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Reviewed by Jamie Michele for Readers' Favorite
In Sharon L. Brawley’s Star Cross Inn, self-made shipping magnate Malcolm Danford meets Gabrielle Bourquet when she arrives in Haven Harbor aboard one of his vessels, beginning a relationship that remains inseparable from the life he builds beside Lake Michigan. Years later, Malcolm turns his ambitions toward a lakeside resort meant to secure the Danford name for another generation. By 1925, Star Cross Inn belongs to Malcolm’s heir Samuel, a proprietor raised inside its stone walls. Fifteen-year-old farm girl Abigail Burton enters his world when her mother seeks a buyer for the family’s surplus eggs and meets Samuel beside the resort’s watchtower. Her fascination with Samuel draws her away from familiar life on the Burton farm. As her connection to Samuel strengthens, the Danford history surrounding Star Cross Inn presses closer to the future she imagines there.
Sharon L. Brawley’s Star Cross Inn is a really well executed historical gothic novel, and Abigail is a protagonist we want to root for, especially when her youth sits beside her determination to enter Samuel’s world. Brawley fleshes her out as a girl trying to appear older, watching Gloria Swanson five times to study the actress’s mannerisms after Samuel calls her childish. Malcolm is wonderfully drawn, with his independence softened by the kindness he receives when Cooky wraps the runaway boy in a wool blanket and finds him a place at the logging camp. I love how Brawley immerses readers in Haven Harbor, from lumber crews icing winter roads beneath loaded sleds, to the vast Star Cross Inn corridors where Abigail senses unseen company beside her. Well written and haunting, readers who enjoy sweeping gothic fiction will adore this book.
