Indigo by Beverly Jenkins

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The June book for the Rake Appreciation Society, hosted by Crystal and Jen, is Indigo by Beverly Jenkins. This is a standalone of hers, but almost all of her books connect and are in the same universe. Here is a link to a family tree that was created last year. This book is one of Crystal's favorite romances. I have read a Beverly Jenkins before and wanted more from the romance aspect. Indigo certainly hit that note for me. I was able to apply Indigo to the backlist prompt for Summer of Swoon and small town prompt for the Ripped Bodice Summer Bingo.

We meet our heroine Hester first and she runs a station on the Underground Railroad. She has guests, a family and a badly beaten man. She cares for the man and finds out that he's the notorious Black Daniel. An infamous slave stealer. He had kind of given himself up to save the family he was stealing, but ended up getting saved from slave catchers himself. What we come to find out, is the Black Daniel is actually Galen. He's the grandson of a prominent creole family in Louisiana. They end up connecting, but Galen eventually has to leave.

He arrives back to their small town in Michigan a few months later, buying a portion of Hester's land and house next door. He comes to woo her, but Hester has a lot of reservations. The biggest drawback for her is the class difference. While Galen is mixed race, his family has been free for a lot longer as his ancestors were slaves under the French and not Americans. Hester is a freed slave. Where the name comes from is that she was on an Indigo farm(?) and her hands and feet are dyed indigo. A lot of twists and turns happen, but I am a little torn on my rating for this book.

If I were to rate this off of the romance, it'd be 5-stars. I really loved the connection and how Galen pushed Hester to not just open up, but also have fun. He takes her down to a river and they make mud pies. I loved how playful he was and the charm he exudes. He really pushes Hester to think about what it is she really wants. She was originally engaged to a friend and they planned for it to be a celibate marriage. Galen really pushes her to push herself to want more. 

Where this book fell short for me, was everything else. There were times where it seemed a little history textbook feeling where it was just a list of facts and historical events. While I usually enjoy  the way she threads history throughout her stories, you can tell it's an earlier book of hers. I kind of found myself skimming because it was written drier and didn't really pertain directly to the romance plot. A part of me feels a little bad about skimming those parts, but a lot of those sections were talking about John Brown the abolitionist whom I actually learned about in college. Because those parts of the book just felt like they had a different voice, I would rate those portions closer to a 3-star. I went for the average, but I did want to also go for the 4-star since this is a romance novel. If there was less of the history lessons or it was moved to the end as an author's note or something, maybe that would've been better for my reading tastes.

Overall I did enjoy this book. The villain was a little obvious and I found myself just waiting for the other shoe to drop since their first meeting. Which is even funnier since his name was Shoe. (Yay! Unintentional puns!) The romance was really good and really gave me what I wanted and expected. While the other sub-plots and history info dump didn't always fit well with the rest, the romance really kept me reading. Also, as far as older historical romances go this doesn't really have any of the normal problematic elements you usually see. I'll definitely keep reading Beverly Jenkins. I feel like I should maybe look at her older books though since this one hit me better. I'm excited to see what everyone else thinks this Thursday during the live show!

Have you read Indigo?

Bookishly Yours,

Stasi🍎

STATISTICS: Indigo, Beverly Jenkins, 4-stars, 2 days, eBook, 359 pages, published in 1996