Category Archives: book review

The American Heiress in London Series: When the Marquess Met His Match by Laura Lee Guhrke

book review January 30, 2014 Leave a comment

I have read one Laura Lee Guhrke historical romance already, Scandal of the Year, and while it had some nice moments, I did not rush out to track down her catalogue. Guhrke does have a book on All About Romance’s Top 100 list, And Then He Kissed Her, that I keep meaning to read, but for now, I’m reviewing the book they happened to have at my library.

When the Marquess Met His Match is the first book in Guhrke’s new “An American Heiress in London” series. The heroine, Lady Belinda Featherstone, came to England with her ambitious parents and a fortune. In short order, she was married, alternately ignored and insulted by her spouse, beggared, and, mercifully, widowed. She has set herself up as a matchmaker for rich American women and English men looking for a generously dowered spouse. Belinda prides herself finding suitable partners for her clients and sincerely tries to ensure their matches will be more successful than hers.

Nicholas, Marquess of Trubridge, is a classic romance rake: handsome, spoiled, and charming. He’s also beset by a difficult father. Cut off without a farthing until he marries according to the Duke’s wishes, he hires Belinda to find him a rich wife who can a. support him and b. tick his father off as much as possible. She is, of course, instantly attracted to him, but leery of his mercenary goals and his seeming resemblance to her twerp of a husband. Belinda agrees to work for Nicholas and he goes to work on her. Thrown constantly together through their efforts, Belinda decides to ignore her attraction and tells Nicholas that he needs to grow the hell up. Nicholas takes the scolding to heart and moves his life in a productive direction. They get married. The end.

The book was perfectly satisfactory, passing the time pleasantly enough, but not particularly involving. Guhrke described their attraction well, but beyond the physical appeal and some biographical details, there wasn’t a lot of time devoted to the falling in love portion of the story. Guhrke does gets my appreciation for not setting her books in the Regency, and for the evocative detail of the costumes, in particular the love scene including the time-consuming and exhaustive removal of a woman’s complete ensemble, buttons, bows, ribbons, hooks, and all.

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go watch The Buccaneers as it has similar themes and is a costume bustlegasm.

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

L’Amour et Chocolat Series: The Chocolate Temptation by Laura Florand

book review January 29, 2014 Leave a comment

Look! I found Laura Florand’s romance mission statement:

FlorandThe Chocolate Temptation is book six in Florand’s Amour et Chocolat series. I reviewed the first four books in a previous effort. I will review the fifth, The Chocolate Heart, when I can get my hands on it at my local library, as it is priced out of my willing-to-pay range*. The conceit of each novel is that an American woman is thrown into close proximity with a French chocolatier/pastry god. They fall in love quickly, get busy, and are engaged in short order. Florand provides consistently enjoyable escapism with romantic locations. The Chocolate Temptation also happens to be particularly steamy.

Patrick Chevalier is the second in a three Michelin star restaurant. Part of his role is to guide and train the patissier team and apprentices. Sarah Lin is working for a tiny stipend and is just 36 days shy of completing her six month internship. She hates Patrick. She hates him for his loose-limbed, charming calm, his seemingly effortless professional perfection, and for the gallant way he treats her which she thinks is just being “French”.  Sarah is incredibly focused and ambitious, but unable to show herself any mercy when she fails to live up to the impossible standards she sets for herself and she sees being met by the more experienced professionals around her. Patrick has been madly in love with Sarah for months and trying to surreptitiously show her without crossing any professional lines. When she tells him, “I hate you,” after a particularly bad day, he takes it as his cue to see if that intense emotion could be hiding passion instead. They are protagonists with major walls around themselves, ones that lead to a great deal of miscommunication as they struggle to come together. Sarah is a mass of insecurities, vulnerable and over-sensitive. Patrick has carefully created the illusion of nonchalance, having learned to hide his feelings after a painful childhood.

After earlier uncertainty, The Chocolate Temptation confirmed for me that Florand is indeed using fairy tale allusions in her books and this one is Cinderella with a twist. I found the denouement rushed and twee, but consistent with the overall romanticism of Florand’s work. Patrick and Sarah were both too closed off to move quickly to an emotionally healthy relationship. Why not give them time to settle in before stampeding towards marriage? The setting is modern, couldn’t they just live together for a while?

I have enjoyed all of the novels in the Amour et Chocolate series. Florand manages to repeat her framing device without quite making the characters repetitious as well. The men all show far more emotional vulnerability than I am accustomed to in romance and it is a welcome change.

A complete summary of Laura Florand’s catalogue, with recommendations, can be found here.

*If Amazon is listening, I will pay $2.99 for almost any well-reviewed romance; up to about $5.99 for a book I know to be a keeper; and full price for any author on my autobuy list, which can be found on my Author Commentary & The Tallies Shameful. I also have a complete reading list of books sorted by author.

 

 

The Importance of Being Wicked & Lord Stillwell’s Excellent Engagements by Victoria Alexander

book review January 28, 2014 Leave a comment

The Importance of Being Wicked is a romantic comedy of manners of the “you are everything I never knew I always wanted” variety. Victoria Alexander’s dialogue is wonderfully droll. I should have loved the book and yet it took me forever to get through. As my romance total climbs, I sometimes think I am losing interest in the genre, but the real issue is that it is taking better stories to claim my attention.

Winfield Elliott, Viscount Stillwell, has been engaged and left at the altar three times. He has retreated to his home to manage his family finances and estates, as one does in a historical romance. When a fire destroys part of his ancestral home, he hires the only firm willing to do the work in the short  timeline he requires, and this brings Miranda Garrett into his life. She is a widow continuing what she claims to be her husband’s work, but is really her own. With the prevarication of a silent partner, she is able to work as an architect and oversee the rebuilding project. Miranda and Winfield (Win) spark and banter and fall in love.

Set in 1887, the subplots show women on the cusp of their first sustained attempt to win rights for themselves as voters and people. Win is conservative and needs to acknowledge that his views are entrenched in tradition rather than rationality. Miranda is trying to escape the people pleasing she was taught and undertook in order to be a “good” wife. They each find in the other their necessary foil and catalyst.

The Importance of Being Wicked is frequently laugh out loud funny. The characters are wry and self-deprecating, but at times it came across as a saucy P.G. Wodehouse novel. There just didn’t seem to really be anything at stake. I know that sounds odd for genre with clearly proscribed expectations, but the story needed a little less aplomb and a little more fire to be truly successful. Just a little more, and  less civilized, smolder, and the novel would have achieved a better balance and had more oomph.

But wait! There’s more… Continue reading →

The Smyth-Smith Quartet: The Sum of All Kisses by Julia Quinn

book review January 23, 2014 Leave a comment

I regret returning The Sum of All Kisses to the library quickly, but I don’t want to buy my own copy. This tells me that while I enjoyed the book, it didn’t make a lasting impression

If you are a historical romance fan, you already know who Julia Quinn is. If you are interested in trying historical romance, her Bridgerton series provides an excellent gateway. I use the words deft and witty every time I review one of her books because they are always apropos and Quinn is almost always a light-hearted, satisfying read. She is guaranteed to make you laugh and offer at least one truly romantic moment.

Quinn’s current Regency series revolves around a family group that puts on an annual concert of consistently awful quality. The Smythe-Smith quartet, as they are called, has an evolving membership and over the course of the novels, members get married off and make good their escape from public humiliation. This time up, it’s Sarah Pleinsworth and family acquaintance Hugh Prentice. He caused a scandal several years ago by dueling with her cousin and Sarah feels the resulting imbroglio ruined her matrimonial opportunities. She hates him. He finds her melodramatic. Forced to spend time together at house parties for their friends’ weddings, no one is surprised when they end up engaged in under three weeks.

Continue reading →

Dangerous Books For Girls: The Bad Reputation of Romance Novels Explained by Maya Rodale

book review January 22, 2014 Leave a comment

As someone who has been reading romance novels virtually non-stop for two years, I have a lot of feelings on the subject. As a successful writer in the genre, Maya Rodale has feelings and actual research on the subject. I purchased her thesis, Dangerous Books for Girls: The Bad Reputation of Romance Novels Explained, because I wanted to understand why this mass market genre is so consistently derided not only by readers, but also seemingly by the book industry as well.  Many people read these books and publishers make a lot of money. Obviously, manifestly, clearly, profit does not equal quality, but why doesn’t it at least equal some respect for the readership?  What is with the titles? What is with the “clinch covers”?

Dangerous Books for Girls: The Bad Reputation of Romance Novels Explained is largely a historical overview, and, I think, a good one, providing context for the origins, specifics, and reputation of these books. A historical perspective seems a good place to start. If American attitudes are still frequently puritanical, why shouldn’t attitudes towards certain kinds of novels be understood through the prism of an earlier century as well? While reading, I kept waiting for an answering “CLANG!” in my brain to help me understand why reading romance is regarded with greater stigma than other genre fiction, including science fiction, spy novels, and murder mysteries. I was seeking vindication. These are the kinds of reactions I get when I people what I like to read:

“It’s pornography for repressed women.”  It’s 2014. If I wanted pornography, I could find pornography.

“I wouldn’t think you were the type.”  I don’t even know what this means. Is it that I have so carefully crafted the illusion of intelligence? I don’t seem pathetic? That is the general implication with statements such as these.

“They’re sexist.” No. Historical romance puts a bonnet on current social mores and uses the setting to create narrative distance and reinforce the elements of escapism. There are cultural limitations placed on the women, but these are obstacles not virtues.

Continue reading →

The Brothers Sinister Series: The Countess Conspiracy by Courtney Milan

book review January 21, 2014 Comments: 2

The Countess Conspiracy is a feminist treatise wrapped in a historical romance. It made me cry. I have read scores romances in the past two years. I have laughed, swooned, scoffed, gasped, cackled, writhed, and sighed, but I have NEVER cried. What’s more, I did not cry over the romance, I cried over the gender politics. Once again, Courtney Milan has upended the tropes of the genre and crafted something tremendously entertaining that rises above the theoretical limitations she works within.

Violet, Countess of Cambury, and her dearest friend, Sebastian Malheur, have been keeping secrets from each other and from the world for many years. As the story opens, Sebastian has decided that he can no longer lie, not about the fact that he loves Violet, nor to continue his scientific work on her behalf. He is tired of secrets and exhausted from the hostility and derision their work is greeted with. Sebastian is a bright, kind, charming man, but while romances frequently come down to the hero, The Countess Conspiracy is not really about him, despite his strong subplot, or even the two of them together. This is Violet’s book. Milan blends the love story with an examination of society’s limitations, the roles we play, the restrictions we create on our own lives, and the prices we pay when we struggle against them.

A splendidly complicated, strong, and wounded character, Violet is closed-off and abnegating, brilliant and driven. She has been told by others for so long who she is that Violet has begun to believe them and, worse, believe that she must be this way to survive. She broke my heart. Her world that tells her very clearly what a woman, a woman of worth, must and must not be. What is considered good, proper, and natural, and what will happen if any woman, even one of privilege, transgresses against these rules. Violet’s story is about the perception of oneself and the fear those rules create, and the strength it takes to defy them.

The story makes its way towards a happy ending. Milan’s writing is clever, well-researched, and diverting as always, her characters well-drawn and visits to old favourites included. In the past, she has taken on poverty, the class system, and even women’s health issues. Not every book is superlative, but when she’s good, she is one of the very best historical romance writers ever. To my mind, Lisa Kleypas is one of the genre’s master craftsmen, but Courtney Milan is an artist. If you want to read a superior, entertaining, and heartfelt romance, read The Countess Conspiracy. Was it entirely realistic? No, but it is still a romance and its escapist vindications need not be only in the relationship sphere. Was it wonderfully romantic? Not quite, but the decline in swoon was made up for by the excellence of the other story elements and the fist pumping I engaged in while reading. Read The Countess Conspiracy, read the Dedication, and read the Author’s Note. It is Milan’s most fully realised work so far and I am saying that with the addendum that I feel she has already written one truly great romance, Unraveled, and one classic, A Kiss for Midwinter.

A complete summary of Courtney Milan’s catalogue, with 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.

 

Abandoned Novel #2 – Maybe This Time by Jennifer Crusie

book review January 20, 2014 Leave a comment

Eleven years ago, Andie Miller and North Archer married in haste and repented at leisure. Divorced for ten years, Andie comes back into his life to return a decade’s worth of uncashed alimony cheques and let North know she is going to remarry. In a panicked stroke of genius, North offers Andie a job looking after two children of whom he is guardian. He is trying to bring them to live with him, but they have experienced a lot of trauma and need help with the transition. North will pay her enough for Andie to start her new marriage free and clear of debt.

Travelling to the out-of-the-way town where the children are living in their family home, Andie learns that the house is haunted by several ghosts. Ghosts. Ghosts that talk and interact with the residents. Not ghosts simulated by the mean housekeeper who would have gotten away with it, too, if not for those meddling kids. Ghosts. No.

But before abandoning this review much as I did Maybe This Time, this hilarious detail warrants mentioning: North’s brother remembers the first time he saw Andie and that she moved like a song was playing in her head. North said the song was “Layla”. Ten years later, the song remains the same, but North tells his brother it is now the “acoustic version”. Jennifer Crusie, you slay me.

Recommended books by Jennifer Crusie: Welcome to Temptation and Bet Me

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

A Breath of Scandal by Elizabeth Essex

book review January 17, 2014 Leave a comment

William (Will) Jellicoe and Antigone Preston meet at a private ball. They recognize each other as kindred spirits and instantly embark on a friendship while falling in love. There is just one little problem…

Antigone’s father has just passed away and she has been precipitously promised in marriage to a man three times her age and fifty times her immorality. Her mother, a panicky, long-game playing schemer, wants the advantageous match for Antigone to help facilitate an even better one for her other daughter, Cassandra.

In the Regency tradition of younger sons, Will Jellicoe is in the Navy, but is currently between engagements with Napoleon’s forces. He doesn’t know that last part yet, but the passing reference to Elba means Will may think he is out, but they are going to pull him back in. For now, he is on forced leave at half-pay and determined to get back to sea as soon as possible. Will meets Antigone when they choose the same library to hide in during a ball. Essex does a great job of portraying the spark between them, going so far as to have them call each other by their surnames as would have been the custom for male friends at the time. If I were an Antigone, I’d want to be called by my last name, too. It’s an endearing detail and indicative of the often droll style of the writing. Essex often repeats how much Will likes “Preston” and enjoys her company. Preston, for her part, thinks he’s great fun as well.

A Breath of Scandal got off to a quick start with banter and adventure, and did not stint on the villainous mustache twisting. Antigone’s fiance is indeed a vile adversary and her mother isn’t far behind. Despite the genre’s obligatory ridiculously compressed timeline, things lost a bit of momentum for me and the promising opening petered out to a fairly standard, if intense, ending. Overall, the writing was clever and I enjoyed the book. I borrowed A Breath of Scandal from my library. It was good enough that if the price were right, say $2.99 or less, I would likely buy more of Essex’s other Reckless Bride books for my Kindle, in particular Almost a Scandal which was the recommendation that had me looking for her work in the first place.

In other news, the hero’s name guaranteed I had the following P.G. Wodehouse Mike and Psmith quote stuck in my head throughout my reading: This…confirms my frequently stated opinion that Comrade Jellicoe is one of Nature’s blitherers.

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

Jacob’s Return by Annette Blair

book review January 14, 2014 Leave a comment

Amish melodrama set in 1880s Pennsylvania and $3.20 I’ll never see again.

Convinced by his beard twirling brother that Rachel, the love of his life, was going to marry him instead, Jacob abandoned his Amish family on the day of his mother’s funeral. He returns with twin children  to rebuild his life and re-enter the insular farming community. His evil brother, Simon, succeeded in his nefarious plan and is married to Jacob’s childhood love and doing his best to break her spirit. Rachel is a barren and heartbroken bundle of perfection. Simon is petty, sanctimonious, and prideful. It’s not very Amish of him, really. I suspect it’s not very Amish for people to have looked away from Rachel’s suffering either. No doubt, many aspects of Jacob’s Return are not very Amish in the way that Regency romances are often not very historical.

There isn’t really a romance in Jacob’s Return. With a love defying distance and time, but not a nasty brother’s illogical machinations, Jacob and Rachel go straight back to being wild for each other while sharing a house and attempting to maintain an honourable distance. In a moment of mutual comfort, about page 40, they consummate their relationship. Using standard romance novel bait-and-switch infertility, Rachel becomes pregnant. With twins. Other things happen as well. A lot of other things. More pregnancies. Christmas. Micro-diaspora. Childbirths. Barn raising. Dynamite. Unappealing facial hair. Printing press purchases. Late pregnancy coitus. German words in italics. Printing press destructions. Death. Life. Boredom. Although, that last one was just me.

After Jacob’s Return, I will not be buying any more Annette Blair books, nor will I buy a book just because I enjoyed the scandalized reviews of offended “Christians” on Amazon, no matter how much I delighted in their shock and discomfort.

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

My Response to Being Mocked for Reading Romance

book review January 10, 2014 Comments: 2

I posted this on Pajiba in response to my opinion being discounted because I read romance novels. Recently, I read a thesis on romance and its reputation which I will review, but for now I stand by this diatribe despite it’s need for augmentation. (Note the laughably low total book count when I wrote it.)

I do, I do read them, and I AM DEEPLY SHAMED, and I CAN’T STOP, and I have looked deep into the romance novel abyss and do you know what I see looking back at me? A tall, beautiful, dark-haired man with unusual eyes, and the body of a Greek God, who is deliciously sarcastic and sometimes autocratic (which I secretly love best of all), and he does things with fierce/rough/ferocious tenderness, and his name is usually Sebastian, and I can’t stop reading about him and all the Simons and Benedicts, and Dukes and Viscounts, who give those poor ignored women sideways glances that make their hearts beat wildly in a way they hope no one will notice as their knees turn to jelly, because then, oh then all of those Sebastians raise their Sardonic Eyebrows of Seduction, smile wryly, and kiss those women senseless, and I am lost because they are so charming and maybe kind of cynical, but they still can’t help themselves because they are besotted, and they keep all those “Annabelles” so safe, and they take care of them and the Sebastians help them find their own strength, and love them, oh, so very much, and I can’t even show enough weakness to buy a pink toothbrush because it’s somehow a sign of feminine frailty which I revile, or take off my armour long enough to let myself be cared for, because I am made of steel and not in a bad way, but I’m always strong, so strong, and the idea of being able to lean on someone and let that feeling steal over me is so appealing, even though I’d probably hate it, so, yes, I’ve been reading romance novels and telling myself that I only choose the good ones (which may actually be fair because I’ve stuck to just 3 authors after careful research), and giving nor asking for any quarter in my self-examination of this ignominious pursuit, and I tell myself it’s a phase and it will pass , but I just get more and more of them and, by the end of this coming weekend, I can guarantee I will have read a total of forty in the last two months, but at least I have the decency to hate myself for it.