I also admired how realistically the relationship was portrayed. The set-up was written believably, and offered the protagonists a chance to fall in love without having to resort to back-breaking plot contrivances. He and Rica meet by accident, as he was receiving medicinal training with her father’s mistress, a healing woman of some repute who was also well-known within the city’s Jewish community. The plague hit the city where he was studying at university, and he was forced to come back to his hometown of Straussburg. When I started reading A Bed of Spices, it was on the recommendation of a friend who suggested it as “something different.” Rica is the pretty, blonde daughter of the local lord, while Solomon is a young doctor-in-training. That’s pretty rare in romance novels – it shouldn’t be, but it is. A Bed of Spices is not one of those romances, however it features a refreshingly different story coupled with interesting characters that have believable romantic chemistry. You know exactly everything that is going to happen, from the first page to the last. The feisty, book-loving spinster set against the alpha-male rake. So often historical romances, nowadays, are what I like to call “regency-by-rote.” No matter the author, it’s the same stale characters and plots, recycled over and over again with only the slightest variations to tell them apart.

As plague ravaged Europe, he struggles against his passion, risking his ife for the woman he wanted to hold in his arms forever.I thought this was a truly lovely romantic story.

Rica's golden haired beauty and bold spirit betwitched him. But there she met a man that set her blood racing, Soloman, the son of a wealthy Strassburg merchant, who'd come to study the herbalist's art determined to become a physician. So Rica fled from the castle to the herbalist's cottage. 352 pages Frederica der Esslingen could never submit to her father's wish to marry the man her twin sister loved. Some reading and cover creases, some edge and shelf wear, possible remainder lines to top of reading block, dealer inkstamp and old price to title, paper edge toned.

A Bed of Spices by Barbara Samuel