Honestly I read another book from this author and was not a fan of the writing style. I remember reading the first few pages but I had not yet really gotten in to reading a lot of romance. Maybe I will pick it up some time in the future but historical romance was just for me and be hit or miss

FULL REVIEW ON FRESH FICTION
An emotional story of revenge, redemption, and an unlikely romance, AN UNCONDITIONAL FREEDOM is another incredible novel in Alyssa Cole's Loyal League series. Her ability to bring this difficult and treacherous time in history to life with characters you truly feel for is astounding, and I hope there are many more books to come. Her characters are layered, flawed, and fully realized, who readers watch come to terms with the people they have been, and who they want to become. Their journeys are just as tumultuous internally as they are while traveling through the deep South. Daniel suffers from PTSD after he was sold into slavery and was beaten and broken down. Revenge is all that fuels his life until he meets Janeta and finds something else to live for.

Daniel Cumberland was a free Black man studying law in Massachusetts when he was kidnapped and sold as a slave in the South. Unable to settle into his old life after a friend buys his freedom, he becomes a Loyal League operative, fighting undercover. Janeta Sanchez is a proud Cubana living with her father in Florida until he is arrested, and she believes that she can secure his release by gathering information for the Confederacy from the Loyal League. This unlikely pair is forced to work as a team, and their prickly relationship is complicated by their growing attraction to each other.

Gosh, Alyssa Cole is an amazing writer. I have thoroughly enjoyed this whole series. This might have been my least favorite book in the series, but I still learned a lot and got caught up in the emotions of the story. This was a tough one for me to read. Daniel has so much justifiable rage it kept making me super sad for him. I wish there had been more of a focus on the romance. I thought the storyline was fascinating, but the main characters lacked the usual Cole crackling and fraught sexual tension. This felt more like a historical fiction novel with a romance subplot.

This book was incredible! I postponed reading it for a while because I knew Daniel's story was going to break my heart. I loved the chemistry between the main characters, their personal growth and I really love who Daniel was as a person. It took longer for me to warm to Janeta, but she too found a place in my heart. Alyssa Cole's writing is very engaging and the story was incredibly relevant in the current climate, even though it takes place in the Civil War. I loved this book and will continue to read Alyssa Cole's work in the future!

An Unconditional Freedom was a phenomenal finish to this series by Alyssa Cole. Both Daniel and Janeta were complex characters and even when I didn't totally understand Janeta's decisions, Alyssa Cole crafted a beautiful and heartbreaking and important story.

I received a reviewer copy of An Unconditional Freedom by Alyssa Cole from Kensington Books from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

What It’s About: Daniel Cumberland was born free until one day he is kidnapped into slavery by so-called abolitionists. He is forced into slavery but having been born free, he is stubborn and doesn't know what it takes to survive in this environment. He tries to help young children read and is shocked when violence befalls him and the children and is isolated out of fear of hurting others. Then he is freed by a member of the Loyal League, a Union spy group that is dedicated to overcoming the confederacy. He is offered membership and takes the opportunity to seek revenge on confederate soldiers, often putting revenge above his life. Janeta's father has been arrested by Union soldiers and she is promised that if she spies for the confederacy by infiltrating the Loyal League, they will free her father. These two damaged people are paired together on a mission to get to Jefferson Davis.

What I Loved: I thought this book was great. The characters were complex and Alyssa Cole doesn't back down from the complexities and the cruelties that they suffered. Daniel's PTSD and mindset is so well described and at times you can really get caught in being frustrated with him because of how he communicates his thoughts and motivations. But Janeta's read on him clarifies the PTSD component and you start to realize that Cole isn't writing an unlikeable character just a character who doesn't like himself. Also, the slow burn romance here is so good! And the secondary characters are so likeable. It's hard to explain what I love without spoiling but it's good, pick it up.

What I didn’t like so much: I liked most of this book except I felt like the ending was abrupt. There is a great build up of action and then the book just stops and resolves very quickly. I felt like the story needed more time to wrap up.

Who Should Read It: People who love historical fiction. People who love romance. People who want diversity in their books. People who want complex characters in their romance.

General Summary: A fierce romance set during the civil war, a romance with substance.

An Unconditional Freedom by Alyssa Cole
Loyalties & identity is tested as Daniel & Janeta travel into the Deep South. I loved Janeta’s journey of realizing her blackness and rejecting the self-hating messages were tearing her apart (CW: war, threats of SA, racism, slavery ).

I am a member of the American Library Association Reading List Award Committee. This title was suggested for the 2020 list. It was not nominated for the award. The complete list of winners and shortlisted titles is at <a href="https://rusaupdate.org/2020/01/2020-reading-list-years-best-in-genre-fiction-for-adult-readers/">

Alyssa Cole is my favorite author for a good reason. I started reading her books because of this series; so to read such a fascinating, satisfying, and well-rounded final book in this trilogy made me so very happy. AUF is about Daniel, who is mentioned in the first book of the series. Daniel is born a free Black man but he is kidnapped and enslaved which traumatizes him. When he is freed, he turns to the same organization Elle (the heroine of book 1) works for and becomes a spy for the North. Except the book kicks up as Janeta, who is a Black Cuban woman, joins the Loyal League and made to be Daniel's partner. Her greenness as a detective, as well as a woman experiencing racism makes her seem a fledgling in Daniel's eyes, but the readers know that Janeta undergoes a satisfying character arc in AUF. I was weary of one thing: Daniel's discovery of the initial reason Janeta joined the Royal League but the way Cole wrote that scene made every anxiety of mine disappear. This series will always remain one of my favorites. It's got love, history, terrifying reality, as well as a slice of hope that I couldn't hope to find anywhere else.

This was my least favorite book of the trilogy, which is like saying sugar cookies are my least favorite cookie—I still love them and will eat them all, just after the snickerdoodles and peanut butter and speculoos.

✓: Cole writes such awesome complex characters and she does such a good job giving (and portraying) their motivations.
✓: I love double agents. And triple agents.
✓: The Cuban/Florida element was also really interesting to bring into play.
✓: This is really plot-heavy in a good way.
✓: Subtle political commentary! ♥♥♥
✓: I'm doing an extra A++ for Janeta's characterization. (Although the Henry thing could get old sometimes.)
±: I loved Daniel, too, and I think this book works great as a standalone. I do wonder if it's better understanding his character if you've read the other books or not? It could really go either way; I almost wonder if I would've preferred not having read Book #1 before this.
✘: The pacing could be iffy in places.

tl;dr: I want Alyssa Cole to write all the historical romances, historical mysteries, and and historical fiction books ever. She should absolutely be on everyone's to-read list and to-buy list.

Alyssa Cole is just a master. This book has been on my shelf for a long time and just for subject matter reasons was hard to read. However, I think that this entire series is going to be such a powerhouse of what historical fiction can do and SHOULD do that I wouldn't be surprised if it's one of those books that we are talking about in romance FOREVER.

This was the most gritty out of the series. My emotions were everywhere. So many times I held my breathe. Both Janeta and Daniel were trying to find their place in the world. Both of them had little faith in their abilities. In the compassion and trust they had for the other they each found salvation and redemption. I loved the characters (not the confederate ones) and how Cole humanizes them so the reader can connect easily and quickly.

'An Unconditional Freedom' didn't start off well for me. I knew quickly it was going to be an intense read. What I didn't know was that it would ultimately be my favorite out of the three. Alyssa has quickly become an author that I will read anything she writes. It is quite difficult, I've found, to find an author who can start a book and end it just as strong.

Thank you to Kensington for the advanced eArc of this book.

This book came out more than 4 months ago, but I just now managed to read it. Having read the first two in the series, An Extraordinary Union and A Hope Divided, I knew a little of Daniel's story and I wasn't eager to read it. Not because I thought it would be anything less than excellent, but because I knew that Alyssa Cole called this the book that almost broke her.

It. Is. A lot.

Daniel was raised a free man in Massachusetts but was sold into slavery by people pretending to be abolitionists. At the end of the first book, Elle and Malcolm free him when he's about to be sold again. Daniel is left a broken shell of himself, convinced he's a coward and not worthy of love. He's suffering from PTSD and is justifiably unwilling to trust anyone. He's also very, very angry. His journey is one of anger and healing, and it's uncomfortable.

Janeta is a Cuban living in luxury with her white plantation-owning family until her father is sent to prison and her home is overrun by Union soldiers. Her enslaved mother, whom her father married, died years ago and she's been both pampered and othered by everyone in her circle. She's coped by becoming what everyone else needs her to be. She's the compliant mistress for a social-climbing a$$hat, not realizing that she's his mistress/not even that until after she joins the Loyal League to spy for him. She internalizes the comments she hears about how enslaved people are happy with their bondage, how they are infantile and can only be taught with abuse, etc. And she listens to her mother, who teaches her that shes "not like those other people" and that the only tool she has in her belt is her feminine wiles. Her journey is one of unlearning, and it's uncomfortable.

The whole book is uncomfortable to read. I will not tell anyone descended from enslaved people that they must read it, but I think that others, particularly white people, should. The ways in which Cole explores unlearning and relearning are especially relevant and thought-provoking. Janeta's characterization as a woman between two sides of the war and two sides of racial stratification is complex and a real authorial feat. There's a lot in here that will make you sit with your feelings.

Both characters also struggle with their gender roles. Tied up in Daniel's self-hatred is his feeling that he is less of a man because he wasn't able to protect the people in his life, especially children, and not even himself. He grew up thinking that he knew how everything could be made better, only to find that he can't. At least, not by himself, and isn't a man supposed to be able to do things on his own? When nightmares cause him to wail and cry in the night, he's so ashamed that he refuses to sleep. (It's also because he doesn't want to draw enemies to them.)

Janeta struggles with her mother's journey from enslaved woman to wife of the plantation owner, and how to reconcile her own seduction strategies with that history. She's been taught that being a social chameleon is her only worth and the only way to stay wanted and loved. She can't be too sexy or too standoffish, too opinionated or too sullen. Not only does she go through a change in worldview, she also learns to think of herself in a new light.

Finally, Cole shows us a side of the war not often seen - the role of foreign powers in the behind-the-scenes machinations of both sides. In the first book, the side plot was mostly about the Clearances in Scotland and the blockade (also the role of white women in upholding slavery), the second book was about the Home Guard and the southerners who didn't want to participate, and this one is about European politics. As always, Cole includes additional reading suggestions and context. You can see the amount of research she's done for each of these books, but it never feels like reading a history text.

In conclusion, this is an intense book that delivers three strong arcs - one for Daniel, one for Janeta, and one for their relationship. I appreciated how slowly their physical relationship progresses, it fits the characters perfectly and their romantic relationship arc follows their building trust in each other. It's absolutely worth the read and I hope people will pick it up.



Content Warnings: master-enslaved relationship? (consent issues, but it's not on-page, character is thinking about her mother). slavery, war, racism, threat of sexual assault, children in peril, suicide, suicidal ideation



Suzanne received a digital ARC of this book, but ended up reading a finished copy she purchased.

I am ashamed to say it, but this is the first I have read by Ms Cole. Gasps in horror! Have I been living under a rock? Any-how, this is book three in the Loyal League series, I can happily say, this can easily be read as a stand-a-lone.

After being kidnapped and sold into slavery, Daniel is full of anger – not just at himself, but at those who have treated him so maliciously. He has lost the one woman he loved and when he is rescued he is determined to do what ever he can not only to fight against those who wronged him, but the whole confederacy and with it his hopes of proving himself to his love; Elle. Which is why he joins the League, well that is until he meets Janita who is facing her own personal trials. I really don’t wish to say too much, as it has so much going on and some wonderfully poignant moments between them.

With it’s multi-layered plot which features everything from slavery, spies, resistance and a thrilling romance, it has the makings of brilliant fast action film. It is thrilling, engaging and beautifully written. This isn’t the easiest book to read, the subject matter is one which we see very little of in romance. Personally I think it should, after all this is history it happened, there is nothing we can do about the past, only learn from it to create a better future. Which is why stories such as this are so important and need to be read.

You get a real sense that the author has put her heart and soul into this story, overall a hard hitting, powerful story that will stay with the reader long after the last page.

An Unconditional Freedom, the third entry in Alyssa Cole's American Civil War-set series The Loyal League, features a man as disillusioned as is Milan's Violetta, but far less happy to accept his fate with any meekness or humility. Before the war, Daniel Cumberland's greatest trauma was that the woman he loved (the heroine of book 1, An Extraordinary Union) did not love him back. But after the idealistic aspiring lawyer is kidnapped from his Massachusetts town and sold south into slavery, his happy, carefree nature is quickly beaten out of him. We meet Daniel after he is rescued from enslavement, unable to fit back into his old life, to "be strong and forget what happened," as his father recommends. Instead, he's working as a spy for the Loyal League, a spy who prefers to work alone. But when Janeta Sanchez, a new recruit, enters the league, the angry, disdainful Daniel is assigned to be her partner.

Janeta, the daughter of a Cuban planation owner and the black slave woman he later married, has grown up taking slavery for granted, even while recognizing that her golden brown skin makes others treat her not quite the same as they do her obviously Spanish half-sisters. Moving from Cuba to Florida changed little for her—until war broke out, and her father was arrested on suspicion of being a northern sympathizer. Her lover in the Rebel army promises that if she will spy on the Yanquis, he'll make certain her father is freed. And thus Janeta, the daughter of a slave owner, finds her way to the Loyal League, using her skill at hiding behind layers of pleasing behavior to ingratiate herself with all of its members. All, that is, but the wary Daniel.

Cole choice to decenter the whiteness that typically looms so large in northerner vs. southerner Civil War stories is not only a boon for readers of color looking for greater representation of their experiences in historical romance; it also allows white readers to step away their fears of being associated with the villain in the more typical white/black binary portrayal of slavery. Which may allow them to read without debilitating defensiveness about the blind spots that many whose heritage does not include a history of enslavement and racism often have towards those whose does, as well as the ways that good people are indoctrinated into accepting what we today often self-righteously believe we would never accept ourselves. Take this exchange between after Daniel and Janeta, after Daniel reveals the scars on his back:

Janeta thought of the time her family had gone into the city center in Santiago. Her mother had clapped her hand over Janeta's eyes when they'd walked by a man tied to a post with his bloody back exposed.
You don't need to see such things. You are a Sanchez. You don't have to endure such ugliness.
She couldn't look away now, though. Daniel has bared to her this proof of his ill treatment and all she could ask herself was, "Why?"
"That man tried to start an insurrection. They had to make an example of him."
That's what her father had told her later when she'd questioned him about what she had seen. He'd handed her a gift when she'd asked why insurrection was bad, a beautiful porcelain doll with creamy skin, rouged cheeks, and blue eyes, and she'd let the matter drop.
"What did you do?" she asked Daniel, and saw the muscles beneath the scars tense.
"You think I did something to bring this upon myself?" he asked, his voice taut, and Janeta's fear came to the surface then. Not that he would hurt her, but that she'd made yet another misstep.
"No! I—I meant, why did they do this to you?"
He shook his head and pulled his shirt back up over his shoulder, not turning to face her as he did up his buttons.
"I was born a Negro in a country where that is a crime, and I was ignorant enough not to know that I had already been convicted."(Kindle Loc 556)

Both Daniel and Janeta discover their own blind spots as they work together to track Jefferson Davis—and struggle to reconcile the plans of the Loyal League with their own secret goals.

The Loyal League is one of the best written series I've ever read. Rarely do we get a historical romance series with such a tangible feeling of the setting, such real sense of place and such strong characterization, that Alyssa Cole managed in this series.
Daniel's trauma was handled with honestly and care, delving deep into his psyche without flinching at what was there. His anger, his ptsd didn't disappear just because he was saved or because he fell in love, but at the same time, the story gives us hope that one day, he will heal. He has to grapple with his past, his naivete and his original planned future, that seems now completely out of his grasp. But again, there is hope.
Janeta absolutely broke my heart. She has to grapple with her past, with the dawning realization of suppressed trauma from her upbringing, of her status in life and her place in the universe. She has to rethink her entire sense of self, and it's not easy or quick. Cole masterfully unveils bits and pieces of her soul as Janeta recontextualizes everything she thought she knew about herself and the world around her. She must grapple with the fact her father was a monster, her lover was only using her, and that the way she treated her fellow people of colour was abominable. I felt immense pride in her growth.
Their romance is fascinating. They're two strong, passionate people, who come together and create sparks. They hate and distrust each other at first, and slowly get closer as they start to understand each other. Daniel dishes out a lot of anger, but Janeta never lets him off the hook and doesn't take it standing down. Every time their banter turned more joyful, or humorous, or flirtatious, I couldn't help but smile. Of course as the story progresses, I smiled more and more.
I loved having a genuinely angry hero. His anger was real, and righteous, and I was furious with him. This book, nay this series, is exactly what we need in this world.

This book, like all of this series, was brilliant. Just the right amount of history and romance to make this romance genre newbie love every moment!

A gripping, harrowing Civil War tale. This is definitely historical fiction with a romance subplot, instead of the other way around. And Cole is clearly drawing parallels between the Confederacy and our current US political situation (I mean, she’s not wrong...). Good chemistry between the leads.

I’ve seen other reviews that Janeta’s Spanish isn’t well-written, but since I only remember a tiny bit from college, I was more frustrated by the lack of translation, especially in longer sections like a song. I can get some things from context, but the lullaby lost me entirely.

I'm not going to get into a deep, complex review here- just what I liked and didn't like about the story. Likes: Although this book is the third of a series, it reads fine as a stand alone. It does reference the previous books, but does it in such a way that it doesn't feel like "here is some exposition for you," it feels like a natural part of the story. The two main characters, Daniel and Janeta, were complex, flawed, and grew over the course of the story, and I cared about what happened to them. The historical events were well researched, and I learned about aspects of the Civil War that I didn't know about before, such as international impacts of the war. The romance was a slow burn, which was understandable in the situations of the characters- Daniel getting over a lost love, and feeling like he doesn't deserve to be loved, and Janeta figuring out the man she thought loved her was using her, and coming to terms with who she is. When they finally get together, it felt right, like they had worked out some (not all) of their personal baggage before moving forward. I enjoyed the two of them together, and feel like they'll get their HEA, not just a HFN. Dislikes: nothing, really. Janeta did take a while to figure things out, but honestly, in her situation, I might've taken a while too- it's hard to unlearn what you've been brought up to believe. I really enjoyed this book, though some of it is hard to take; it's important to know, and to think about.

#AnUnconditionalFreedom #NetGalley