Leigh's review posted on Guilty Pleasures Book Reviews 
 4.5 Stars 
 It is not often I read a historical romance that combines such a gothic tale with erotic sensuality. But Ms. Simone has managed to perfectly capture the dark stillness of a lonely country manor in a beautifully described world inhabited with secretive servants, a reclusive and dominant master and an innocent ward. 
 In a story that reminded me of an erotically charged Jane Eyre, it is told through the eyes of Ivy Leavold while she travels to live with what she believes to be the elderly widow of her late cousin, and the only family she has remaining. What she encounters is the quiet and intense Julian Markham, an estate shrouded in the mystery of the deaths of his two previous wives, and a man who awakens a sensuality in Ivy that she didn't know she possessed. 
 The encounters between these two people is scorchingly hot. Not matter what the nature of their interaction may be, the electricity is palpable and just radiates off the page. Julian initially seems to be the staid lord of the manor, but the parties he throws and the company he keeps prove just how wrong an impression this is. Fighting himself every step of the way, he pulls a willing Ivy into an world that is unbelievably sensual. 
 Told over the span of three books, two of which have yet to be released, The Awakening of Ivy Leavold was truly an incredible read. I finished it one sitting and had to shake myself when I was done to realize that I wasn't sitting in a country manor, surrounded by lush woods, snippy servants and a smoldering passion between these two lonely people. It has been a while since I have read something this engrossing to draw me into a different world, and I am not ready to leave it quite yet.