Master of Hanging Cross: An Exmoor Romance book 2

Kate Mckenzie is off men and finished with love. The last thing Ethan Cade wants is to get involved with another woman. He’s been caught once and does not intend to repeat the experience.

Kate arrives at Hanging Cross, an isolated estate on Exmoor, to begin a new job as personal assistant to a famous novelist. From the moment he sees her, Ethan is determined Kate will have to go. But Kate has found her dream job and is equally determined to stay, despite Ethan’s hostility. As the secrets of Hanging Cross gradually unfold, and her own past eventually catches up with her, Kate must act, or leave Hanging Cross for good.

Amazon Review

This is a great story to wrap up snug with and enjoy. Thoroughly enjoyable and left me with a lovely warm feeling. More please!
 

Goodreads Review

Five stars – and these from a non-romance reader.
Someone lent me a copy of this book as they knew I’d lived on Exmoor for many years. The title put me off, but from the start (first word ‘Idiot!’) I knew that reading on would be worth it. The feisty heroine Kate, escaping from London and a crashed love affair, nearly collides with a Ross Poldark-type horseman on a lonely Exmoor road. She’s on her way to a new job as assistant to a well-known author on a huge manorial estate on the Moor. (Better learn to go more carefully in all respects, Kate, because that gorgeous horseman is the nephew of your new boss, Vanessa Cade. And he owns the estate.)
He’s Ethan Cade, stereotypical hero, tall dark and handsome of course, but in character – a mystery. He’s polite at first, then wary, then not polite and almost aggressive towards Kate. What’s wrong with the man? He clearly finds her attractive and she finds him devastating but unlikeable with his unpredictable moodiness. His ancient family home and estate mean everything to him and he’s spent years salvaging it from the wreck of his late father’s ruinous management. Kate falls in love with the baronial house and its history of smuggling, its romantic setting up on the glorious Moor above steep cliffs to the sea – and finds herself also falling for its mercurial master. Why is he so determined to keep her at a distance?
As I said I’m no romance-reader. But I really enjoyed the plot turns and manoeuvrings and particularly the whip-crack dialogue between Ethan and Kate as they come one step closer to one another both mentally and physically, are pulled apart, take another step closer, fall apart again. And all to the backdrop of wonderful romantic Exmoor.
Gail Crane clearly knows it well. Her atmospheric descriptions of the steep wooded combes and tracks, the open country, the cliffs and the seashore are superb, the reader can see, smell, hear and almost touch the scenery.
Master of Hanging Cross reminds me in places of the Poldark novels, of Du Maurier’s Rebecca, even of Wuthering Heights.
Read and enjoy. It’ll be three hours of your time well spent.