A complete redemption story that somehow doesn't make its way back to shore. We meet the main character of this book slightly in the first, and are lead to think she's an awful and odious character. We think the same for a while for the second book in the series, and are meant to come around to her way of thinking via Joel, who we are meant to be fond of from the first book - except he was overused and only seen as a point to repeat and repeat the narrative in that book... so it still somehow doesn't work in this one.

Unfortunately unlike Balogh's other books, this series is a bit too boring and drawn out, with characters that lack charisma or a place in our hearts. I gave this book a hard try as I hoped to like the first in the series after giving it another go for the sake of reviewing this one, but alas it's simply not to be.

Since discovering – VERY belatedly! – how talented a writer Mary Balogh is with the first book in this Westcott family series, I have been waiting anxiously for the second instalment.
I was VERY surprised when I discovered the heroine of the next book was Camille, the half-sister of the heroine of book one. In the first book she discovers that she isn’t, in fact, the legitimate daughter of an earl, and when her illegitimacy is discovered she reacts very badly (understandably), loses her fiancé, and refuses to have anything to do with her newly-discovered sister.
She is not a particularly likeable person and the author makes certain we know it.
However, there is much more to her than that, and I was excited to see how Balogh had her grow and change into a worthy heroine over the course of the book. As one of her relatives observes, while also noticing how she is changing:
‘I do not believe anyone really likes Camille.’
Someone to Hold takes place not in London, but entirely in the spa town of Bath. Camille is trying to understand who she is now she is not Lady Camille, and she takes a job at the orphanage where her half-sister grew up. There, she meets her sister’s best friend, Joel, the art teacher, and he takes an instant dislike to her.
This is no ordinary orphanage; it’s the sort of establishment where aristocrats dump their illegitimate kids and then pay for them to stay hidden.
Of course, things change over the course of the book, and I really appreciated the difficulties the two characters went through to reach a point where they fell in love.
This is a very different type of Regency romance to many. Instead of a heroine rising up to get everything she could ever have wanted, she has to learn to be a commoner, and find out who she is when she isn’t titled and extraordinarily rich.
The aristocrats are on the fringes of the story still, as they publicly recognise Camille, her sister, and their mother. So there’s still a touch of the rich and sparkly people. This series is, after all, all about family.
One thing I really loved was the orphanage setting – this came as a surprise.
The children are written realistically, and there is one little girl whose evolution as a character is as complex as Camille’s. She also starts off as an unlikeable character, and I loved seeing how that changed. Some scenes are a little heartbreaking.
Joel, our hero, also grew up in the orphanage (he discovers his origins over the course of the book), and it was great seeing him interact with the children.
Mary Balogh writes books with “more” in them. It is amazing how some authors can fit a complex story into the same word count where others simply give us people romping from ballroom to ballroom.
What fascinates me the most about this series is how imperfect the characters are. The hero of the last book was small, full of affectations, not at all the way romance heroes ever are – and also a very powerful duke. This heroine? Even her family has their doubts about her at the start, but she is memorable and tries very hard to become someone different. I never thought I’d be so engrossed in such unconventional characters.
I am impatiently waiting for the next book.

I promised to give an honest review for this ARC. The writing is very detailed and it is a long read but I am sorry to say that i found it to stilted to finish. I found no passion in the tale at all