Smuggler's Kiss

It is very satisfying for a reviewer to see a writer improve with each book reviewed and this is certainly true of Marie-Louise Jensen.  This is a very good story with real depth and a joy to read.

Isabelle tries to drown herself but is rescued by the crew of a smuggler’s ship in 1720.  She has led a very pampered and sheltered life and, when she is asked to work her passage, finds herself totally unprepared for the life aboard ship.  Isabelle works in the galley and becomes aware of Will, who is not rough and ready but obviously a gentleman from her own world. Slowly Isabelle is drawn into the smuggling life of the Invisible and is used by the skipper to smuggle lace, round wound her person, with Will in attendance.  She helps to decoy the Revenue men with Will and helps him when he is shot.  Her reason for attempting suicide is revealed at the end of the story, after she is captured.  Her experience on board ship leads her to question the life she led and the thoughtless treatment of those below her, and there is a happy ending!

The reader is totally involved with Isabelle, and will understand not just her reluctance to work on the ship, but her growing realisation that Jacob whom once she would not have considered at all, is a very fine man. Similarly, readers will understand that her reason for trying to drown herself was a real and valid one.  The position of women at the time, chattels to be married off, with no status at all, save that of their husbands, is very clearly drawn for today’s young women.  The Channel with its lovely coastline, made for smuggling, is beautifully described and the reader feels there with Isabelle and Will.

There are echoes of Daphne du Maurier’s Frenchman’s Creek, but this is a fine romantic story standing on its own merits, measured, well-written and with a real feel for the period and the women of its time.