Eden's Choice Sass and Steam, Book 1
Steampunk, Gaslamp, Sci-Fi, Fantasy
Catherine Stein, LLC
October 1, 2019
341
Football, mechanical dragons, industrial espionage, sexy romance. Welcome to fall in Ann Arbor.
Eden Randall has her life under control. Sure, people call her weird for having a mechanical dragon with her at all times, but she’s content. All she needs are her studies and her sports—and for the football team to have another undefeated season. What she doesn’t need are nosy men from out-of-town poking into her business.
Spending months in a tiny town shadowing the football team is the last thing Boston reporter Bruce Caldwell wants to do, but the tedious job could be his ticket to something bigger and better. When he meets a sports-mad spitfire on the sidelines, he realizes the town may hold stories far more interesting than he expected.
With dragons running loose in the laboratory and a ruthless New York industrialist threatening their budding friendship, Eden and Bruce find themselves players in a game far more dangerous than the one on the gridiron. Never ones to quit, they know the only way to emerge as The Victors is to become a team. This football season, winning might mean losing their hearts.
Available at Amazon.
Reviewed by Marie Loring
Member of the Paranormal Romance Guild Review Team
Catherine Stein is one of those authors, who, the minute you start reading her book, you wonder why the heck all her novels are not in your library! She has an amazing voice, a quirky and utterly engaging way of writing, and an imagination that soars.
In Eden’s Voice, she creates a world quite unlike the 1904 with which we are familiar. Her world is filled with mechanics, biomechanics, dragons and…football! Yes, football. Our intrepid heroine has a thing for the gridiron, and despite being labeled the “weird girl” on the college campus where her father teaches, she unabashedly follows her heart. That means following each and every game while pacing the sidelines, a habit which eventually leads her to two very different men, neither of whom are put off—nay, they are charmed—by her eccentricities.
Although we are rooting for Bruce all the way and are pretty sure that’s where Eden’s future and happiness lies, there is something about the well-heeled Evan Tagget that begs a second, and perhaps a third, look. Sure, he’s got ego problems and a couple of strong-armed goons he could do without, but Eden forgives him his trespasses, so why can’t we?
But back to Bruce. He’s a lovely man, highly enlightened for his day and age, and full of righteous indignation (backed by some physical heroics) for those who would treat Eden foul. Throw in a boy-next-door cuteness, a healthy dollop of witty banter between our two protagonists, and you have a story that flies by as you turn the pages as fast as you can.
Eden is wonderful, but all the periphery characters are, too, which fleshes the book out with engaging depths.
This is one of those rare books to which I would give many more stars, were they available, and I’m not even a steampunk fan! I beg all potential readers who are leery of steampunk to give this book a try. I promise, you will be drawn in and inordinately pleased with every aspect of this well researched and expertly woven tale!
Fantastic review, Marie. I agree completely. Eden’s Voice is also a five-star read for me. I don’t read a lot of steampunk romance, but when I do it’s usually a Catherine Stein book.