About Hillary Bowen
Hillary Bowen lives in Victoria with her family, two cats, and a flock of hens. A lifelong reader and lover of all things swoony, you can most often find her writing or reading romance or in her garden. She has just released her debut historical romance, Out with Lanterns.
Out with Lanterns
A World War I Historical Romance
Available Now!
Somerset, 1917.
Ophelia Blackwood has a choice: continue to evade a parade of her father’s ill-advised suitors, or seize control of her future and join the war effort with the Women’s Land Army. Ophelia finds the independence she has always craved, but a year into her assignment, Silas Larke arrives, and she is irritated to discover that he is just as intriguing and attractive as he was during their intense summer friendship, years ago.
A year after being injured on the Front, Silas is thrown together with the one woman he couldn’t forget when the British government assigns him to lend a hand on a local farm. The work may be familiar, but he finds himself forced to examine the future he always imagined.
When pressure from the War Office raises the spectre of the farm’s repossession, Ophelia knows she can’t afford distraction, no matter how beguiling the man, but the feelings kindled during her and Silas’s 1915 summer have returned as a blaze. Desperate to produce more for the war effort and save the farm with the people who have become her family, Ophelia and Silas push against the rising tide of their attraction, but Ophelia begins to wonder if they could be a force to be reckoned with, together.
Tropes you’ll find in
Out with Lanterns
Close proximity
Friends to lovers
Hurt/comfort
Found family
Protection/independence
Virgin MCs
Playlist
Songs of note:
“Transparent Theme” by London Music Works
“Melusine” by Summer Mastous
“The Wings” by Gustavo Santaolalla
“Fade into You” by Mazzy Star
“Hollow in the Ferns” by Craig Armstrong
“Quietly Yours” by Birdie
“Holy Roller” by Zach Bryan & Sierra Ferrell
“Stand by Me” by Florence and the Machine
“Bluebird” by Alexis Ffrench
“It's Always Been You” by Ray LaMontagne
Press
“Out with Lanterns is a beautifully crafted book about finding your way when circumstances change, and the world shifts under your feet. It's about a found family that celebrates your strengths, and helps you find them. It's about a love that is arrived at through careful nurturing and communication, and based on white hot attraction and desire. The prose is lovely, the characters are wonderfully crafted, and the story and setting are perfectly immersive.”
Jody, Good Reads reviewer
“Out with Lanterns is exactly what I crave in a historical romance: transportive, unique, impeccably researched, emotionally complex and beautifully crafted.”
Louise Mayberry, author of The Darnalay Castle series
“Ophelia and Silas are steady and strong romantic leads, building a partnership of equality and tender love on every page of this book … Their love story builds and builds and builds until it reaches an unstoppable crescendo by the book’s conclusion. It felt indulgent, rich to both the senses and heart. It was very satisfying for me as a reader.”
Lindsay Barrett, author of Savannah Royals
“I loved a lot of things about this book: Silas and Ophelia's sweet but SPICY slide into a relationship; the historical elements that were perfectly woven into the narrative without detracting from the love story; the well-developed secondary characters; the satisfying sense of place.”
Meg, Good Reads reviewer