ARC Review: Someone To Trust by Mary Balogh

Someone to Trust is the 5th book in Mary Balogh's Westcott series. This book follows Someone to Care to the second, time wise. Someone to Care finishes with Marcel and Viola's wedding at Christmas. Brambledean court is where the entire family (which I admit is hard to keep track of, but there is a family tree included in the book for your reference) comes together for Christmas.

Elizabeth, Lady Overfield, has been a very interesting character throughout the first four books. She always seems to be poised, intelligent, and unafraid to have fun. She seems to have an ease to conversing with everyone. Seeing that her sister-in-law's brother, Colin, off to the side alone, she approaches him and starts a conversation. The two seem to act like they're close confidantes from the beginning. They tease each other a little, but also stray a little into more deep subjects about their lives. Elizabeth goads Colin into snow filled activities.

Colin, Lord Hodges, falls in love with the family togetherness for Christmas and cannot help but yearn for something similar within his own family. He and the rest of his siblings are estranged apart from Wren (Elizabeth's sister-in-law). He throws himself full on into all the fun at Brambledean from sledding to snowball fights. One fortunate accident with the sled leads Colin and Elizabeth into an impromptu kiss amid the snow (how romantic)! However it affects them both, they just try to brush it off considering she is almost 10 years his senior, which is an unheard of thing in Regency England.

The two agree to keep their "friendship" strong throughout the Season coming up and arrange to share the first Waltz together at every event they both attend. Elizabeth is considering remarrying, and Colin is also considering marriage. It was hard for me to completely understand the way they kept pushing the idea of themselves as a couple away because it isn't so unheard of in our times. I kept wanting to shake them for not seeing what was happening. However, I can acknowledge that times were different then. 

Both Elizabeth and Colin have parts of their pasts that shape the way they act (as all people do) but as usual Mary Balogh really seems to go to the right depth with it. I love how she seems to understand a person's inner thoughts and motivations. Her work is perfect in my opinion on that. This romance was a sweet one, and it was perfect for Elizabeth (who up to this point has been my favorite side character in this series). I want to share the ending with you, but don't want to spoil either. Mary Balogh handled it perfectly and with a spice of humor. I hope the series will continue, or at least for some of these amazing side characters get their own stories in some way, too!

**ARC provided by Publisher**

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