Category Archives: book review

Tank by M. Malone

book review December 6, 2015 Leave a comment

Contemporary romance’s love affair with billionaire heroes continues. My assertion that being a billionaire is akin to living on another planet and that the transition is not as simple as “now I can afford to buy shoes” continues. In this first book in the Billionaire Bad Boys series by M. Malone, sets up the novels that follow while bring together a big lug and a sweet young woman.

From Amazon (with comments from me): Tank Marshall has anger issues. (He has PTSD, is scary for a living, and keeps weapons in his home.) Years ago he swore off fighting but everything in his life lately is out of control. (Not good for the guy with PTSD). His mom’s cancer is back and the deadbeat dad he hasn’t seen in years is offering an inheritance in exchange for redemption. (As is the way of fiction, he managed to abandon his wife and young sons, spread his seed to others, and make billions at the same time because that last thing is apparently quite straightforward.) So he prowls the streets at night, looking for an outlet for the rage. (He is introduced to the reader while looking for victims to defend and bad guys to pummel.)

There’s only one person that keeps him anchored in the midst of the chaos. One person untouched by violence and money and lies. Emma Shaw. (Redemptive Female – Table for One!)But the one thing that Tank hasn’t learned yet is that when billions are at stake, there’s no such thing as innocent. Because the only woman he trusts is the last woman he should. (This is an overstatement.)

Money. Changes. Everything. (I hear this is true, but would love to test it personally.)

End Amazon
 
As the first book in Malone’s series, the streets are not paved with gold yet, but Tank and his brother have received some money from their father. Not being stupid and needing to pay for medical expenses (*see photo below), they accepted the money, but being honourable, they are not sure they want to take all of it, or pay the price their dad requires for it, specifically spending time with him. Dealing with his father’s machinations, Tank has been spending a lot of time at his lawyer’s office and is warm for the form of the receptionist, Emma. She, in turn, has noticed him, at 6’5″ it’s hard not to, but he seems like a bad news and she has been trying to resist his weekly dinner invitation. When their paths cross outside the office, their relationship tentatively begins.
 
Like Tank, Emma has a history of trauma. Her parents were murdered during a home invasion during which she was hidden and therefore spared. Trying to get herself back on track, she wants to return to university with an eye to veterinary college and really needs money for tuition. When the nice old man she brings documents to offers her a MILLION DOLLARS if she can convince Tank to visit and she agrees which is, let’s all admit, a perfectly sensible thing to do. You can imagine what happens next: They fall hard and fast, she learns he is sweet beneath his behemoth exterior – even though the author often conveniently ignores their height difference – and everything is daisies and candy floss for about 10 minutes until all of the sundry plot complications explode simultaneously.
 
I didn’t dislike Tank,  but I didn’t particularly like it either and at some point I am going to write a diatribe about overkill in romance plotting, but not today as I was more concerned with the ongoing romance trope that violence management issues can be cured by love: “Ever since the beginning, being around you has been one of the only times I feel calm. Happy. You center me, Emma.” Is it her responsibility to keep him that way?  Can his outbursts really be that selective? What happens when he doesn’t feel calm around her? Will it involve all of the guns he keeps in his closet? The reader sees him respond with disproportionate violence when defending people, so how far does “but he would never hurt me” go?
*the photo below
 Links to my other reviews can be found on my complete reading list of books sorted by author orAuthor Commentary & The Tallies Shameful.

Rules for the Reckless Series: Lady Be Good and Luck Be a Lady by Meredith Duran

book review November 30, 2015 1 Comment

This is a previous review updated with the next book in the series…

Lady Be Good

Meredith Duran writes very strong, character driven historical romance, but Lady Be Good never quite grabbed me. It was as accomplished as readers have come to expect from Duran and involving at the time, but I didn’t really think about it once I was done. That said, I would really like to read the next novel in the Rules for the Reckless series, Luck Be a Lady, as it involves an up-from-the-the-gutter hero and a very proper heroine and those are almost always fun.

From Amazon: Born to a family of infamous criminals, Lilah Marshall has left behind her past and made herself into the perfect lady. Working as a hostess at Everleigh’s, London’s premier auction house, she leads a life full of art, culture, and virtue. All her dreams are within reach—until a gorgeous and enigmatic viscount catches her in the act of one last, very reluctant theft… Christian “Kit” Stratton, Viscount Palmer, is society’s most dashing war hero. But Kit’s easy smiles hide a dark secret: he is haunted by a madman’s vow to destroy anyone he loves. When his hunt for the enemy leads to Everleigh’s Auction Rooms, he compels Lilah to help him.

From Me: Hijinks ensue.

In addition to that whole “a crazy person wants to destroy Kit and all he holds dear” thing, Lady Be Good has some great fish-out-of-water elements and commentary on the place of women in the Victorian world. Hamstrung by convention, Lilah must steer herself very carefully in making her place, and her employer, Catherine, is fighting the same battles, but from within a different class. The romance worked well, too, but I found female characters more interesting and look forward to meeting them again. Not that Kit wasn’t charming and engaging, as was his interaction with Lilah, but he didn’t jump off the page the same way his heroine did.

Luck Be a Lady

From Amazon: THE WALLFLOWER – They call her the “Ice Queen.” Catherine Everleigh is London’s loveliest heiress, but a bitter lesson in heartbreak has taught her to keep to herself. All she wants is her birthright—the auction house that was stolen from her. To win this war, she’ll need a powerful ally. Who better than infamous and merciless crime lord Nicholas O’Shea? A marriage of convenience will no doubt serve them both. THE CRIME LORD – Having conquered the city’s underworld, Nick seeks a new challenge. Marrying Catherine will give him the appearance of legitimacy—and access to her world of the law-abiding elite. No one needs to know he’s coveted Catherine for a year now—their arrangement is strictly business, free from the troubling weaknesses of love.

To go all Accuracy Police on Amazon’s ass, Catherine is a Victim of Circumstance rather than a Wallflower and this character type combined with a crime lord is quite common in romance. Why, if I had a nickel for every one of those I’ve read, I’m guessing I would have maybe, conservatively, upwards of 60 cents. As a rule, the term “crime lord” simply means the hero climbed up out of the gutter and now owns a casino, or “gaming hell” in the genre parlance. It’s shorthand for rich and ruthless climbers. Nick is no exception having started out as a thief and worked his way up to a position of power and, most importantly, wealth through his gambling establishment. When we meet him, he’s become a kind of pater familias to the local rogues gallery. Catherine is resolute and pretty ambitious herself, so they make a potent combination against her brother and his willingness to be simultaneously gormless and uncompromising at every turn.

I didn’t like this book as much as I wanted to or felt like I should like it. I enjoyed both main characters – Nick is romance catnip – but I felt the romance never quite held together or smoldered as much as I would have liked. I appreciate how independent and canny Duran’s heroines are, and the way they fight for themselves, or learn to do so, but more couple time would have been appreciated. I would suggest reading Fool Me Twice or the delightful novella Your Wicked Heart instead.

Also by Meredith Duran:

Rules for Reckless Series (not entirely interconnected, more of a theme)
That Scandalous Summer – very good
Your Wicked Heart – delightful novella
Fool Me Twice – excellent
Lady Be Good – nothing special
Luck Be a Lady – better than Lady Be Good, but still nothing special

Not Rules for the Reckless Series
Bound by Your Touch – excellent
Written on Your Skin – not my style, but very good

Links to my other reviews can be found on my complete reading list of books sorted by author or Author Commentary & The Tallies Shameful.

Sex, Straight Up and Hot Under Pressure by Kathleen O’Reilly

book review November 30, 2015 Leave a comment

Sex, Straight Up

A couple of weeks ago, I snapped this up during the Harlequin sale on Amazon. Ignore the title, it’s a sweet romance that masquerades as something spicy when it’s really just shorthand for a romance that starts with physical intimacy and works backward to an emotional connection.

From Amazon: Meeting a handsome loner on a deserted beach in the Hamptons was like being hit by lightning. One steamy weekend in bed with Daniel O’Sullivan and Catherine Montefiore was marvelously woozy from a delicious cocktail of sun, sand and superhot sex. Abruptly, though, Catherine’s forty-eight hours of fun are at an end when her family’s exclusive auction house is hit by a very public scandal. She’s ready to step in and save the day, but she’s hoping Daniel, her hot Irish hunk, will lend a hand. After all, he’s got the necessary skills and, straight up or not, Catherine wants another long drink of Daniel before another forty-eight hours are up and her legacy is lost forever!

Daniel’s wife was killed on 9/11 and he has been mourning her for several years. Convinced the best way to honour her memory is as a living memorial, he has rejected his family’s attempts at matchmaking. When he agrees to a party weekend at the beach, he finds refuge with the quiet, and quietly attractive, woman staying next door. They have a weekend fling and when they return to everyday life, their professional circumstances throw them together.

Despite being a little lost, Daniel is otherwise a lovely guy who mostly needs to give himself permission to move on. In some ways he has started to and Catherine is the catalyst to make the final breaks which, in turn, helps her move forward in her life as well. There was nothing new in Sex, Straight Up just two people who are a little lost finding each other. It was a quick, heart-warming read and I liked O’Reilly’s style enough to track down another of her books.

Hot Under Pressure

From Amazon: Boutique owner Ashley Taylor hates flying. Especially when there’s a sugar-fueled little hellion on board. But then David McLean (sexy!) sits next to her, and suddenly Ashley finds herself hoping the delay will last forever—and that David won’t notice her comfy pink bunny slippers (sadly, the opposite of sexy). David does notice Ashley, and when the flight is delayed overnight, they can’t get to the airport hotel fast enough. Off with the slippers and in with the zing! Fortunately, America is filled with cities—L.A., New York, Miami—and nothing says “smoking-hot passion” like an intercontinental affair!

Ashley and David meet on a delayed flight, get busy in an airport hotel room, and then carve out a relationship based on random and periodic visits. They keep thinking that the intense passion will die out and while it calms, it also makes room for a genuine connection between the two. Ashley’s home-life is broken, though not irretrievably, and creates a lot of obligations owing to an unhealthy sister. David’s life is a barren and rocky place where seed can find no purchase (H/T Coen Brothers) because his wife cheated on him with – wait for it – his brother and – there’s more – divorced David to marry said brother and now – still more – she is pregnant with their first child. And you thought your Thanksgiving Dinner was awkward!

I found some to the elements of Hot Under Pressure a bit much, specifically [SPOILER] that Ashley may have a difficult family situation, but she owns three stores in the Chicago area and somehow it is her who completely uproots herself and moves cross-country in the end. David had a movable career and I call bullshit.

Links to my other reviews can be found on my complete reading list of books sorted by author or Author Commentary & The Tallies Shameful.

 

Throttle Me by Chelle Bliss

book review November 26, 2015 1 Comment

It was free.

It was sexist.

The title is an actual request from the heroine.

If a man I was involved with told me not to “worry my pretty little head”, odds are very strong that I would worry his eye with my pretty little finger.

From Amazon: Suzy’s a control freak and has her life mapped out – work hard, find a man with a stable job, and live happily ever after. She’s content with the status quo, but her plan comes to a screeching halt when he enters her life and turns it upside down. City gave up on love when his heart was crushed in college, preferring to be the typical bachelor. He spends his nights hopping from one bed to another and his days working at his family tattoo shop, Inked. A chance encounter on a dark road makes him question what he had sworn off forever – a relationship.

Honestly, I think Chelle Bliss lost me at a hero who goes by the nickname “City” though his real name is Joey (not even Joe). He’s designed for the tattooed-pierced-biker-aggressive-tough guy-rough guy-secret pussycat-who-would-kill-for-me loving crowd and I am not among them. The story is very much a Good Girl falls in with a Bad Boy she thinks is dangerous and unstable, but turns out to be everything she needed. It’s not a trope I mind, though the hero was so over-the-top I found him ridiculous, but what really put me off was the love scenes. I don’t know where this moves from simply personal predilections versus squick, but this is the first time I’ve read a romance in which the hero says things like, “I can’t decide which part of your body to assault first” and thinks similar sentiments. There was a line being crossed into rough that distressed me because, while I appreciate that some books cater to a desire for such moments, it makes me uncomfortable that the hero liked the idea of assaulting or abusing the heroine. Moreover, the title, Throttle Me, is an actual request made by Suzy of City. They do not portray the act, but keep it to a phone interaction, but I was SUPER CREEPED OUT by City getting off on the idea of Suzy being unable to breathe and scrabbling her hands against his chest while he “assaults”, “pounds”, and chokes her. ABORT! ABORT! ABORT!

It turns out he’s rich, of course, because apparently middle class biker guy fantasies can only take you so far.

Links to my other reviews can be found on my complete reading list of books sorted by author or Author Commentary & The Tallies Shameful.

The Game On Series: The Game Plan by Kristen Callihan

book review November 25, 2015 Comments: 4

The Game Plan is the third novel in the Game On series about football players and the women that climb them. I loved this new adult romance. I LOVED IT even after getting annoyed with the author, Kristen Callihan, about her The Pig Becomes a Person plot in The Friend Zone.  I loved it so much that it started as a loan from a good friend and I went ahead and bought myself a copy that I have since re-read.

Fiona Mackenzie’s father and sister are sports agents. She has grown up around professional athletes, most particularly football players, and she wants nothing to do with them. Avoidance is a challenge as her sister is married to one and run-ins are inevitable.  Visiting said sister, Ivy, brother-in-law, Gray, and her new nephew, Fi finds another house-guest keeping company with her family. A close friend of Gray’s, Ethan Dexter is large, stoic, sweet, bearded, tall, artistic, gentle, lumbersexual… I need a moment…

 

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Good golly! Smokin’ hot hero alert!

…so Ethan is a close friend of the family and fellow football player with Fi’s brother-in-law. He adores Fi. He’s besotted and has been for a couple of years. (I never get tired of the “I have loved you from afar” trope.) He’s large, she’s tiny. He’s quiet, she’s “noise, noise, noise”. Taking a chance to get her attention, Ethan gains her interest, but their lives in different cities create obstacles, but that’s not the true challenge they face.Things go truly awry when a bounty is placed on Ethan’s virginity and Fi is caught in the resulting circus. This crisis allows The Game Plan to take on issues of sexual experience and consent in a way that will have you cheering in between bouts of fanning yourself over Ethan’s manifest hotness.

A truly enjoyable romance, The Game Plan is the best book by Callihan I have read so far and I expect I will read more; moreover, she should get a special award for how well she writes couple’s arguments. She’s very good with the smolder, too, but her fights are wonderfully realistic and intense.

More New Adult romance recommendations can be found here.

Links to my other reviews can be found on my complete reading list of books sorted by author or Author Commentary & The Tallies Shameful.

The Ravenels: Cold-Hearted Rake by Lisa Kleypas

book review October 28, 2015 Comments: 2

I will try to calm my excitement induced vibrating to write this review. I discovered Lisa Kleypas when I dove into the romance genre in 2012 and read everything of hers I could get my hands on – The Wallflowers, The Hathaways, The Travises, Derek, Gideon, and Zachary. She is the author whose work I have read the most of and I was SO EXCITED to learn she was returning to historicals. How excited? I’m writing this review and the book hasn’t even come out yet. Will it have the trademark smolder? How hot will the [insert funky bass line here] be? Will the hero be sardonic, self-made, and wry? Will he call the heroine “sweetheart” in that way of Kleypas men? Will we get to see any of our favourite characters? Probably. (Answers: some, insufficiently, yes, yes, no)

y648[1]As is the way of historical romance plots, Devon Ravenel has accidentally inherited an earldom. The last earl died in a horseback riding accident and now Devon and his brother, West, have come to look over the moldering pile of the family estate, the plentiful farmland hanging on despite the ongoing decline in the agrarian economy, and the women of the family, including the erstwhile earl’s beautiful widow, Kathleen. They had been married for only three days when he died. As the oldest member of the household, though not by much, she is acting as head of the family and arbiter of good conduct. Things proceed as well they should.

Cold-Hearted Rake lays a lot of the groundwork for the rest of the series, so much so that it was a challenge balancing that against the love story itself. I would have liked more romance in this romance novel. Devon falls hard and fast, Kathleen takes longer, but their interactions felt episodic as opposed to intrinsic to the story. The supporting characters are reasonably well fleshed out and I look forward to books for Devon’s brother West, their friend Rhys Winterbourne, and Tom Severin. Rhys in particular has been set up with a need for redemption, as there is a scene in which he acts sexually threatening towards the heroine, and he is up next. His conduct represented a couple of elements that I found dated, including West giving Kathleen “the gentlest shake” (a common Kleypas occurrence) and Devon behaving in a very high-handed fashion. I know it’s a historical romance, but certain elements were inconsistent with what I think of as the current state of the genre.

Lisa Kleypas is an autobuy author for me and, despite any disappointment I felt about the lack of couple time and, yes, insufficient sex and smolder, I will purchase the next book as I found the excerpt of Marrying Mr. Winterbourne tantalizing (his redemption is already in the works) and West’s should be a lot of fun as he was absolutely charming (if too easily rehabilitated).

I don’t often include quotes in reviews, but I wanted to share a couple of gems.

“No, he keeps the schedule of a cat. Long hours of slumber interrupted by brief periods of self-grooming.”

“You shouldn’t be in here,” Devon told him. He turned to the room in general. “Has anyone been corrupted or defiled?”

“If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to find a tavern where I can pay an under-dressed woman to sit in my lap and look very pleased with me while I drink heavily.”

A complete summary of Lisa Kleypas’s catalogue, with recommendations (two classics and one of my personal favourites), can be found here.

Links to my other reviews can be found on my complete reading list of books sorted by author or Author Commentary & The Tallies Shameful.

And Then He Kissed Her by Laura Lee Guhrke

book review October 26, 2015 Leave a comment

Laura Lee Guhrke is usually a fallback author for me, with Lorraine Heath and Eloisa James, but All About Romance publishes an annual list of their readership’s top romances of all time and I had seen And Then He Kissed Her on it a few years ago, so this historical romance had been on my personal wish list for a while. Recently, it came up on Amazon for $1.99 and I snapped it up immediately. It did not disappoint.

Emmaline Dove (GREAT name) has been the personal secretary to handsome, divorced Harry the Earl for five years. Subsuming herself to her role, she is everything he needs her to be and he, of course,  takes her for granted. Having written and submitted five etiquette books to him, which he always refuses to publish, Emma’s final straw comes when she realises that Harry has never actually read any of her books before rejecting them. She quits. He panics. She gets a job writing etiquette and household advice (read: late Victorian Martha Stewart) working for a competitor. He buys the competitor’s newspaper. They work together. Harry finally gets to know the real Emma, not the perfect secretary version she portrayed for her job. They fall in love and each is freed from their misconceptions about themselves and their lives. Lovely.

When I started And Then He Kissed Her, I feared it would be a Victorian office romance, but it avoided that pitfall and was a great genre read. Harry and Emma had strong chemistry and the story was by turns sweet, funny, and sexy. There were some hodge-podgey historical elements that irked me a bit, such as Harry admonishing Emma to be her own person and do what she wants in life to which one of the voices in my head replied, “Easy for you to say rich, male, aristocratic person who can do whatever the hell you want!”, but my quibbles were not any great detriment to the story. It was an enjoyable read and one I suspect I will revisit. Plus, as I had hoped, the title of the book does occur in the text and it was wonderfully timed.

Laura Lee Guhrke reviews: When the Marquess Met His Match and How to Lose a Duke in Ten Days

Links to my other reviews can be found on my complete reading list of books sorted by author or Author Commentary & The Tallies Shameful.

The Ivy Years Series: The Fifteenth Minute by Sarina Bowen

book review October 23, 2015 Leave a comment

The final book in Sarina Bowen’s Ivy Series is a bit of a head scratcher and one in which the author’s intent seemed clear, but I don’t think she managed the very delicate balancing act she had decided to undertake, but first let me praise the other five books in the Ivy Years series and emphatically recommend buying all of them immediately:

  1. The Year We Fell Down – BAM! This book got me right in the feels.
  2. The Year We Hid Away – That’s a lot for two such young people to have going on.
  3. Blonde Date novella – Perfect novella: Short, sweet, adorable, and added to my classics list.
  4. The Understatement of the Year – Surrender. Lying to yourself is exhausting.
  5. The Shameless Hour – “You don’t get to tell me who I am.”

As to The Fifteenth Minute, let me sum up my response with a picture of a word and its synonyms:

ambivalent

Lianne Challice is a child star whose fame comes from an ongoing series of movies about a character called Princess Vindi. Striking out on her own and trying to grow up by attending an Ivy League school, she first appeared in The Shameless Hour and I was happy to learn she was getting her own book. Happier still was I when I started reading and it was mentioned that Lianne, who is no bigger than a minute, would have logically proportioned beloved in DJ Trevi, who I took to be of average male height. Great start. Lianne wants her independence and to grow as an adult in her career, DJ just wants that false date rape accusation to go away.

Were you able to spot where the ambivalence came in? Are you, like me, AMAZED at the ovaries on Sarina Bowen for taking up a false rape accusation plot after dealing so beautifully with slut-shaming in the previous novels? I mean DJ’s not guilty, right? Sometimes, the guys aren’t guilty, right? WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON? I don’t care if he’s not guilty, or that he’s a nice guy. I don’t care because I spent the ENTIRE book wondering what on earth Bowen’s intention was. Was it to spotlight the relentlessly inept way that accusations of sexual assault are handled on university and college campuses? Was it? Because, to me, it was all about how much some people claim that women make false sexual assault accusations, although the statistics on reported rapes tell a very different story, and this was an entire subplot about that very thing.

I didn’t even mind DJ. He had wrestled with the accusation and was keeping himself sane by clinging to what he knew to be true.  It was the center of his existence and he was persevering until he got his day in college court. Lianne continued to delight. They had great chemistry and made sense as a couple. Too bad I couldn’t pay attention to that part because having a story line in which a young, vulnerable woman makes false accusations to preserve her reputation is EXACTLY THE THING WOMEN ARE OFTEN ACCUSED OF and we don’t really need a book reinforcing that notion, least of all in a genre written almost exclusively by and for women. All those poor helpless guys who just thought they were getting their rocks off and then some witch turned around and accused him of a horrible crime because she was embarrassed. Why, Sarina Bowen, why?

Sarina Bowen’s catalogue can be found here. Bowen has also co-written two very enjoyable and steamy M/M romances with Elle Kennedy called Him and Us. Links to my other reviews can be found on my complete reading list of books sorted by author or Author Commentary & The Tallies Shameful.

The Silver Locket by Margaret James

book review October 19, 2015 Leave a comment

Young, rich, and pretty Rose Courteney lives with her stifling family in rural England. When it becomes clear that her path is to marry to please her parents, she takes her fate into her own hands. Just 18, she lies about her age to volunteer as a military nurse in London at the outset of World War I. Gaining experience and skill, she is thrilled to be sent to France to work in field hospitals. Despite this, she is never quite able to fully escape her family politics or their cloying expectations.

Alex Denham has been interested in Rose for a long time, they’ve known each other forever, but the circumstances surrounding his birth (he’s a bastard who was accepted and loved by his mother’s cuckolded husband) render him socially unacceptable. Part of the regular army, at the outset of the war he is shipped to France to slog through years of battle, wounds, recovery, and returning to the front.

The Silver Locket was a change of romance pace for me. Rose and Alex’s coming together took a long time and they spent months at a time apart as they each play their rolls in the war. The novel is more her story than his and details of the circumstances in which the nurses worked were really interesting to me and an area of war history about which I was happy to learn. James also realistically portrays the overall vulnerability and the limitations placed on women at the time – even those serving their country. Further, it’s harrowing watching the timeline crawl along as the four years of the war slowly pass, or realising with horror that the new battlefront means that a bloodbath is coming.

Neither Rose, nor Alex come through the war unscathed and it strips everything away from them but their essentials. The societal judgments and accusation, especially from those on the home-front, seem foolish and provincial considering what they have endured. The Silver Locket was only the first in the Charton Minster series which has five books about successive generations. I don’t plan on reading more from the series, as I like a little more romance in my genre fiction, but as a historical novel with a romance it may appeal to you.

Links to my other reviews can be found on my complete reading list of books sorted by author or Author Commentary & The Tallies Shameful.

The Pennyroyal Green Series: The Legend of Lyon Redmond by Julie Anne Long

book review October 19, 2015 Leave a comment

Having read Julie Anne Long’s eleven book Regency romance Pennyroyal Green series, I am not really in a position to judge how this novel reads as a standalone, but as a long-awaited end to the series, I have but two syllables: BRAVO! Somehow The Legend of Lyon Redmond manages to be both epic in the way required of its buildup and personal in its sweet and believable love story. What’s more, Long successfully tied up every single loose end I could think of from the preceding books. I can’t imagine the planning and plotting involved.

As the two big fish in the small pond of Pennyroyal Green, Sussex, the Redmond and Eversea families are centuries-long rivals for fame and fortune.  They also share a legend that once in every generation, there will be a pair of star-crossed lovers in their rival folds. In the current generation, it is eldest son Lyon Redmond and eldest daughter Olivia Eversea. Like Romeo and Juliet, they spy each other across a crowded room and are instantly, overwhelmingly drawn to each other. Unlike Romeo and Juliet, they do not die owing to a Big Misunderstanding; however, when their secret relationship is discovered it ends with Lyon disappearing for five years. Nothing is known of his whereabouts or what on earth Olivia did to make him leave, so this thread of the missing son and the self-contained, possibly pining woman has woven through the first 10 books. Olivia and Lyon have had character development over the series, so when Olivia decided to moved on and take a suitor, readers knew their end was in sight.

The Legend of Lyon Redmond starts with Olivia preparing for her wedding to an incredibly patient man, Lord Landsdowne, and then flashes back and forth to her relationship with Lyon and the eventual final straw that drove him away.  I loved it. The juxtaposition of who they were then and are now was a great display of character development, particularly hers. Lyon may have gained a reputation as a mystery man, and possible pirate, but Olivia has been living under the weight of her role as a jilted woman, and consequently a matrimonial prize, for years and she has been worn down by it.

Long is always a funny, clever writer, but she sometimes leans towards the twee. That was not the case with The Legend of Lyon Redmond. What I found instead was that she seemed to be giving the historical romance genre and its tropes a big, enthusiastic kiss. I greeted so many of the events with a delighted “of course!” as Long used many standard romance turns, but the joy was in recognizing and embracing them while they were happening. They ALL work because the reader is in on the joke (such sounds of glee, I made), knows what is going on, and because the emotional connection between Lyon and Olivia is written so sincerely and is so completely understandable. Thank you, Julie Anne Long. The Legend of Lyon Redmond  was a long hoped-for gift wrapped with a beautiful bow.

A complete summary of Julie Anne Long’s catalogue, with recommendations and a ranked order of the Pennyroyal Green series, can be found here.

Links to my other reviews can be found on my complete reading list of books sorted by author or Author Commentary & The Tallies Shameful.