The Heiress and the Woodsman by Christine Hill Suntz

Rated: 4 star rating 

I just finished reading this book, and I really love it. The Heiress and the Woodsman by Christine Hill Suntz is a fantastic, clean historical romance that takes place in Canada during the 1837 Upper Canada Rebellion. If you enjoy stories about strong family ties and people doing whatever it takes to protect the ones they love, you will be hooked from the first page.

The story follows Charlotte Carruthers, a city girl trying to save her family's crumbling estate near Toronto after her mother's passing and her elderly father Charles's health starts to fail.  

Things get worse when a wealthy neighbor named Mr. Cole threatens to ruin them by publicly accusing her missing younger brother, Simon, of being part of the political rebellion, if her father doesn't sell him their property. 

Refusing to sit there and watch everything fall apart, Charlotte disguises herself as a man, grabs a poorly drawn map, and heads into the wild backcountry woods of Nassagaweya to find Simon and bring him back home before he is arrested.

That is where she meets Joshua Robertson, a hardworking woodsman who is facing his own desperate situation. Joshua has been working himself to the bone, to carve out a farm in the wilderness, for the younger brother he was forced to leave behind. But his first harvest ends up being nearly worthless, and his brother Henry gets stuck in an unfair indenture contract that Joshua can't afford to redeem. Joshua needs money fast, so when he crosses paths with Charlotte in the bush, he accepts her offer of twenty pounds to guide her through the rough terrain, even though he thinks a spoiled city girl is just going to slow him down.  

As they travel deeper into the Canadian bush, the survival challenges become a struggle, and they have to depend on each other as reluctant allies. I loved watching their relationship grow from skepticism into respect and a slow burn romance. The contrast between her high-society background and his rugged wilderness life brings so much natural tension to the story, especially as hidden secrets and the dangers of the ongoing rebellion start catching up with them.  

This is a beautifully written book that keeps you on the edge of your seat, without any graphic content. 

For anyone looking for trigger warnings, the book deals with themes of loss, grief, and the stress of family illness, along with some mild historical violence from the rebellion backdrop, but it is handled very gently. It is the perfect, clean read .

Thank you, NetGalley, Tyndale House Publishers/Tyndale Fiction, and author Christine Hill Suntz, for providing me with a copy of this ebook review consideration. All review opinions are my own.

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