Absolutely thrilling and heartwrenching anthology of stories right from the battlefield. I adore this group of authors and boy, do they weave an intriguing tale! It was really difficult to put this book down. It is one of the more serious historical romances that I have read so I will definitely recommend it on a day when you are looking forward to read some very sentimental but touching stories. Fantastic read!

The best book I’ve read in 2017. Three stories that are hopeful but honest and show the power of love and country.

Three evocatively enthralling love stories during the American fight for independence from skilful story-tellers.
Compelling and intense reads.
I received an eGalley arc from the publisher. This is my honest opinion.

Story 1: Rachel/Nathan - I didn’t care for this one much, but I believe that is because of my personal reluctance to read stories with descriptive battle scenes.
Story 2: John/Henry - this was lovely and a slow burning love story about a white British officer and a black American soldier who fall in love.
Story 3: Mercy/Andromeda- this was my favorite (and I’m partial to Alyssa Cole’s writing). A story about a servant and a dress maker that fall in love.
All these stories revolve around Alexander Hamilton (some more than others) and it was an enjoyable read about Revolutionary America and 3 love stories that stemmed from that time.

Trio of novellas set during the American War of Independence. I have a feeling that when I get around to reading the historical notes on these novellas they will turn out not to be as far-fetched as I currently suspect.

The Promised Land by Rose Lerner
Rachel left her arranged marriage, her interfering mother-in-law and her husband to join the American rebels fight the British. For three years her husband has thought she was dead and she has dressed as a man, calling herself Ezra. Full of ideals about an America where race, religion and sex do not act as a barrier she intends to write her memoirs after the war and go on tour telling people that a Jewish woman fought alongside christian men to free America. And then she sees her husband, Nathaniel, walking through the camp as bold as brass. Convinced he is a spy for the British she denounces him to her superior officers.

Nathaniel has mourned his wife for the past three years. Although it was a marriage of convenience, Rachel needed money for her mother's medical fees, Nathaniel truly loved his wife and had hoped that she might come to love him.

As the rebels beseige Yorktown can two estranged lovers be frank enough about their feelings and needs to start over, or are the scars too deep?

Rose Lerner writes unusual historical romances, often from the point of view of the working classes or people outside the mainstream such as gypsies, this is no exception. An exploration of how to reconcile religious beliefs with emotions and patriotism, of listening to yourself and to others, of what it meant to be a Jew in the 1700s in America, of what it meant to be a Jewish woman, of gender and identity.

I liked this, I liked the romance, that neither Rachel nor Nathaniel was entirely right or wrong, that they made as many mistakes as each other, that the emotions felt 'real'. But I didn't feel emotionally engaged, this was more historical than romance.

Three stars.

The Pursuit Of ... by Courtney Milan
An unlikely romance between a rich, white British officer and a poor black free man fighting for the American army. After saving the life of Henry Latham, a loquacious British officer, John Hunter is surprised when Henry hunts him out to offer his thanks, even more surprised when Henry agrees to accompany him on his 500 mile trek across America to reunite with his sister and her husband.

As the two men walk across America Henry waxes lyrically about anything and everything, particularly cheese, and somehow the two men fall in love.

This is funny and touching and engaging, a wonderful romance about hope and idealism. I thought that John was unbelievably well-spoken and educated for a poor black man of that time, but it's not an era I'm familiar with and it was a riveting read.

Four stars.

That Could Be Enough by Alyssa Cole
I haven't really started this one - review to come

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Not Throwing Away My Shot: Review of “Hamilton’s Batallion” by Rose Lerner, Courtney Milan, and Alyssa Cole
I love history. Now, that has not always been the case, but for the last half of my life, I have been History’s Bitch. I listen to history based podcasts like Nerds on History (please come back soon) and The History Chicks and look forward to documentaries on The History Channel. I find all of these things to be the epitomy of fun, which would definitely come as a complete surprise to most of my history teachers from back in the day. What is the one thing that has taught me more about history than anything else? Romance novels. 
Yes, you read that right. Romance novels are a rich source of history. It is because of The Pink Carnation novels by Lauren Willig that I understood the subtle dig at George III about “going mad” in “You’ll Be Back,” something that my mother, who also loves history, did not get when she heard the song. These authors seriously do their homework when sitting down to write. If you follow them on social media (as I do), you’d learn that they read through actual primary sources to find out how people behaved, what they ate, and what society was like during the time periods their characters populate. Historical accuracy is the name of the game and the women who write historical romances do it right. Knowing the work of two of these authors, when I sat down to read Hamilton’s Battalion, I knew I was in for a treat.


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From the Publisher:
Love in the time of Hamilton…
On October 14, 1781, Alexander Hamilton led a daring assault on Yorktown’s defenses and won a decisive victory in America’s fight for independence. Decades later, when Eliza Hamilton collected his soldiers’ stories, she discovered that while the war was won at Yorktown, the battle for love took place on many fronts…
PROMISED LAND by Rose Lerner
Donning men’s clothing, Rachel left her life behind to fight the British as Corporal Ezra Jacobs — but life catches up with a vengeance when she arrests an old love as a Loyalist spy.
At first she thinks Nathan Mendelson hasn’t changed one bit: he’s annoying, he talks too much, he sticks his handsome nose where it doesn’t belong, and he’s self-righteously indignant just because Rachel might have faked her own death a little. She’ll be lucky if he doesn’t spill her secret to the entire Continental Army.
Then Nathan shares a secret of his own, one that changes everything…
THE PURSUIT OF… by Courtney Milan
What do a Black American soldier, invalided out at Yorktown, and a British officer who deserted his post have in common? Quite a bit, actually.
They attempted to kill each other the first time they met.They’re liable to try again at some point in the five-hundred mile journey that they’re inexplicably sharing.They are not falling in love with each other.They are not falling in love with each other.They are… Oh, no.
THAT COULD BE ENOUGH by Alyssa Cole
Mercy Stiel knows the best thing to do with pesky feelings like “love” and “hope”: avoid them at all cost. Serving as a maid to Eliza Hamilton, and an assistant in the woman’s stubborn desire to preserve her late husband’s legacy, has driven that point home for Mercy — as have her own previous heartbreaks.
When Andromeda Broadnax shows up at Hamilton Grange for an interview in her grandfather’s stead, Mercy’s resolution to live a quiet, pain-free life is tested by the beautiful, flirtatious, and entirely overwhelming dressmaker.
Andromeda has staid Mercy reconsidering her world view, but neither is prepared for love — or for what happens when it’s not enough.


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The Promised Land by Rose Lerner


Ms. Lerner was the only one of the three authors that I had never heard of before picking up this anthology, so I wasn't sure what I was getting into with this particular novella, especially considering the cross-dressing aspect of it. I know this is something of a mainstay of the romance genre, but I haven’t actually encountered it before, so I didn’t know what to make of the fact that the main character was successfully pretending to be a man. It takes a lot to get me to try something as cliched as the cross-dressing trope. To my surprise, I enjoyed this immensely.
The relationship between Rachel and Nathan was a lot of fun (even without Rachel pretending to be a man). I loved watching them try to figure each other out after not seeing each other for five years. These were people who knew each other completely, or at least they thought they did, and now they’re having to reevaluate what they knew. Ms. Lerner did an outstanding job of making you understand their confusion over their current situation and what brought them there.
What I liked the most about this installment was learning Rachel’s reasons for wanting to fight in the Revolution. In school, we’re taught one thing — the British government was tyrannous and the American colonists wanted their freedom. No one ever talks about why individual people wanted to fight. Sure, some of them did it because of the collective anger over The Stamp Act, but not everyone did. I found particular significance in Rachel’s reasons as a Jewish woman fighting to start a brand new country. Not growing up Jewish and learning the standard, white Christian history, I was unaware of the fact that Jewish people were not in fact citizens of any country in the world until the United States gave citizenship to them. I knew that anti-semitism was rampant for much of history (and sadly is seeing a resurgance thanks to a certain orange asshole currently taking up residence in the White House), but it had never occured to me that members of the Jewish faith could not become citizens unless they converted to The Church of England. It makes me wonder how many people decided to join the Continental Army in the hopes of finally having a country that would accept them.
5 Stars
The Pursuit of… by Courtney Milan


When I finished reading The Pursuit of…, I tweeted out that I need to come up with a new rating system because this novella deserves a higher rating than 5 stars out of 5. I spent an entire night reading this and would do it again in a heartbeat. I loved the fact that a novella successfully depicted a slow burn romance between two characters who had not met prior to the start of the story. I have mad respect (do people still say this?) for Ms. Milan’s ability to do this because it is not easy. Establishing characters and a relationship that ends in a satisfying manner in under 200 pages takes skill, and not everyone has that skill. What especially struck me was that not only did she manage this, but she managed it with characters that were not inclined to trust each other — a white, Bristish military officer and a former slave fighting in the Continental Army.
As with The Promised Land, The Pursuit of… also taught me things that I never would have learned in a traditional classroom. For instance, I did not know that the Rhode Island Regiment allowed slaves their freedom if they fought. No one ever thinks about the role of slaves in the Revolution. There we were fighting for the idea that “all men are created equal” while at the same time the very person who wrote that line owned people. What hypocrites our founding fathers were. While this was not news to me, having spent enough time in American history classes in both high school and college, but it really hit me when reading the passages from John’s point of view. The conversation between him and Henry regarding the Declaration of Independence gave me goosebumps. More books should do this.
All the Stars (okay for simplicity’s sake, 5 Stars)
That Would Be Enough by Alyssa Cole
I wish I could say that I liked this as much as the other two novellas, but I can’t. I had a hard time connecting with either of the heroines and frankly, I thought that Andromeda was a bit of a creepy stalker. She was obviously the man in this relationship and the alpha characteristics that I hate in male characters, I liked even less in her. For what it is worth, I did enjoy the depiction of a successful woman of color in the Early 19th Century, but what was supposed to come off as confidence in herself felt more like cockiness than anything else. If she were a man, people would probably call what she had swagger, a term that for me equals arrogance.
Mercy was less of an issue for me, so I liked her more than Andromeda, but not much. If Andromeda was full of cocky arrogance, Mercy was the total opposite. Because of things that happened to her in the past, she had zero confidence in herself, especially when it came to dealing with emotions. She was burned really badly be someone she trusted and so she didn’t think she was capable of dealing with romantic love. This kind of backstory would have been handled better had it been given its own, full-length novel. Unfortunately, given the limitations of a novella, Mercy’s issues were wrapped up far too quickly.
That Would Be Enough was not all bad, though. I loved the interactions between Mercy and the Hamilton family (Eliza and her daughter Angelica — not to be confused with her sister, Angelica). If there is one thing I hope, it is that Eliza Hamilton was as accepting as she was depicted here. Based on what we learn at the end of Hamilton, we know that she was an abolitionist, but expecting someone born around the time of The Seven Years War (1756–1763) to accept a romantic and sexual relationship between two women might be a bit much, no matter how progressive she was.
3 Stars


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I don’t remember the last time I read an anthology that I loved as much as i did Hamilton’s Battalion. For the most part, anthologies tend to have one good novella and two or three meh novellas, all of which I’ll have forgotten almost immediately. I finished this book more than a week ago and even not being totally impressed by That Would Be Enough, I haven’t forgotten a single thing about it. If these three authors decided to write a new anthology every year, I would gladly throw my money at them.
Overall Rating: 4 Stars

When I first heard about this book, I was so excited to read it, mainly because it contained stories written by Alyssa Cole, Rose Lerner and Courtney Milan. Also, as a child, I became an admirer of Alexander Hamilton, mostly because, to my juvenile, pre-teen mind, he figured as the cutest founding father and Oh, yeah! he participated in a most dashingly dangerous duel. But I have not seen Hamilton the musical.

Anyway, then the book showed up on Netgalley and I was lucky enough to obtain an ARC. I’m still pretty thrilled about that.

These three novellas are linked to each other through Alexander Hamilton. They also all took place around the same time and place in American history. Essentially the characters in this book were all with Hamilton at, or related to someone who was at, the siege of Yorktown. Years later, his widow Elizabeth Hamilton is collecting and documenting their memories of Alexander.

The first story was <i> Promised Land</i> by Rose Lerner, featuring what is just about my favorite trope, a woman disguising herself as a man in order to achieve a job or position that would otherwise be denied to her as a woman. Rachel has strong ideas about her destiny, and the possible future of the nation that she is fighting to help establish. She’s hiding her womanly womaness, and serving bravely and effectively as a corporal in the continental army. During the war. In combat. On the front lines. Constantly avoiding any and all situations that may expose her gender. Things are pretty complicated for Rachel.

Enter Nathan, her former love, who she remembers as being loyal to the crown, and immediately denounces as a spy. Nathan remembers Rachel quite vividly, and also remembers that she 'died' several years earlier. They are both Jewish, but with different levels of adherence to the tenets and rules of the religion. There are all types of lusty feelings flying about. Things get even more complicated.

<spoiler> I loved that it was a second chance love story, showing how they both had developed into more complex people. I liked that they had several differences to work out. There was so much conflict between the hero and heroine. They had to to overcome different political loyalties, her faking her death, the disparity in their religious devotion, strong physical attraction to each other, yearning to have children, wanting to be full citizens of the new republic, AND dealing with his mother. And all this while being in the middle of a war.

Her insistence on calling him out as a spy showed the depth of faith to the cause, or perhaps an inability to resist reconnecting with him, although if it were only that, she would have waylaid him secretly. But she was willing to give up her secret of in order to protect the army.
</spoiler>

Beautiful and evocative. I loved Rachel and Nathan, and their story, and read right through to the conclusion. <spoiler>The flash-forward passages in the narrative showed bits of their life a great many years after the war, which was quite reassuring given the grave tone of the writing.</spoiler>

<i>In Pursuit of…</i> by Courtney Milan was the second story, and began at Yorktown, with a surreal cute meet, the best that I have read in years. It then turns into a journey story, as John must return home to his family after the war and Henry decides to travel with him, in part as repayment for John sparing his life.

I found this story to be the lightest and most humorous, which is odd considering it is a m/m, inter-racial love story set about 250 years ago, when ‘all men created equal’ clearly did not mean that all men were created equal. <spoiler> I was nervous for their safety during the encounter with the two yokels. It is sad how John expects the worst of people because that has been the only way he has experienced people to be. </spoiler> And yet still, the story was often pretty hilarious.

The balance between serious, taciturn John and ridiculous, garrulous Henry was entertaining. I liked this couple the best, especially the slow emergence of their feelings. I was really invested in their story, hoping that they would have a wonderful future together. <spoiler>The extended ending sequence was just what I needed. I needed to know that they would be fine and have a happy future together. I really needed that. </spoiler>

<i>That Could Be Enough</i> by Alyssa Cole
At the end of John and Henry’s story, we meet Mercy Alston. She works as a scribe for Elizabeth Hamilton. Her duties seem to cross over into the companion zone for Elizabeth and one of her daughters, Angelica. Mercy is very tightly-wound and sensitive, with an extremely artistic side that she meticulously hides. There are reasons.

Rather different than the hilarious meet cute of John and Henry, this one is replete with golden light and fireworks. Andromeda Stiel makes her entrance, gloriously and unexpectedly. Mercy’s (and our) first impression of her is of a magnificent force of nature. Andromeda makes an instant impact, all beauty, strength, assurance, and interest. It is safe to say that by this point I am already in love with Andromeda. Mercy takes a little longer to work through her feelings.

Andromeda is a dressmaker with a successful business, and is well-respected in the community, and by everyone she knows. She knows what she wants and works towards it. Mercy thinks a lot. About everything. She has issues communicating, which makes getting close to her difficult.

I liked the two very strong, very different women, but felt that the misunderstanding at the end could have been resolved with some plain speaking. That would absolutely NOT be in Mercy’s nature, though. Mercy needs to work on her verbal communication skills. <spoiler> She does get there in the end, after a few false starts, and really is quite endearing. </spoiler>

In short, loved the story, loved Andromeda, and am wishing for a graphic novel version on account of the description of the dresses and settings.

While the three novellas had distinctly different characters and conflicts, there was a strong feeling of hope, and faith in the country’s potential. Though there were challenges and inequality, and a few contemptibly despicable men, these characters lived and loved valiantly.

All three novellas had great characters, great meetings / introductions, and the couples just felt right for each other. <spoiler> Each story had one believable, detailed love scene, that enhanced the story, and did not distract from the emotional bonding. </spoiler>

It feels like the authors took strength and inspiration from each other to make the novellas better and more cohesive. The length was perfect - not too short. I felt satisfied with how each concluded. Each author’s afterword was fascinating, and I appreciated the references that were cited there. The attention to historical detail and the research was outstanding, and did not overwhelm the storytelling.

I thoroughly enjoyed this. Highly recommended.

"Hamilton's Battalions" is a trio of romance novellas that pay homage to the spirit of "Hamilton: the musical." Diversity and inclusiveness are celebrated in each of the three romances. Some will appreciate the collection for its openness to same-sex romance and to characters that challenge traditional gender roles (one of the heroines has disguised herself as a man to fight with the Colonial Army).

Others, however, will have problems with the lack of fidelity to historical reality. The problem is that while characters challenge strongly held ideas about gender and sexuality, the genre of romance demands a happy ending, and that happy resolution comes far too quickly and easily to be believable in the context of the American Revolution. While a full-length novel may have provided more room for the development and resolution of complexities, a novella is much more restricted.

For those willing to suspend disbelief and imagine an American past in which tolerance is easily won, the book may satisfy. For those who are more aware of the actual prejudices that worked against happy endings, these novellas may appear far-fetched and glib in their treatment of diversity in America.

4.5 stars. This is a really fantastic, delightful, and sexy collection of novellas. I especially love how inclusive the stories are (a Jewish woman who faked her death to fight as a man unexpectedly meets her ex-husband again, an inter-racial road trip romance between a black revolutionary solider and a white British deserter, and a black poet working as a housemaid who falls in love with a black female entrepreneur). The novellas centre on the Revolutionary War, with the framing of Eliza Hamilton collecting unheard stories from people who knew Alexander Hamilton. While the resolution of the romances is sometimes abrupt (a common issue in novellas), overall these are engrossing, satisfying, and thoroughly romantic novellas that will keep you warm to your toes.

A trio of Revolutionary War novellas by three romance superstars featuring diverse characters? You better believe I almost broke my computer with my enthusiastic request to netgalley. I was not disappointed. I loved historical romance but I was ready for a break from regency England. A change of scenery is refreshing, the change in perspective makes it a million times better.

The three novellas are very different from each other and I will admit I liked one less than the other two but I still liked it well enough. It just had the misfortune to have to stand next to much stronger stories.

I really recommend this book to every romance reader and I hope that it does so well that it spawns a slew of similar books about diverse American stories.

This is an original concept for an anthology: Alexander Hamilton's wife, Eliza, collects the stories of the men who served under her husband at the Battle of Yorktown, and spin those stories into romances. All of these stories are unconventional.

In Promised Land by Rose Lerner, a young Jewish wife flees her husband to fight as a man in the Revolutionary War. After years living as Ezra, her husband stumbles into her camp a prisoner and a spy. They slowly find their way to a relationship that is more genuine than the marriage she abandoned. They story is sincere, but a little ahistorical. Jews in New York during Colonial times were much more likely to be Ladino speaking Ashkenazi, rather than the Yiddish-speaking Poles in the story. Still, The complex connection Rachel and Nathan build is genuine.

The protagonists in The Pursuit of... by Courtney Milan start the story off in hand-to-hand combat. They spend a great deal of the story at odds, as British deserter Henry insists on accompanying former slave John on a trek to find John's family. When their relationship turns romantic, it's clear to both of them that it' can't be permanent. How they come together, and eventually make a life together, in a wholly original story with a solid emotional core.

The last story in the book, That Could Be Enough by Alyssa Cole, focuses not on Hamilton's troops, but on the servant who helps Eliza Hamilton record their stories. Mercy has been burned by previous relationships with women, but is struck by Andromeda Stiel, who comes to tell her grandfather's story of his time serving under Hamilton. Andromeda pursues Mercy deftly and forthrightly. It is a pleasure to watch her work, and to watch Mercy gradually yield to Andromeda's attentions.

These stories all hang together as a group, with characters in one story also appearing in another, in a way that does not feel forced. Each story has its own tone and tenor. There is a sense that these are just three of many more narratives that could be drawn from this source.

This was magnificent. All three romances have clear voices and a wonderful romance. I was laughing on the train reading this, and holding back tears as well. You don't need to know anything about Hamilton, or care about the musical to love the historical romances crafted in these pages. They stand on their own as triumphant voices from people who don't often get happy romance stories in this time period.

While anything by Milan is an instant purchase and read by me, and I had just learned how delightful Cole's writing is, I'm pleased to also find a new author in Lerner.

Hamilton's Battalion is a collection of three romances that take place during Hamilton's time. It would take me too long to recap but if you're a fan of swoony romances that feature compelling characters and Hamilton, I highly recommend this collection.

While the authors in this collection were all new-to-me, I utterly adored the stories and the writing and I can't wait to pick up some of their backlist titles. The romances were all wonderful and I definitely teared up at some points. I was so invested in all of the characters and I loved seeing the small ways the stories all connected.

Overall, Hamilton's Battalion was an utterly wonderful diverse collection of 3 short novellas that were all super swoony and definitely well-written. I highly recommend it!

Positive things first: 3 authors that are famous for their social commitment have found a clever way to surf the Hamilton wave and create a common frame to deliver 3 well written historical romances filled with interesting issues about feminism, role of minorities in the forging of the USA as a nation, same-sex relationships, racial issues, etc. so if you like your chick lit to be something more than just a few hours escapism, this is your read. Plus the Hamilton/Turn touch, however very light, does not hurt.

The down side of this very challenging endeavour is that it sometimes sounds more like a political pamphlet than a romance anthology, with the overlapping of multiple issues (e.g. Judaism AND feminism, racial issues AND same-sex relationships) being a bit overwhelming for such short stories, however well structured. Furthermore, readers with more traditional tastes may not wish to buy a book where two thirds of the pages they pay for are dedicated to same-sex romances, which represent 2 out of the 3 stories in the collection. At least the present blurb is honest in that respect and everyone can make their informed choice.

I was over the moon to get the ARC and it did not disappoint. On the contrary.

First of all, it's a really strong collection. I love that it combined m/f and two different queer romances (m/m and f/f). I enjoyed the way in which the stories worked with together to create a whole that was surprisingly coherent despite the very different tones of the separate stories. And I found the afterwords interesting and illuminating. And now, onto the three separate novellas.

The volume begins with Rose Lerner's Promised Land: a second chance romance between Rachel, who cross-dresses for the sake of taking part in the Revolution, and Nathan, a man from her past. The description suggests something lighter and more frivolous than what we actually get, which is a bittersweet, profound and heart-wrenching story full of emotion. It had amazing depth and the protagonists were even better than in the previous novel by Lerner I've read. They were extremely relatable, deeply sympathetic and yet completely human and imperfect. I loved how their conflict and relationship were depicted: I think second-chance can be a balancing act between trying to show that characters made a mistake not being together, so the hurt they'd wrought wasn't quite their fault or that deep, and yet making it believable that they didn't stay together in the first place, and often the result is that the cause of the break up may feel trivial. In this case, the past hurt is real but the affection is real as well. It was impressively filled with angst but done just right: I rooted for the characters and for the romance a lot, because of how hurt they were rather than despite it.

In addition, I can't not gush about the way in which Lerner wrote the physicality of the characters. The desire was believable and palpable and yet utterly non-gratuitous. There was so much eroticism with no objectification. It was beautiful, and I particularly liked how Lerner managed to actually subvert cliched attractiveness tropes (rather than, say, writing about a supposedly not beautiful character who, as we are told at every turn, is actually very conventionally attractive with a single flaw that's not really a flaw) and write features like bodily hair with love and without othering.

Finally, I loved the way Lerner wrote Jewishness in the story. It was integral, rounded the characters and the world they lived in well and was given so much care and attention and affection. Overall, this was one of my favourite Rose Lerner stories and one of the best romances I've read this year.

The second novella was by Courtney Milan. In Pursuit Of was much funnier and lighter than I'd have expected from the description or premise. Its story about Henry, a privileged, neuroatypical [I think?] white British aristocrat who can't stop talking (or lying) and John, an insightful and witty former slave, utterly unimpressed but amused despite himself, was delightful, gripping and just so adorable. It also featured some of the best unresolved sexual tension I've read in ages, and I don't say that lightly. The pining, it was real. I found the structure of the story a little uneven towards the end, and the way we got to the resolution didn't quite work for me, but it's a minor quibble - it's absolutely Courtney Milan at her very, very good if not necessarily best (that, for the record, would be The Suffragette Scandal, for me).

Also there was cheese. The cheese, it was amazing. (Must have been goat cheese, right?)

The third novella, by Alyssa Cole, entitled That Could Be Enough, unfortunately didn't impress me quite as much. There was a lot to love in it, but the pacing and the way in which information was revealed didn't grip me. The story follows an excellent pair of characters, reserved Mercy and glamorous Andromeda, two free Black women in post-Civil War New York. The way their life in New York and the social advancement and their emotions - anger and hope - are written felt really interesting and believable. I enjoyed how their struggle against upbringing and past hurt in Mercy's case, and present discrimination in Andromeda's, was an integral part of the story. But - and your milage may absolutely vary here - for me the romance was strangely abrupt, the conflict fabricated, the love a little flat. In addition, it was the only novella where I felt there were some editing issues (one scene had a strange shift in POV that I suspect was simply a mistake in names in chapter 8 - unless I'm very confused by what is happening in the flashback and whose parents are doing what - and a minor typo or two - but of course I'm reading the ARC, so this may be gone by the time the final version is published).

All the same, there were some lovely similes and turns of phrases in this novella that I enjoyed a lot, particularly in Mercy's POV, when she uses her literary talents to think about her own feelings; it's just that the romance didn't tug on my heartstrings like I'd wanted it to.

My final verdict is a sincere recommendation: if you don't really care about Hamilton all that much, a historical romance reader will still find a lot to love in this collection. And if you love Hamilton the musical / Hamilton the character, like the authors clearly do, I suspect you'll enjoy this even more than I did.

These meaningful love stories fill a gaping hole in historical fiction as these marginalised voices present diverse characters navigating relationships no less dangerous than civil war itself!