Sometimes I think romance readers can get stuck in a rut by confining themselves to only medievals, only regencies, or only series books. Me – I like variety and am pleased when an author sets a book in a time period that is not often used in romances.

Cranberry Point is sent in the American Colonial period, a time I don’t often see treated in many historical romances. I liked the setting and the period details in Cranberry Point and I liked the characters very much – I did wish, though that there had been more romance in the story.

Gerald Crosbie, the third son of an English-Irish nobleman comes to the Massachusetts colony to visit his sister, Anabelle, who has married a Colonial sea-captain named Joshua Fairbourne. Gerald is expecting to find his sister suffering all kinds of hardships out in the boondocks, but to his surprise, she is wearing silk and jewels and living in a comfortable house with servants. Not only is Anabelle happily married, but she is expecting a child.

Anabelle wants Gerald to stay until her baby is born. He agrees, partly because he does not want to cross the Atlantic during the winter storms, but mainly because he has met Joshua Fairbourne’s sister, Serena, and is vastly attracted to her.

Gerald and Serena are found in a compromising position by Joshua Fairbourne and are forced to marry. Neither one of them entirely trusts the other, and the marriage gets off to a rocky start.

Gerald and Serena are two likable characters, but I found myself liking them better when they were apart. After a wonderful opening where Gerald saves Serena when she is lost in the fog, there is not much sexual tension nor attraction between the two, until very close to the end. Gerald and Serena have a lot of problems just talking to each other and much of the difficulty they find themselves in could be cleared up if one or the other would just say something.

The best part of Cranberry Point is the characterization of Gerald Crosbie. As an independently wealthy son of a nobleman, he has never had to work, and would have been looked down on if he had. When Gerald comes to the Colonies, he finds that stigma against work does not hold there, and that his interest in and talent for architecture and carpentry is of use to the people in the Massachusetts colony. Since Gerald is finally doing something needed and useful, he no longer feels like he has to wander. I only wish the treatment of the relationship between Gerald and Serena had been as interesting as the treatment of Gerald alone.