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Why ‘Scavengers’ Left Us Breathless (3 of 3)

The Rum Runner: The Legend of Captain John Stewart (3 of 3)

By Doralynn Kennedy (Indie author, 2025)

Genre: Fiction/Gothic Romance

Pages (print): 530

Via: Author request

Note: We received a complimentary copy of this book for honest review.

“The only thing they didn’t account for was you and me falling love.”

Picking up where we left off yesterday, we’re diving into the third and final book in The Rum Runer Trilogy today. It’s called Scavengers. To get up to speed, see our reviews of Book One, Cliff House here, and Book Two, Rum Runners, here.

“How many years had he fought to master the sea, only to build something more dangerous along its edge? He had raised Cliff House with his own ambition, poured into it barrels, bribes, blood, sweat, and secrets.”

Case Pharmaceuticals sent master spy Caroline Oliver to get the goods on Edward Kelly, mysterious owner of a sprawling dark mansion squatting on cliffs overlooking the coast of Maine. But Caroline and Edward have formed their own alliance, escaping the avaricious clutches of Cliff House for a cottage in the quiet fishing town of nearby Clifton.

“But Caroline felt the weight in each step: every move forward was a step deeper into a game with rules written by enemies who would never play fair.”

Circling like sharks with blood in the water, Case will stop at nothing to gain access to and control of Cliff House. One swallows secrets and real estate. The other swallows souls.

“Always give your enemy more paper than powder. Paper stalls. Powder kills.”

Caroline and Edward are soon neck-deep in a high stakes game of chess with not just Cliff House, but also a cold-blooded band of avaricious cutthroats headed by the ruthless Marcus Veyron. This guy gives pit vipers a bad name. He uses other people’s lives as steppingstones and corporate cannon fodder.

But in a game “where the board bleeds,” Caroline and Edward have weapons not seen…

Caroline and Edward don disguises and take on new personas in an effort to stop both the house with a taste for blood and the voracious Case vultures determined to snap up the decaying mansion – and Edward’s secrets in the process. And while Edward has survived many brushes with death, he’s not sure Caroline can survive another war with it in this epic page-turner.

“Edward didn’t just survive. He endured, and he fought with a patience born of a century.”

Meanwhile, Edward’s thoughts return to Ruth (see Rum Runners review) and the promises he failed to keep. He will not make the same mistake with Caroline, who is also being hunted by a pack of Case’s hyena-like goons.

“Fear is cheaper than bribery, and more reliable than loyalty.”

This book has more plot twists than Snake Alley, especially as the story steams toward a shattering crescendo.

“Some lies we carry willingly because the truth would drown people we love.”

Together with the two other books in The Rum Runner Trilogy, Cliff House (Book One) and Rum Runners, (Book Two), Scavengers rings down the curtain on an ambitious, three‑part masterpiece. The trilogy is a colossal odyssey — three parts, one unforgettable saga. But these novels are much more. They’re deeper. Older. Wiser. With echoes of another Ruth. A distant Ruth. From Moab. (You’ll recognize her if you know what to look for.)

“When deliverance comes, it may be at our hands, but it will be God who commands it.”

The writing? Well. Glad you asked. The writing paints in lightning, not pastels. Sentences crackle like live wires. The words don’t just tell the story—they grab you by the collar and pull you in. Think intense as a thunderstorm on a Friday night — unpredictable, relentless, and somehow still beautiful.

There’s a lot of fire in this third book. Fires in Caroline and Edward’s cottage in Clifton. Fires to ward off chill. Fires to light dark corners. Popping fires that collapse into ash. Fires burn in the story itself, sputtering and smoking just under the surface. Call it “foreshadowing.”

There’s also a cup with three drops. A choice. For Mary. Keep this safe. For better. For worse. “Together, then. Until the last piece falls.”

Each of the three books in The Rum Runner trilogy can be read as a stand-alone. If this book consisted of just Cliff House or just Rum Runners, that would be enough. But we recommend reading all three novels in succession, as intended and designed. The tail is tucked in neatly at the end, which is the mark of a true professional.

Finally, it’s been awhile since a book moved us a much as this trilogy.  Every page is a heartbeat, every chapter a pulse. It’s an emotional journey that you don’t just read, you live. Indeed, the story doesn’t unfold, it envelopes you like a fine mist. Or a second skin. It wraps you in a sensory experience that refuses to let go. It left us breathless.

I’d grab a copy now ‘fize you.

Our Rating: 5.0


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High Spirits & Higher Stakes: A Prohibition-Era Page-Turner (2 of 3)

The Rum Runner: The Legend of Captain John Stewart (2 of 3)

By Doralynn Kennedy (Indie author, 2025)

Genre: Fiction/Gothic Romance

Pages (print): 530

Via: Author request

Note: We received a complimentary copy of this book for honest review.

We’re picking up where we left off yesterday with a review of the second book in the three-novel collection, The Rum Runner: The Legend of Captain John Stewart. Here’s our review of Book One: Cliff House. (Kimber: I’d check that out, Toots. It’ll give ya some important back story.)

So, Mom and I? We figured we’d just dip a toe into Book One. Like, test the narrative waters. Then get to Book Two when we can. Cuz, our TBR pile looks kinda like Mount Rushmore these days. Or maybe the state of Alaska.

Just shows you what we know.

After finishing Book One, Cliff House, we were itchin’ to dive into Book Two, Rum Runners. Like, Do Not Pass Go. Do Not Collect $200. So, we did. The next day.

Yep, we thoroughly enjoyed Cliff House. But guess what, Cookie? Book Two, Rum Runners, is even better. I’ll let Mom ‘splain. Ya might want to buckle up.

He’s caught between the two things he loves most – the empire he’s built and the woman he loves. John Stewart is being pulled in opposite directions that he can’t reconcile in this sweeping gothic romance set on the New England Coast.

“Not all houses are for the living.”

John Stewart is an enigmatic kinda guy. Taciturn. Passionate. Mysterious. We kept seeing Jay Gatsby. Or maybe Edmond Dantes. And a little of James Clavell’s Dirk Struan of Tai-pan. A dash of Rhett Butler. And Stewart’s main squeeze in Book Two, nurse Ruth Wilson? We kept seeing Dickens’s Esther Summerson of Bleak House.

Well. Rum Runners opens 100 years before Book One. An exhausted nurse peers into a tempestuous sea in the midst of a raging storm, searching for any hint of shipwreck survivors. Survival is something Ruth Wilson knows well. Half her town is gone due to a deadly flu epidemic, including her family and most of her friends and neighbors. But in the raging storm she finds another survivor: Captain John Stewart.

“Revenge makes widows where it should only claim enemies.”

Once he’s healthy again, Stewart contacts Ruth and asks her to come to his Connecticut estate, Marshwood Manor, to care for his diabetic mother. Once there, Ruth meets the kindly and steady Dr. Michael Best (echoes of another Dickensian character, Tom Pinch of Martin Chuzzlewit.). Together, Ruth and the doctor oversee the Stewart matriarch’s care. The doctor asks for Ruth’s hand in marriage. She is touched by his kindness and quiet, unfettered steadiness. Ruth is also unsettled by “men with rifles in the roses” at Marshwood Manor. And what’s up with the little girl who isn’t really there?

“Ruth found herself suspended between the two: the quiet ward of Dr. Best, where one might count a lifetime in the faithful return of spring blossoms; and the reckless blaze of John Stewart, where one might live a single year and yet feel it outweighed all others.”

Ruth chooses to join John Stewart at the new house he’s building on a cliff in Maine. And “The promise she gave a dying woman was a chain that pulled tighter the more he disappeared.” Can Ruth keep her promises to John’s dying mother without losing her own soul?

“She thought she wanted glitter. What she really wanted was grace.”

Book Two explains how and why John Stewart got into rum running. And the origins of Cliff House, which is really two houses. Cliff House above is all show. Chandeliers. Polished wood. A band and a ballroom. Cliff House below is hidden doors. Narrow, slick staircases. Deliveries at odd hours. Shadows. And while Cliff House remains a formidable character in Book Two, it’s not as central as it was in Book One. So, make sure you read both, okay?

The tone of Rum Runners differs a bit from Cliff House. The latter is more cerebral. There’s plenty of action in Rum Runners. For example, after a duel to the death over smuggling supremacy, Stewart’s criminal empire grows. It spreads from Main to Chicago, “from coast to coast: bribes paid, rivals buried, men bought for loyalty or silence.”  

We loved how the author weaves echoes of Book One throughout Book Two: A woman in pink. Mercy with a mouth like a trap. A cup with three drops. A flask and water from a cavern pool. One, two, three. One, two, three.

“Memory is an animal that will not be tamed.”

As in Cliff House, superb writing and skillful storytelling are the watchwords for Rum Runners. The author’s metaphors remain as sharp as a chisel carving stone. Her similes sparkle like embers in the dark. The narrative makes readers feel like we’re tip-toeing into a shadowy world of secrets where faint whispers curl through cracks in the walls and floorboards are full of breaths held too long.

The story races forward with the precision of a seasoned conductor, keeping the beat tight and the tension high. It’s a brisk, expertly paced journey where every word is a deliberate choice, every scene a calculated advance.

And… we’re not through yet! Be sure to keep an eye out for our review of Book Three: Scavengers. Coming TOMORROW!

Our Rating: 4.5


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How ‘The Rum Runner’ Caught Us On a Cliff (1 of 3)

The Rum Runner: The Legend of Captain John Stewart

By Doralynn Kennedy (Indie author, 2025)

Genre: Fiction/Gothic Romance

Pages (print): 530

Via: Author request

Note: We received a complimentary copy of this book for honest review.

“Mercy with a mouth like a trap.”

Kimber: Okay, Mom. I give up. What’s a “gothic romance”?

Mom:  “Gothic romance” combines dark, suspenseful settings with intense, often forbidden love, blending horror, mystery, and passion. It’s often characterized by moody, atmospheric settings. Crumbling mansions. Haunted castles. Foggy forests. They shape the story’s tension, drama, and intrigue.

Kimber: You mean like a nice, thick juicy Porterhouse steak sizzling on the grill?

Mom. Sighs. Something like that.

Well, friends. We don’t usually gravitate toward “gothic romance.” But when we received a review request from author Doralynn Kennedy for her latest book, The Rum Runner: The Legend of Captain John Stewart, we accepted it on the strength of her prior work. A formidable author and prodigious writing talent, Kennedy has published in multiple genres, including romantic suspense, Gothic romance, Christian fiction, nonfiction, and children’s books. We’ve reviewed a couple over the years, including Thirteen Miracles and The Mystery of the Fox Down Dog and Other Stories. Enjoyed them.

So even though we’re not really big “gothic romance” fans, we decided to take a chance on The Rum Runner and Book One: Cliff House. It’s the first book in a three-novel omnibus collection. We’ll get to the other books later. But were we ever surprised with Cliff House. Here’s the skinny:

When the past refuses to stay buried and an external hurricane mirrors an inner storm, love becomes a dangerous game of shadows and secrets in this deliciously moody and atmospheric read set in Maine.

The Plot

Caroline came to steal his secrets. But he stole her heart.

When Case Pharmaceuticals’ investigator Caroline Oliver arrives at a decaying mansion on the Maine coast as a hurricane closes in, she expects corporate secrets tied to rumors of immortal life. Instead, she finds a house that’s alive – and a man who should not exist.

Edward Kelly, rumored to be a long-dead Prohibition-era smuggler Captain John Stewart, is now a billionaire businessman of impossible age. Haunted by a century-old curse, he’s spent decades hiding from a past that refuses to stay buried. A hundred years earlier, a private nurse named Ruth Wilson stepped into his world of passion, smugglers, and secrets, and fell in love with a man the sea refused  to drown. Now the past and present collide.

Because some storms do not end with the water. Some follow a man ashore and wait for him in the dark...

The Rum Runner is a masterful, highly readable blend of spooky haunted house with a mind of its own, supernatural mystery, and a generational curse tied to Prohibition-era rum runner and Cliff House owner Captain John Stewart, aka: Edward Kelly. The historical context is – duh – rum running – and smuggling during the 1920s. This includes speakeasies, murder, mayhem, and one super creepy house help duo, Mr. and Mrs. Yardley.

It may be the first book we’ve read where a house is a main character. Like, sentient. Hungry. Jealous. And if Cliff House is a trap, what does that make Edward? Is he really flesh and blood or… something else?

The Rum Runner grabbed us in Chapter 1. Didn’t let go until the final page. As noted above, we’ve enjoyed Kennedy’s prior novels. But The Rum Runner is a whole new level of excellence and expertise. It’s Kennedy’s best work yet. And thoroughly un-putdownable. Like this:

Superb writing and masterful storytelling propel a plot that hits you with relentless momentum. The plot-punching narrative and dynamic characters combined with breathless pacing pour out a story that’s as smooth as a rum-soaked sunset. It’s also as creepy and compelling as the water-soaked beams and stones of Cliff House. The story creates a subtle but distinct line of rising tension and intrigue as we follow Caroline in and out of the rhythms of the house and the stories within while the “creep-out factor” soars into the stratosphere.

Haunting, mysterious and exceedingly eerie, The Rum Runner would make a great movie. (What’s Vincent Price or his progeny up to these days? Hmmm…) “We sail!”

Again, kindly note that this omnibus collection includes three novels. It’s a heavy lift, clocking in at over 500 pages. Book One, Cliff House, clocks in at 174 pages.

Cloaked in a shroud of secrets that echo through the story like ghosts of yesteryear, this exceptional gothic romance caught us on a cliff, haunting our thoughts long after we turned the last page.

We loved it! You will, too!

Our Rating: 4.0

Join us TOMORROW for our review of Book Two: Rum Runners. And don’t forget the Porterhouse! “Cut loose!”