Title: An Unconditional Freedom (The Loyal League Book 3)
Stand-Alone: Part of a series, but can be read alone
Publisher: Kensington
Publication Date: February 26, 2019
Genre: Historical
Heat Level: Sensual
The Book Bar Gives This One 🍷🍷🍷🍷

Once I begin reading this one, I longed to know about some of the characters, so I went back to the first book. Please Note: this was just my preference. You can enjoy this one as a standalone. Throughout this series Alyssa Cole has you drawn to this series with the titles and she captures you with strong characters, historical tidbits and a well written storyline.

In Unconditional Freedom, we see especially today, not to take anything for granted, with Daniel and Janeta we see what can happen when you do….

Daniel Cumberland, a free man learns some hard truths with some of Elle’s (childhood friend/first love) statements. He studies to be a lawyer with intentions of supporting his African American people. What he finds is that very law could be the same system that has him kidnapped and sold into slavery. Janeta Sanchez, biracial, born to a mother who was a slave until she married her father the plantation owner. Her naivety leads her to being used and brainwashed about the things really going on around her.

These two couldn’t be more different, making them a perfect pair. They sought the Loyal League for different reasons; Daniel seeking revenge for the Confederacy and anyone associated to them. Janeta enters with the intent of infiltrating the organization and trade information for the freedom of her father. What happens is a journey of truths, growth, trust, healing and forgiveness.

What was so amazing, throughout the series we consistently see even in an era filled with inhumane conditions, brutality, racism, inequality, greed, abuse, hatred and much more…. Two people can share love and soul connections making it possible to endure most anything together.

This was a great book and series, I recommend it to all types of readers.

This was one of my most anticipated reads of 2019 and I’m sad I didn’t enjoy it more. This is an incredible book that deals with the Civil War era and the trauma experienced by the main characters wonderfully and with nuance. At times it was hard to read, but in some ways it was hard to put down.

<u>An Unconditional Freedom</u> follows Daniel and Janeta as they make their way south to help the Loyal League in their quest towards freedom. Daniel is a born freeman who was captured and ended up enslaved, and has a lot of anger and hurt as a result of his experiences. Janeta is mixed-race, often describing herself as the daughter of slaves and conquistadores, who initially is trying to get information for the Sons of the Confederacy, but over the course of the book grows into herself and her loyalties change.

My favorite part of this book is absolutely Janeta and her growth. She starts off relatively naive and comes from a very sheltered upbringing, having had slaves and her white father having married her Black mother in Cuba. She has always been taught that she’s not like the slaves her family keeps, and she has to work to ignore her own face in the mirror as a result. She also has sisters constantly telling her she’s not feminine or demure enough. When she starts to spy for the Sons of the Confederacy she thinks she’s doing it for her father and the man she thinks she loves, but during the course of her travels and meeting new people with unfamiliar experiences, she realizes just how sheltered she’s been and begins to question everything she’s ever been taught. I adored her arc and her strength and adaptability were awesome.

Daniel’s arc felt more rushed in some ways, but his story felt like one that needed to be read. He’d been born in the North as a free man and was working to be a lawyer when one day he was tricked and captured, ending up enslaved. He is eventually freed, but not before being scarred, inside and outside. He has severe PTSD and experiences flashbacks to his time as a slave. He thinks himself weak and unworthy of gentleness, full of anger and only wishing for vengeance. In the end he realizes hope is the stronger force, but in some ways that realization felt abrupt, though that could have been the intention given how it hit Daniel.

I also really enjoyed the secondary characters and seeing some familiar faces from the first books of the series. There is a great friendship between Daniel and Elle, and I’m glad we get to see it being repaired in some ways by the end.

All is that said, this did not feel like a romance to me, but an excellent historical. While there is attraction between Daniel and Janeta, I didn’t really feel much in the way of emotional chemistry. In many ways this could have been a slow burn, but the tension I felt was more centered on fear for their lives and the future they faced if they didn’t stop the confederacy. There are definitely some great emotional scenes and I believe they developed a strong bond of friendship during their time together, but it is hard for me to see it as a romance.

Overall, this is a painful but wonderful read. I definitely had to take a few breaks to get through it, but I’m so glad I read it and I have no doubt it will stick with me for a while. I’d recommend this more to fans of historical fiction than romance readers, but definitely a strong conclusion to Cole’s Loyal League series. Strong recommend!

Sometimes you read a book and it is so hauntingly beautiful and powerful, and it resonates so deeply with you that you feel almost as though your heart can’t contain the emotions properly to express just how much you love it, how much it moved you, how much it impacted you. This was that book for me.

First of all, let me just get this out of the way: Alyssa Cole could rewrite the phone book at this point and I would be like “YES PLEASE, LET ME READ IT”. Her books are without fail, exquisitely written, brilliantly plotted, her characters leap off the page and right into my heart and permanently burrow there.

I adored the first book in this series, An Extraordinary Union and the second book was also very, very good.

But this book….this book might have ruined me for all others.

Set in the turbulent time during the American Civil War, Daniel, born a free black man in Massachusetts is eventually kidnapped and sold into slavery. Eventually freed, his experiences as a slave have hardened him, breaking not just the skin on his back but also, he believes, his very spirit and hope for what this country could become. Upon gaining his freedom, he is drafted into a secret spy ring of detectives and code breakers, the Loyal League, who work to bring about the end of the war and victory for the North by gaining access to Confederate secrets. He is a loner by choice, unable to trust, refuses to play by the rules and out to seek vengeance against all those who seek to oppress and enslave. He…is magnificent. And I think he broke me. Reading about his pain, his anguish, his trauma felt like I was being emotionally flayed alive in parts. That is the power of Alyssa Cole’s writing, to not just immerse you in the world she creates, but to make you feel every emotion, every hurt and every hope.

Janeta is a Cuban, born to a father who is white and a mother who was his slave turned wife. Raised from birth with her mother repeatedly telling her that she’s not like the other slaves who serve her family on their wealthy plantation, she learns quickly to stop asking questions about why she looks like a slave and yet isn’t one, and accepts the fact that she is her father’s princess, living a life of luxury and comfort. When her mother dies and her father moves the family to Florida, she falls under the spell of a Confederate soldier, sneaking him information and tidbits she gleans from the Union soldiers who occupy her family home, which eventually lead to the Union Army imprisoning her father because they believe he’s the one selling them out. Convinced by her Confederate beau to infiltrate the Loyal League as a spy working for the other side in order to free her wrongly imprisoned father, she sets out from her comfortable, well-appointed life and in the process, her eyes are finally opened to what is actually happening all around her. Janeta’s character arc was one of the most moving parts of the book, showing without judgment and criticism, how you can, through the circumstances of your birth and your family’s influence, become blinded to injustice and oppression. Her desire to save her father and help her Confederate ex-lover slowly ebbs away as, with Daniel as her newly appointed spy partner, she realizes that she’s been fighting for the wrong side all along.

I truly admire that Alyssa Cole doesn’t shy away from approaching these incredibly tough topics, handling them with unflinching honesty and accuracy. The breadth of her research into the historical accuracies of her story are truly amazing and fascinating. But ultimately, it’s the characters that are at the heart of the story. Daniel and Janeta are two incredibly powerful characters, motivated by pain and loss and heartache and vengeance and ultimately, by love and hope.

This book was a 5 star read for me and I cannot say enough good things about it. I would also encourage those who read it to read Alyssa Cole’s Author’s Note at the very end – it too, moved me deeply.

Alyssa Cole has done it again - great historical accuracy and brilliant story-telling - the entire series is wonderful!

Alyssa Cole has solidified her place as one of my favorite, auto-buy authors. This is the third installation of her Loyal League series and brings us to the story of Daniel Cumberland; an easter egg from the first 2 novels. One of the things that Cole does a great job of is taking what would be taboo along the lines of relationships and perceptions, and presenting them in a way that would be more receptive to the reader. The whole idea of the character of Janeta in this novel is wonderful! This story is written very well written and, while there are a couple of places where resolutions are reached without the characters working through them in the novel, I have full confidence that this will be amended in the finished copy of the novel for which I'm currently impatiently waiting. I was a tad bit disappointed with some of the quick resolutions seeing as I have been waiting for Daniel's story for months, BUT, I still enjoyed the story. The eARC would have been 4 stars if the resolutions were more thought out. But there is room for the 4th star with the final, published copy.
My video review is linked below for further insight.

Romance takes a bit of a back seat in this final installment in Alyssa Cole’s Loyal League series.

And that is not a bad thing. It is the slowest of slow burns, focused more on the individuals loving themselves while gradually falling for each other.

The hero and heroine, Daniel and Janeta, go on an intense journey of healing and self-discovery, which worked for me because I had such a hard time sympathizing with sheltered Janeta at first, knowing that her motives were initially harmful to Daniel and the 4L.



But, we should always trust Alyssa Cole. Trust her to know that someone with Daniel’s trauma and PTSD needed time to heal before falling in love. And Janeta needed to come clean with him and herself before doing the same. She needed to come to terms with the ramifications of the way her mother raised her. By the end, I was her biggest fan.

So it was fitting that the ending is more happy for now, yet hopeful and optimistic. We never forget that this was one of America’s darkest periods, and Daniel and Janeta are in the midst of a war that could end with them both in bondage or dead.

An Unconditional Freedom (The Loyal League, #3), Alyssa Cole

Apesar de ser o terceiro de uma série, as histórias são independentes.

A história centra-se em plena guerra civil norte-americana com dois espiões negros da Lincoln’s Legal Loyal League (4L): Janita e Daniel. Janita, uma mulata cubana que viveu num mundo estanque com escravos por servos, encontra-se agora numa posição impossível: infiltrada numa organização de espiões dos unionistas, a tentar obter informações para os rebeldes que poderão ser a salvação do seu pai, que se encontra preso.Daniel é uma personagem fascinante, um negro nascido livre e com educação superior, é capturado e vendido no sul como escravo. Na 4L procura vingança e tenta enquanto tenta sobreviver com stress pós-traumático.

Entrei no livro depois de uma recomendação como uma autora para preencher o desafio do Book Riot Read Harder Challenge: ler um romance histórico por uma pessoa de cor. Este era um que encontrei disponível no NetGalley (a minha nova biblioteca digital).

Saí do livro a desejar ler todos os livros de não ficção sobre o tema, que encontrei nas notas.

Daniel Cumberland and Janeta Sanchez could not have joined the Loyal League for more different reasons. Born free and then sold into slavery, Daniel uses the League to provide structure for vengeance against, in particular, the Sons of the Confederacy organization. By contrast, Janeta - whose Cuban plantation owner father freed her enslaved mother and then married her - is there to spy on the spies, hoping to gain information that will buy her father’s freedom from Union prison. This story is honest, raw, and dark, and while the romance isn’t as strong as I’d have liked, I still recommend An Unconditional Freedom as a deeply affecting read.

The strongest aspect of this story by far is the intersection of history and character. Daniel was kidnapped out of his life as a trainee-attorney Northern freeman to be sold into slavery. Daniel is a protector, and the author effectively shows that his experience being enslaved was not traumatic only because of his own suffering, but also because being unable to protect the people around him on the plantation made him feel like a failure. The nightmares, flashbacks, and other manifestations of trauma he experiences after his rescue torment him, seeming like further evidence of personal weakness when he contrasts himself with people who spent longer in slavery or otherwise suffered, in his subjective analysis, “worse.” While I wish those had been the traumas he confronted in the climax instead of his claustrophobia and fear of being a jinx, the multidimensionality and raw authenticity of his pain leapt off the page and settled like a weight in my chest as I read. That’s powerful writing.

Creating Janeta as the heroine was also a strong choice by the author, because her journey of self-conceptualization in terms of race and class is fascinating and illuminating. In Cuba, Janeta’s enslaved mother was freed and became her father’s second wife, making Janeta a free, wealthy plantation princesa - but one who is black. In many ways, this is the story of Janeta’s blinders coming off to the ways in which wealth and the peculiarities of her “small pond” buffered her against the way someone of her color would be treated in other places (although even in her father’s home, she was never fully equal with the white daughters of his first wife). I appreciated the depth and nuance with which the author traced Janeta’s journey. Yes, Janeta is in some ways innocent and manipulated, but she also confronts the fact that in other ways, she was complicit in her innocence: there were questions she stopped asking, or deliberately never asked in the first place because she suspected the answer would be problematic. She also has to critically examine her mother’s emphasis on deriving her value from her ability to please others, especially men, and especially sexually.

NOT fascinating are Janeta’s endless ruminations about Henry, the white Confederate she loved who duped her into spying, and her choice to spy on the Loyal League for Henry in order to free her father. These scenes are repetitive – ‘I can’t betray them for Papi! But I must!’ happens at least three times - and every time she comes to a decision or realization that had already occurred in a previous chapter, it made her character feel stagnant. (On the other hand, it was interesting to do some Googling and find that there really was a female Sanchez - Lola Sanchez - in Janeta’s town of Paletka, Florida, who performed the spying attributed here to Janeta. I always respect authors who work that level of research into their stories).

Janeta and Daniel are deep, complex characters who help each other grow and heal, respectively. However, maybe this excellent history and character development took a bit of the page count from the romance. I would have liked more chemistry between the two of them, because sometimes they come across more as therapists than lovers. Both also spend too much time thinking about their previous loves - in the climax, Daniel even thinks of his former love’s faith in him alongside Janeta’s. Their transition to lovers feels abrupt, and I vote it’s time to retire ‘I can’t sleep, so I need to wander innocently to the library in my nightclothes for a book.’ The moment you read that, you know they’d better not have upholstered the chaise lounge in a fabric that shows stains.

There’s a pacing issue when a chapter ends in the middle of a naval battle, and the next chapter picks up and goes a few pages before revealing that oh, yeah, the battle ended, off camera, and Janeta and Daniel were set ashore, also off-camera, and now they’re making camp. On occasion, the prose gets carried away with itself:

“The same optimism Daniel had once felt… galloped through the arid plains of his soul, leaving a trail of verdant green. That trail of green sliced through him like a wound.”

So the optimism is a horse, but a horse that makes grass, but grass that cuts people? Unclear.

As a romance, this book is a B+ for me, but as a work of fiction, it’s an A-, and that’s the grade I’ve settled on. It reflects the fact that An Unconditional Freedom is profoundly powerful and worth reading. In a moving afterword, the author writes about how challenging it was to promise an HEA to her characters in a country that was not only so corrupt in its time period, but also remains plagued by structural and individual white supremacy to this day. I hope our community is inspired by books like this to take our love of the HEA off the page and work for it in the real world.

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Wonderful. It is a romance novel with a dash of historical fiction. The characters are realistic and likable.

Book 3 in the Loyal League is every bit as beautiful as books one and two. Alyssa Cole’s gorgeous prose brings you into the world of the American Civil War and slavery. It’s a timely story for today’s audience as well, even if you feel the story doesn’t reflect you. The romance is a very slow burn, and is completely appropriate given the circumstances and the characters’ prior experiences. I highly recommend this book to historical fiction lovers, perhaps even more than romance fans.

I received a copy of this book from the publisher through NetGalley. All opinions are my own.

Alyssa Cole is one of the best romance novelists working, and a new book from her is always cause for celebration. An Unconditional Freedom is the third in her Loyal League series, which follows Union spies working behind Confederate lines to ensure an end to slavery.

Daniel Cumberland joined the Loyal League to seek revenge: Born free, then sold into slavery by white men pretending to be abolitionists, Daniel has never recovered from the psychological scars his years in slavery inflicted. He has no interest in a new partner, let alone one as pretty and vivacious as Janeta Sanchez, a mixed-race Cuban woman. But Janeta holds secrets of her own: She is an unwilling double agent, sent to spy on the Union in order to secure the freedom of her slave-owning father.

In the hands of a less talented author than Alyssa Cole, this would have been a hard pairing to get me to root for. It was actually a hard pairing to get me to root for. Although Janeta's position in her family has always been precarious, as the daughter of a former slave, she still plans to work against abolition. But Cole deftly shows us how Janeta's strengths -- which become clear to us and to Daniel over the course of the book -- have arisen from that exact precarity. Daniel's developing respect for Janeta's ability to manipulate situations in her favor goes hand-in-hand with Janeta's realization that her worldview has been deeply wrong -- not just her ideas about slavery, but her ideas about herself. It's just really, really nicely done.

The book handles Daniel's trauma -- and underlying goodness -- with a similarly careful hand. Though Daniel believes himself to be weak for struggling to recover from his ordeal as a slave, the book is clear that isn't the case. Instead, it makes the point that different people respond to trauma differently. Which is a simple point to make, but one that often goes ignored, and I appreciate Cole for bringing it to the forefront here. Daniel has begun to forgive himself by the end of this book, but it's clear that recovery will be a long, slow process.

To the ongoing question of how one can set a romance in the midst of the Civil War, the answer continues to be "by engaging really carefully with the realities of the time period." Our glimpses of Daniel's past are horrifying. Cole has clearly done her research and shines a light into various aspects of slavery and the Civil War that make the book feel truly lived in. A good chunk of the plot deals with the issue of foreign intervention in the Civil War, a subject that occupied the two sides quite a lot at the time, but that I never learned about in history class. Daniel and Janeta are trying to disrupt the South's efforts to gain European -- and especially British -- support, a support that much of the South believed, or hoped, they would be able to count on as the war went on.

Perhaps more important than the history -- at least to me, in this political moment -- are the things Cole has to say about America. Neither Daniel nor Janeta begins the book with much hope of improving the country. Daniel wants his revenge, and Janeta wants her life to go back to normal. They both discover that their previous normal was deeply corrosive to them, and that there's more to strive for.

The past two years have shown more clearly than ever the corrosiveness of America's status quo. Yet An Unconditional Freedom reminds the reader that America is also its people, that the most downtrodden people can still carry a spark of hope that brings light in the darkness and maybe, eventually, a brighter future.

Prepare, in short, to get emotional, not just about Daniel and Janeta, but about the country we live in and the one we hope to create.

(I received an e-copy of this book for review from the publisher. This has not impacted the contents of my review.)

Rated 4.5 Stars

An Unconditional Freedom is in no way, shape or form an easy book to read. The opening scene of had me pissed to hell off, it only took a few minutes for me to go from zero to angry. It had nothing to do with the writing which was great as always but everything to do with the subject matter. All the books in this series are difficult to read for that very reason. Although they're set in the past they're in a lot of ways mirror images of present day America and other parts of the world which makes for some very uncomfortable reading but in no way takes away from the fascinating stories this weaves.

These characters didn't have the easiest go of it as every part of their journey was wrought with danger, lies and deceit among so many other things. I loved that despite all of this love was able to sprout under the most inhospitable and unlikely conditions. As difficult as it was to read I loved it and highly recommend it.

Compared to the other book in the series, the romance between the two main leads takes a bit of a back seat. It's not dropped completely; it sort of simmers compared the truth bombs Alyssa Cole decided to drop left and right.

This book is a solid condemnation of the racist, evil thinking prevalent in the United States in 1863 and in 2018. It's hard not to see how the current political climate has shaped the outlook of the characters and I love it.

Daniel, once an idealistic law student, is now a bitter man who has been betrayed by his own country and feels no hope for its future. Janeta is a sheltered, privileged black woman from Cuba who has shut her eyes to the evils of the world. Both of them have to take their own personal journey to understand their place in the world and how to make it better. And they both also come to realize how much they care for each other. But even that is framed within the larger story of their personal growth and development. I loved watching as they challenged their previously held ideas and healed from their past hurts.

This was a great conclusion to the series and I'm sad to see it come to an end.

The absolute best in the series so far and that's saying a great deal. The author took the confusion, injustice and betrayal of our current day society and gave it voice in our past. And managed to remind us how to find hope in times where it seems there is none.

God, this book. I say without a doubt it is my fave of the three (i'm sorry Elle!). Daniel stole my heart. Being in his head was so gut wrenching. He feels he's broken. Daniel is a free black man who was then captured and enslaved, and works now as a detective for the Loyal League. so whew...being in his head is pretty hard at times but it's such a powerful read !

Also the heroine Janeta is a Cuban woman whose father freed and married her enslaved mother. Sooo all sorts of internal conflict there. i love them both. I wasn't sure how I'd feel about Janeta considering but of course Alyssa made me love her because she's so complex. They both are ! And they grow so much over the course of the book. In different ways. Janeta had a lot of growing up to do, and finding herself, after being repeatedly told she's not like them (them being the slaves in her father's employ) Even as she learnt once again to question her entire life!

Alyssa blends action, romance and hard truths to make for a stunning book. Truly.

I also loved the glimpse of the Daughters of the Tent and i'm gonna need a whole new series about them thanks! And my now 2nd fave (sorry again Elle) makes a cameo in this and i still love you Elle but Daniel has just overtaken the number one spot.

Also the author's note at the end may have broken me all over again *cries*

and let me just say this. When we say we need ownvoices to tackle topics like this, this is what we mean. The nuance and hard truths within just couldn't have been done right or as impactful otherwise IMO!!

I love Alyssa Cole. I will read anything she writes, and probably love it. This book takes one of my least-favorite tropes (big secret, which leaves you anxious about the reveal), and handles it beautifully. I don't think the ending was entirely satisfying, but overall I still really enjoyed this book. I think this is one I would actually like better on re-reading.

I went in to this book with very high expectations and this book met every single one of them. Cole writes about heavy topics and her author's note at the end is really worth a read through as well. The character arcs that Janeta and Daniel go through are arcs that I've had to go through as well in my life. Cole wrote both perfectly. In her author's note Cole talks about how she could possibly give Daniel hope when our current political climate (and especially the events that happened while this was being written) mirrors so much of the injustice and racism that he experiences. I love that Cole didn't pull any punches. Her explanations for the whys and whos of the Civil War are so succinctly put and give no room for apologists or revisionists.

As for the plot, I was a bit afraid that Cole was going to rely on one of my most hated tropes, the giant secret that blows up the relationship when communication was totally a possibility. I hate that tension in a book and I find it is often a very lazy way to create tension. Cole handles it so beautifully and in character. I would have appreciated as the reader more hints to how it was going to be resolved, but overall I can't complain.

My only quibble is with the ending. I thought it was a little too deus ex machina and minor side characters, who are the focus of big plot events, are left a little hanging and that bothered me. However, in the end I loved this book.

This is the series that I like to recommend to people when they dismiss the romance genre in its entirety. These books are so well done with the combination of history, suspense, and romance. They are thoughtful, exciting and feature time periods and characters not often represented in historical romance. I love all things romance but this series refutes common misconceptions about the genre and helps to illustrate that there are as many types of romances in the genre as there are types of readers.

I loved this book just as much as the previous two books in the series and in some ways even more. It is a well crafted story about two souls dealing with the fallout of having their illusions shattered. When Daniel and Janeta meet neither of them is in any place to truly see each other much less begin a relationship. Daniel who was born free and kidnapped into slavery has focused solely on revenge since his rescue. Janeta is the Cuban born daughter of a slave and a plantation owner, raised to not look too closely at the her status in her family and her home, she is infiltrating the Justice League in an attempt to help her father. Daniel is angry. Janeta is naive. When the two of them are forced to partner up on an important mission they are both caught up in their own agendas but cannot help but be intrigued by each other. Over time they both grow and change and Cole makes every step of their journey believable. Their story is complex and emotional and I was so fully invested that I barely came up for air while reading. Also, Cole's author note about writing this book during the current political climate should not be missed.

I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This series is the perfect blend of historical fiction and romance, and it’s so impressive that Alyssa Cole manages to write ultimately uplifting stories set in such a dark era of our history.

What I admire most about Alyssa Cole's Loyal League series is her effortless fusion of action, history, and romance. Each book has all the thrills of a spy novel (which each is), but Cole finds hope, vulnerability, and emotion in the inhumanity of the Civil War. Having read the two novels before this, I was surprised by the slow burn of Daniel and Janeta's connection. Having said that, I was also impressed by it. Cole spends a lot of time establishing Daniel's trauma as a free black man who is captured and sold into slavery as well as Janeta's conflict as a Cuban woman whose father freed and married her enslaved mother. These are complex, traumatized, flawed characters, and their growth throughout the novel felt natural and engaging. Cole is open about how difficult this novel was to write in the political environment of 2018, but the ultimate hope and heart displayed within these pages made it a brilliant book to end the year on.