Title: An Unconditional Freedom (The Royal League #3)
Date of publication: 26 Feb 2019
Genre: Historical romance, the Civil War
My rating: 4.5 Stars
Blurb
Daniel Cumberland’s uneventful life as a freed man in Massachusetts ended the night he was kidnapped and sold into slavery. To then have his freedom restored by the very man who stole his beloved’s heart is almost too much to bear. When he’s offered entry into the Loyal League, the covert organization of spies who helped free him, Daniel seizes the opportunity to help take down the Confederacy and vent the rage that consumes him.
When the Union Army occupies Janeta Sanchez’s small Florida town, her family’s goodwill and ties to Cuba fail to protect her father from being unjustly imprisoned for treason. To ensure her father’s release, Janeta is made an offer she can’t refuse: spy for the Confederacy. Driven by a desire for vengeance and the hope of saving her family, she agrees to infiltrate the Loyal League as a double agent.
Daniel is both aggravated and intrigued by the headstrong recruit. For the first time in months, he feels something other than anger, but a partner means being accountable, and Daniel’s secret plan to settle a vendetta and strike a blow for the Union can be entrusted to no one. As Janeta and Daniel track Jefferson Davis on his tour of the South, their dual hidden missions are threatened by the ghosts of their pasts and a growing mutual attraction—that might be their only hope for the future.
Review
What a fantastic end to an amazing series!
These are such important books, offering a little known and an invaluable perspective on the Civil War in the US. I enjoyed all the books and with An Extraordinary Union my favourite, this comes a close second. It's a powerful character-driven story with a strong suspense elements (the MCs are al spies and agents, after all).
I won't be giving away any plot details and I can say that it's tied with the previous in the series but works well as standalone. The whole series draws a powerful portrayal of the people involved in the Civil War and this one adds yet another layer to the grand picture.
Daniel was a broken man, set on revenged, disillusioned, hardened, one who fights for his people but ultimately he has lost hope in his country. There is so much hurt and devastation in his life, and blame, all the self-blame for having been naive and hopeful, for being weak and unable to move on.
He was a free man with big plans for the future and he was kidnapped and enslaved and everything was taken away from him. In a way his story was one long coming back from the dead, learning to trust and to hope and dream again.
panic attack, suicidal thoughts, anxiety. flashbacks of trauma and torture.
Janeta was an amazing, so interesting, so unusual. She started as a double agent, determined to spy for the Confederacy. Her father was a white Cuban slave-owner and, her mother was a slave he freed and later married. She through a most difficult and transforming journey in this story. She had to face hard truths about herself and her family that she had been avoiding. She found her people in the face of Daniel and the slave they met on the road. I started disliking her and by the end I was fully on her side.
The story has a varied cast of great side characters who brought life and richness to the story. Seeing Malcom and Elle (the MCs in book 1) in the end bought things full circle.
Ultimately, this is a dark but hopeful story. The focus for me was not so much on the HEA but on the MCs making a choice who they want to be in this life, standing up for their to love and happiness and after all, unconditional freedom.
Ebook price: $9.99, books 1 and 2 are on sale at the time of posting this review: $2.99 each
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