About The Lady in the Coppergate Tower by Nancy Campbell Allen
Hazel Hughes has spent her life believing she is a Medium—someone who can talk to ghosts. But as of yet, that skill has remained frustratingly elusive. She is also suffering from a reoccurring childhood dream of someone who looks almost exactly like Hazel, but this dream version of herself is slowly going mad.
Sam MacInnes is a talented surgeon who runs in the highest social circles thanks to his family’s position and history. When Sam hires Hazel to assist him with his medical practice, he is immediately drawn to her intelligence, wit, and beauty.
Their potential relationship is derailed one evening when a mysterious count arrives in London and reveals to Hazel the truth about her past: she was abducted at birth and her twin sister has fallen dangerously ill.
Hazel agrees to travel to Romania with Count Petrescu in order to save her sister, and Sam insists on accompanying her. The count has secrets, though, and the journey grows more sinister with every mile that draws Hazel closer to her homeland. Even as her feelings for Sam become deeper and more complicated, she fears she might not survive the quest to save her sister with her heart intact, not to mention her life. She must learn to draw on gifts she doesn’t know she has if they are going to ever return home again.
Hazel and Sam must fight their way past dark magic, clockwork beasts, and their own insecurities as they try to reach her sister in the impenetrable Coppergate Tower before time runs out.
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Review of The Lady in the Coppergate Tower
I do believe this series gets better with each new story! I devoured The Lady in the Coppergate Tower, needing only two settings and a few hours to tear through each adventure- and romance-filled page. This one has a gothic feel with the dark and possibly/probably evil Count Petrescu orchestrating the trip to his home in Romania. Neither Hazel, Sam, nor the reader trust him and they trust his henchman Renton even less. At one point, Hazel surmises Petrescu is a vampire. Possible because he has a henchman named Renton….. By the way, vampires do exist in this world.
You know what else they have in this world? Automatons. Or ‘tons. Eugene is what is described as a ‘high-functioning automaton…with exceptional programming.’ Basically, he has a personality and is a source of irritation for Sam and humor for the rest of us. I did enjoy Eugene’s character very much.
Sam and Izzy have a friendship that both would like to be more, though neither will admit it. Sam thinks Izzy only wants friendship and her career. Izzy thinks Sam wants a wife from his own social class. The circumstances of their travel will bring them closer together – maybe together enough that they might just work something out. Their witty conversation and occasional flirting made for delightful reading. The climactic ending with one of them almost dying made for a sharp inhale and a slow, relieved exhale.
The Lady in the Coppergate Tower is the third book in Nancy Campbell Allen’s Steampunk Proper Romance series. I’ve enjoyed all three so I can tell you that each books stands alone, though successive books do reference events and characters of previous books. Read one, or read them all!
Through Netgalley, the publisher provided a copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.
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