The onset of the Gilded Age. Times are changing, and so are the ideals centered around women, but Kat Darlington's troubles go much deeper than the world's inequality, and they occur closer to home. One of five sisters in an affluent Manhattan family, Kat is a passionate young artist who yearns for adventure and a world where women have more freedom. While the women in her life seek suitors and dream of managing their own households, acquiring a husband is the least of her concerns.
Their mother died while the country was in the middle of a civil war, and their father had returned to quickly marry a woman people knew little about before returning to the battlefield. Driven by her own mission, the Darlington sisters' new stepmother wreaked havoc on the household, and made life miserable for Kat in particular.
Now older, Kat sets out to discover the truth behind the mysterious woman and her disappearances. Her stepmother threatens to use Kat's longtime friendship with Jude Williams, a student in his last year of law school and the son of a Southern white woman and a Black doctor in an era where one drop of Black blood has to be recorded on the census, to ruin her reputation and destroy Jude's future. While Kat is worried about protecting her childhood friend, Jude's feelings for the spirited Kat Darlington go much deeper than friendship.
As Kat defies all to save her family from her stepmother and claim her independence, she enters a business arrangement with well-respected investor and businessman Merritt Huntington. He is drawn to Kat's frankness and free spirit, but she doesn't seek to be claimed by any gentleman.
New York society is filled with whispers of scandal. Can Kat save the Darlingtons from ruin and put speculations to rest, or will she, too, become embroiled in scandal?
If This Is Love is the first book in the charming and heartwarming Darlington historical romance series.
