Most Ardently Yours

Author: Freya Sampson Title: Most Ardently Yours Publisher: Sourcebooks Landmark Date Published: 07/07/2026

Read Dates: 06/01/2026- 06/02/2026
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐💫

 📖 I received a gifted e-book ARC. The following is my honest review✍🏻

Most Ardently Yours is a single POV magical realism romance. Zoe has given up on her dreams of writing and her hopes of a relationship, but not on her love of romance novels and book boyfriends. She meets Nick, the frustrating owner of a bookshop that refuses to sell romance and disparages the genre, and ends up rescuing (ok, stealing!) a battered copy of Pride and Prejudice from his store, to give it a loving home! When Zoe reads from the book, she’s not expecting to summon Mr. Darcy from its pages, but suddenly she’s hiding a confused 1800’s gentleman in her apartment, and debating whether she should trust Nick to help her undo what she’s somehow managed, or if she should just accept the happy accident that brought her favorite book boyfriend into her life!

This was my first book from Freya Sampson but I’ll be adding her other books to my TBR! I enjoyed the magical realism, the twist on Pride and Prejudice, and the slow burn romance. I loved Nick, even when they were disagreeing it felt more like banter than distaste, and he definitely showed how far he would go to protect someone he loved! I understood Zoe’s self doubt and desire to shrink her life, and loved seeing her slowly healing. Definitely worth the read!

"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single woman in possession of many romance novels, must be in want of a book boyfriend."

Zoe Knight, a struggling romance writer, has sworn off men for good. At least…the ones in real life. Once a believer in a happily ever after, she now curbs her loneliness with the help of the best book boyfriends in literature – and there is no better man than Jane Austen's Mr. Darcy. So when she stumbles into a classic London bookshop and argues with the annoyingly attractive store owner, Nick, who refuses to sell romance novels, she decides to liberate him of a dusty copy of Pride & Prejudice abandoned on a top shelf.

But this is no ordinary book.

After reading from the pages, Zoe finds herself in a remarkable situation: she has accidentally summoned the Mr. Darcy to the real world. Now, she's face-to-face with the man she's loved forever, and he's everything she dreamed he would be. Handsome? Check. Brooding? Check. Talks like he swallowed a thesaurus? Check and check. But even in all his regency perfection, can he ever be as good as in the novel? And if he's here, in her London apartment trying to figure out how to work a shower , what will happen to the literary world he came from? With Nick—the last man she could ever be prevailed upon to work with—urging her to send the fictional Darcy back to his own story, Zoe will have to decide what she really wants from a happy ending, before it's too late.