Coming Home to Bellingham was a cute debut book by Katie Stewart Stone. It was sort of like a YA regency! Anabelle Milton is struck by tragedy when her parents die suddenly and she must find her way to family that lives in Bellingham Cottage. She meets the Bellingham brothers and becomes best friends with one, is fending off the unwanted advances of another, and falling in love with the third. It's a difficult situation to be in for sure!
This story has a lot of fun moments. Anabelle has a hard time filtering her words and she often says the wrong things. We are shown a sweet friendship between Anabelle and Robert and see Anabelle as she settles into a family and gets to know her young cousin (who steals all his scenes!) The author does great with writing the blossoming relationships between those three. I did have a hard time relating to Anabelle overall, because she comes across as quite young and immature. This also made it difficult to be drawn into the romance because her interactions with Peter didn't quite feel balanced. He had so many more life experiences and she was just so young and not in the same place he was at all. I thought Peter was a well-drawn hero, but I wish we'd had more from his perspective and that he'd been able to really express how his losses had colored his perspective. There was so much great emotional backstory that is only hinted at! I would have loved for the author to dig deeper and show us that side of our hero and heroine.
I did love the setting of the Bellingham estate and could easily picture it, but I wished the author had stayed true to society's rules for the regency times. It was fairly modern in places for both language and the actions of a young lady from the time period and detracted a bit from the story. With that said, however, it's obvious that the author has a talent for storytelling and I will be watching for more from her!
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Here's the back copy:
What begins as a pleasant holiday with a new friend in Brighton quickly turns to devastation for Anabelle Milton when she receives the tragic news: her parents are dead. Turned out of the only home she’s ever known, Anabelle is sent to live with an aunt and uncle who are strangers to her. Heartbroken, she arrives at Bellingham Cottage, a cozy home on the sprawling grounds of the Bellingham estate, to find an unexpectedly warm welcome—not only from her own family but also from the family of their aristocratic neighbors, Lord and Lady Bellingham.
Anabelle soon attracts the attention of the heirs of Bellingham—brothers who, though connected by blood, could not be more different. As she slowly begins to distance herself from the polite and obedient young woman her mother trained her to be, Anabelle is free for the first time to choose her own path. She knows she must be true to herself, even if it means risking unrequited love—but can she trust that the gentleman who has stolen her heart will not break it?
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