October 24, 2022
In this lackluster WWI romance from Breslin (As Dawn Breaks), a woman fights to keep custody of her daughter after the death of the child’s father. Clare Danner is an unwed mother who has made inroads into London society by posing as a war widow. Only her close friends and her lover, Capt. Marcus Weatherford of the British Navy, know that her two-year-old daughter, Daisy, is the illegitimate child of her affair with Elliot Lange, the son of the viscount for whom Clare once worked as a maid. After Elliot dies in combat and leaves Daisy as his heir, his family determines to take Daisy from Clare and raise her as their own. Desperate to keep custody of Daisy, Clare turns to Marcus for help, only to find that he’s lost his memory after a head injury and that a Russian ballerina named Natalya is claiming to be his fiancée. Unbeknown to Clare, Marcus is a British spy on a mission with Natalya to save the Romanov czarina and sustained his injury in an attack by Bolsheviks. Clare must trust in God to help her keep Daisy and restore Marcus’s memory. Marcus’s spy maneuverings never quite mesh with Clare’s custody battle, resulting in an overstuffed historical that’s further dragged down by wooden dialogue. This never quite takes off.