About the Book

Book: When Tomorrow Came

Author: Hannah Linder

Genre:Christian Fiction / Historical / Romance

Release date: April, 2023

They Waited Their Whole Lives for Their Papa to Return

Nan and Heath Duncan, siblings abandoned by their papa and abused by their guardian, have no choice but to survive on the London streets. When a kind gentleman rescues Nan from such a life, the siblings are separated and raised in two vastly different social worlds. Just when both are beginning to flourish and years have healed some of their wounds, their long-awaited papa returns and reunites them—bringing demands with him. Nan is expected to marry a rich suitor she’s never liked, and Heath is expected to forsake his gentle spirit and become the hardened man his father always was.

Dangers unfold, secret love develops, fights ensue, and murder upsets the worlds Heath and Nan have built for themselves.

They’ve waited their whole lives for their papa to return, for tomorrow to come—but now that it has, will they be able to see through to the truth and end this whirlwind of a nightmare before it costs one of their lives?

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About the Author

Hannah Linder resides in the beautiful mountains of central West Virginia. Represented by Books & Such, she writes Regency romantic suspense novels. She is a double 2021 Selah Award winner, a 2022 Selah Award finalist, and a member of American Christian Fiction Writers (ACFW). Hannah is a Graphic Design Associates Degree graduate who specializes in professional book cover design. She designs for both traditional publishing houses and individual authors, including New York Times, USA Today, and International bestsellers. She is also a local photographer and a self-portrait photographer. When Hannah is not writing, she enjoys playing her instruments—piano, guitar, and ukulele—songwriting, painting still life, walking in the rain, and sitting on the front porch of her 1800s farmhouse. To follow her journey, visit hannahlinderbooks.com.

More from Hannah

Love interests me. Not just in the romantic sense, but in every sense, because love is the driving emotion behind so much of what we do. It’s the heartbeat of everything. What do we have but love? Yet isn’t it the very essence of our greatest pain?

Sometimes it doesn’t make sense. Sometimes love has no reason. Like a tumultuous wind or a wet branch that sways in different directions, love is often petulant and aimless and powerful. But sometimes it’s soft, like a flower lifting dewy petals to the sunshine. The epitome of everything good, sweet, and true.

What makes love change? What makes two friends who have always been fraternal one day confess romantic affection? How much wrong, how much affliction, does it take for sweet love to sizzle into hatred? Even then, is it really hatred? Or merely the charred crust of the adoration still throbbing beneath? And how strong are the cords of new love? Will they break at every pull and tug, or are they more unfaltering than anyone might think?

Maybe those are silly questions. Maybe, like snowflakes, every heart knows a different answer. But if I explored anything in When Tomorrow Came, it was this. I glided through the story and felt love shift from brotherly to intimate, from hopeful to disappointed, from untested to proven, from safe to betrayed.

Just as love is the heartbeat of life, it is also the heartbeat of this story. I hope you will find yourself falling in love with the characters and their journey as much as I did.

My Impressions

“When’s Papa coming back?” “Today or tomorrow.”

Young, starving, street urchin siblings from London in the 1800s are separated and raised quite differently, in When Tomorrow Came by Hannah Linder. Nan is raised in high society, by the Stanhope family, with a special attachment to her older foster brother, Gilbert. Nan’s brother Heath is taken in by a poor, caring rector, who teaches Heath how to show people the love of God. This is a balm to my reader’s heart, as Heath is so abused as a child that he cannot understand or love a God who allows many horrible things to happen on His earth.

When Heath and Nan’s absentee biological father finally reappears, the expected bliss of belonging and unconditional love do not come with him. Instead, a papa they don’t remember, who is given to drink, meanness, lies, and threats has arrived.

I did love Nan and Heath and their devotion to each other, as well as Gilbert and Nan’s relationship of deep sibling love. Loftus and Temperance added much to the story. While I loved Mr. Stanhope for his wisdom and caring ways, he was not as developed as other characters.

Linder paints great, but not pretty, pictures of child poverty, abuse, and the machinations of minds bent on revenge.

The loyalties we see in different relationships are beautiful, but choking for Nan and Heath, in the case of their father.

I found the narratives hard to follow as there is no distinction or separation between which characters are being discussed. I had to go back and re-read many times, when the character discussion switched with no warning to the reader, from one sentence to the next.

While an emotionally-charged novel, I had trouble becoming fully engaged until the last third, when it seemed finally all story seeds sprouted. Action, danger, suspense, mystery, romance- it all seemed to come together here and the novel became unputdownable.

I received a copy of the book from Celebrate Lit via NetGalley. No positive review was required, and all opinions are my own.

Notable Quotables:

“Why couldn’t he just grab her onto his lap, hum the old songs, and be the papa the little girl inside of her still needed?”

“Perhaps it is as important to forgive as to ask for it.

“Love was too powerful to die, so it shriveled and formed into something new. A kind of hatred. A bitterness…”

“There was no changing what already was. There would never be room for tomorrow until Papa let go of every yesterday—and all of its hurt.”