends to be a social butterfly, but is obtaining valuable information for the South as she spies on her Northern guests. In 1864 Union Naval Rear Admiral Mitchell Longley falls in love with Suzanna, but stupidly leaves classified material lying around that she obtains. Suzanna loves Mitch, but her vow means more. She steals the information, which leads to many deaths. Mitch is shattered as he knows who betrayed him. He lives for one thing to destroy the Southern Belle who killed their love.

Nan Ryan writes a terrific star-crossed Civil War romance that grips readers once Suzanna vows to see Yankee blood flow and never slows down until Mitch pledges to avenge the flow of Yankee blood caused by the betrayal. The lead characters are fully developed especially when anger takes over reasoning as each drives the exhilarating story line with the personal conflicts over loving a DEAREST ENEMY. This is a one sitter historical to learn how it plays out.

I thought this book was truly awful. For one thing It read like a first draft. The chapters are short. The plot is very unbelievable, almost corny at times, and the characters are very sterotypical "romance" characters, very flat and the heroine is quite spoiled & silly at first and then annoying later. The hero is actually referred to as the Rear Admiral a couple of times. (think about it) Even though he's a Navy admiral, it just sounded so...like Nan Ryan was pulling my leg. I actually started to laugh out loud while reading this and that's so not good while you're reading a romance novel. May just be Nan Ryan's worst novel ever.