It’s official, I took a romance out of the library that I have already read and (clearly) forgotten.
Category Archives: book review
An Introduction to Pleasure: Mistress Matchmaker by Jess Michaels
Given a title like An Introduction to Pleasure: Mistress Matchmaker, you should not be surprised to learn that Jess Michaels’ book falls into the “romantica” historical romance category which means it’s reasonably tame erotica with a love story thrown in to keep things on the straight and narrow. It was free for Kindle, I read it quickly, and I wasn’t going to review it, but the heroine’s name beckoned:
LYSANDRA
Were I the kind of person to make egregious use of multiple exclamation points, that name would warrant just such a display. What’s more, I kept misreading “Lysandra” as “Lysistrata” thus adding piquancy my romantica experience. As for the hero, I track the men’s names on The (Shameful) Tally and I’d like to show you something:
Simon – 7: I’ve updated the totals many times. Simon always wins.
Michael – 5: Meh.; Alex/Alexander – 5: Seems fair.
Robert – 5: Seriously? And not a Bob or a Rob in the bunch.
Charles – 4: Including a rather charming Charlie.
Colin – 4: Tessa Dare has the best one, just ask Malin.
Harry – 4: Plus 2 Henries.
Sebastian – 4: Sebastian is the quintessential rake name.
William – 4: Will never Bill.
Gareth/Ian – 3, Jackson – 3: Yet I could not name one of the books off the top of my head.
Julian – 3: I prefer this spelling, Lucien – 3: THREE!
Marcus – 3: I would have thought there would be more.
Also: Gideon, Griffin, Jonas, Rafe, Tristan, Vere – 2; plus, a Cyrus, a Wulfric, and a SMITE!
Why did I bring this up? Because, somehow, this is the first ANDREW and I find that interesting. Mind you, his brother calls him “Drew” because “Andy” isn’t going to cut it on the Testosterone and a Y Chromosome Registry of Manly Names.
Andrew is Viscount Callis (not to worry though, he isn’t) whose beloved wife died three years ago and he is still grieving. Lysandra Keates is an impoverished lady with an ailing mother, abusive moustache-twirling relatives, and no reference to help her find work in household service. As a last resort, she approaches Vivien, a former courtesan, for help being matched with a “Protector”. Lysandra is wholly inexperienced (how quickly things change), so Vivien chooses Andrew because while he is not in the market for a mistress, she feels Lysandra can help him to, quite literally, come out of mourning.
It is lust at first sight.
Pointless time constraints being common in romance, their relationship duration is set for one month during which Andrew will act as Protector and Lysandra will learn the ways of Mistressin’. The woman used as payment of debt/or turning to a “life of sin” out of desperation is, for better or worse, a standard romance trope, and I should make it clear that the woman is always a willing sexual participant, and that her sojourn in the Land of Euphemistic Prostitution is usually brief. What sets romantica apart from a standard romance is the reversal of the First Comes Affection Then Comes Consummation structure, and focusing on the sexual elements over the emotional bonding elements, or by replacing them therewith as was the case here.
As expected, although it is neither particularly romantic, nor especially erotic, An Introduction to Pleasure: Mistress Matchmaker does have more than the average amount of detail and level of creativity in the love scenes. Jess Michaels gets a gold star on her romantica report card for putting a check in each activity box. She doesn’t get one for the sequencing of the sex scenes/love story though, and there are a lot of authors who make similar mistakes. In this case it’s romantica, but even in standard issue historical romance, the writers sometimes fumble in terms of timing. If one is following a checklist, and this story reads like one is, shouldn’t one put a little thought into progression as well? On the Lisa Kleypas Suddenly You scale of one to six raspberries, with six being a sequencing misstep on par with the scale’s namesake, “He’s doing that NOW?!” and one being a Georgette Heyer novel, I would give An Introduction to Pleasure four raspberries. I’d say the plot organization had a negative effect on the reading experience, but since I had profoundly low expectations that really wasn’t possible and it resulted in eye-rolling more than a let down. Other than that, the writing was perfectly serviceable, if unromantic(a), which is likely not the enthusiastic endorsement the writer was looking for.
Spindle Cove Series: Any Duchess Will Do by Tessa Dare
Desperate for grandchildren and a Dower House, Her Grace the Duchess of Halford has gone to the trouble of drugging her son, Griffin York, His Grace the Duke of Halford, and bringing him to Spindle Cove. Familiar to Tessa Dare readers as the setting of her current series, it’s a convenient location for duchess hunting, rife with eligible young ladies who don’t fit into Society for one reason or another. Her Grace insists that her son pick somebody, ANYBODY, and she will mold a Duchess out of the woman. Griff, vexed and still half-lit, picks the barmaid, Pauline Simms, to irk his mother, and because the little voice inside him whispers, “Her. I’ll take her.” Pauline is an astute, purposeful, and engaging woman with a challenging home life. Griff offers her an obscene amount of money to humour his mother and fail spectacularly at “duchess training”.
I’ve written before about the two basic heroes in historical romance novels: The Rake and The Protector. This may be the first novel I’ve ever read in which a character readers met as a Rake in an earlier story is reintroduced later in the midst of transforming himself into a Protector. When Tessa Dare’s readers first met Griff in A Week to Be Wicked, he was a dissipated, dissolute, hedonistic sybarite. He fit a lot into a couple of pages. His Grace wasn’t exactly hero material, but that was Dare’s challenge. You have to bring them low to build them up. Griff had been brought very low indeed before the story began and, I have to say, I don’t think I’ve seen an unapologetic rake so completely redeemed since Sebastian St. Vincent took a bullet for Evie Jenner in The Devil in Winter.
Any Duchess Will Do is a very good historical romance: clever, sweet, sexy, and, yes, romantic. Tessa Dare’s books are always a great deal of fun and often more than slightly implausible. My review of her recent novella, Beauty and the Blacksmith, included my thoughts on the willing suspension of disbelief in romance in general and with this writer in particular. Dare pulls the story off much more successfully in this case because, frankly, the hero is a Duke and rich as Croesus, and because Dare takes a romance trope and gives it enough of a twist to make it sufficiently crediblesque to maintain the illusion. For readers of the series, she has some savvy reincorporation, which was absolutely necessary to keep the willing suspension of disbelief going, although she was less successful in bringing back her most popular characters from A Week to Be Wicked and That Other Book I Didn’t Like as Much.
Reviewer’s Note: I sincerely hope that someone somewhere in the romance sub-culture is making a list of all the things Dare’s heroes compare their telltale masculine firmness to. She has a particular gift for wry metaphor in this area.
A complete summary of Tessa Dare’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 which includes the aforementioned observations.
The Immortals After Dark Series: The Warlord Wants Forever by Kresley Cole
If you whisper the title, it sounds even better.
Just when I thought my preferred reading material couldn’t possibly be more silly, my brain pointed out, “You’ve never really given paranormal romance a shot”. Kresley Cole is a very big name in the genre. She has a huge following. She has dozens of books. She has copious high ratings on Amazon. I have a Kindle. I have 99 cents. The Warlord Wants Forever was worth each and every one of them because Nikolai Wroth is a vampire and Myst the Coveted is, I am not making this up, a Valkyrie. They meet cute.
A prequel to Cole’s Immortals After Dark series, The Warlord Wants Forever is set in an unseen world populated by illusory creatures familiar from mythology and Things That Go Bump in the Night. There may also be shape-shifters. I’m not sure. Until last night, my main romance concern was historically-accurate frocks and then suddenly it was all fangs, blood, and violently intense love scenes that I’ve decided to christen “THUNDER SEX™”. There is some sort of internecine war between the Myth/Bump factions and Nikolai the hot vampire warlord gets “blooded” (imprinted) by the tempestuous Valkyrie, Myst the Coveted. It’s a mating system requiring, to put it delicately, initial release exclusivity, so when Myst escapes Nikolai before the THUNDER SEX™ consummation devoutly to be wished, he must chase his Valkyrie down to relieve his eternal blue balls. It takes him five years. Then he has to convince her to shack up with him, a lesser immortal being. There is a magical waist chain involved.
The novella was fun and the first time I’ve heard of a story that did involve a Valkyrie and didn’t involve Richard Wagner. The THUNDER SEX™ was hot and plentiful, if a trifle “red in tooth and claw” for my tastes. There is clearly a huge audience for paranormal romance and I could go on about what tastes or appetites this kind of fiction appeals to, but I think it all comes down, almost literally because of the vampires, to à chacun son goût. If I ever have qualms about the nature of The (Shameful) Tally’s contents, I now know it could be worse, if not quite so deliciously ridiculous.
After reading The Warlord Wants Forever, I tried another work from Cole’s Immortals After Dark series, Lothaire, about an ancient vampire finding love with a blue-collar mortal (which is apparently totally declassé and galling). It was even redder in tooth and claw than The Warlord Wants Forever and included a THUNDER SEX™ scene which can be imagined as biting a sausage longways for a protracted period of time. Sex? Sure. Blood. Useful. Sex and blood? I’m out thus ended my paranormal romance experiment.
… or I was until being given more Kresley Cole books by Malin and Alexis. I’M NOT MADE OF STONE! As a result, I have reviewed the following linked books from the series as well A Hunger Like No Other; No Rest for the Wicked; Wicked Deeds on a Winter’s Night; Dark Needs at Night’s Edge; Dark Desires After Dusk; Kiss of a Demon King; Deep Kiss of Winter; Pleasure of a Dark Prince; Demon from the Dark; Dreams of a Dark Warrior; Lothaire; MacRieve; Shadow’s Claim.
Indigo, Night Hawk, & Always and Forever by Beverly Jenkins
New author? NEW AUTHOR!
How did I find a new writer in amongst all the dross? I clicked “African-American” on the Amazon historical romance sidebar and abandoned Victorian England for nineteenth century North America. HELLO, BEVERLY JENKINS! She’s a great writer and justifiably highly rated on Amazon and Goodreads. I read three of her books in four days and I’ll get to the other two, but first I want to talk about Indigo, her highest-rated book. It is really good. Definitely a “recommend” and possibly a classic.
Northern Michigan, 1859. Born a slave and now a free woman, Hester Wyatt is a “conductor” on the Underground Railroad. As the book begins, she and her fellow conductors are helping a family that has just arrived from the South. The family will move on quickly to Canada, barely stopping to rest and replenish themselves, but their guide was seriously injured during the flight. Severely beaten, the man, known as “the Black Daniel”, cannot possibly be moved. He remains in a secret room in Hester’s basement to be cared for, even as he suspects that someone in Hester’s circle has betrayed him, and more importantly, their work.
Hester nurses the Black Daniel, Galen Vachon, back to health. Initially very difficult to deal with, he relaxes as he heals and they form a tenuous bond before he returns to his work. They each try to forget the other, but when Galen returns in the spring, it is with very serious intentions towards Hester. Objecting to the differences in their stations, Hester holds out against his charm offensive for as long as she can, but ultimately surrenders. Because of the setting, their happily ever after is vulnerable and the reader knows it will be challenged as the American Civil War begins.
Almost any other historical romance written in 1998 would feel dated. Indigo does not (mostly) and I think that is owed to both Jenkins skill as a writer and the seamless way she weaves genuine historical detail into the story. Every once in a while, there is a history lesson/succinct summary of what the reader needs to know about the political and cultural climate at the time. The fraught situation creates a sense of jeopardy that no other romance has ever possessed for me. Normally, I view the “historical” part of the romance as something that creates narrative distance: It’s another world and the clothing is pretty. Indigo is a love story in which the historical context is truly essential. The characters are not real, but the bravery and boldness required in their situation calls out to all of the people who fought against the injustice of a repugnant society.
Night Hawk (also a recommend) and Always and Forever reviews after the jump…
Night Hawk is set in Kansas and Wyoming in the 1870s. The Civil War is over and The Reconstruction is still in force. Jim Crow has not yet reared its ugly head, but endemic racism is always an issue.
Indigo’s Hester was dignified and humble, Night Hawk’s Maggie is a force of nature, bloodied but unbowed. After losing her beloved parents, Maggie has managed to scrape by, occasionally finding sanctuary, but often falling prey to unscrupulous people, and also to her own temper. Her latest mess is the accidental death of her boss while she was fighting off his sexual assault. She is of mixed race and poor which is enough to condemn her in the eyes of the dead man’s father and the community. The local lawman attempts to transport her to another town to await her reprieve in peace, but things go horribly awry and she is passed off to a US Marshall, Ian Vance, “The Preacher”. The book is largely a road trip undertaken by the two as Maggie tries to escape and Vance keeps trying, unsuccessfully, to find another person to deliver Maggie to for safekeeping so he can go home to his ranch.
Night Hawk was the first Beverly Jenkins books that I read. It’s clever and well-paced, not to mention laugh out loud funny. One thing I particularly enjoyed about all three of these books is that the couples married a. after much persistence from a scrumptious man who knows a good thing when he sees it and b. in the middle of the story, so that the balance of the book takes on a “you and me against the world” tone. If romance novels are about finding the right partner, it makes sense for that partnership to be used and tested. All men in romance novels are delicious: gorgeous, strong, and sometimes heroic, but in these books they are truly heroes, not just for plotting purposes, but in the context of their times. For the equally heroic women, Jenkins acknowledges something that I often think of with stories set in the past. In our world, beauty can be a gift and a ticket to a better life. For women living in a time when women, especially those of colour, had no power, beauty could be a liability. It certainly was for Maggie.
Always and Forever (SPOILERS)
It’s 1884 and the Civil War is long over, but the dismantling of the Reconstruction and the insidious expansion of Jim Crow laws has created an exodus of African-Americans to the plains and the West. Grace Atwood is contacted by her cousin and told that the men in his community in Kansas need wives. Grace, who owns and runs a bank in Chicago, has just been left at the altar and takes up the project to distract herself. She decides that despite the potential ease of train travel, the risk for mistreatment (being forced to ride in the livestock cars or summarily dumped beside the tracks) at the hands of Jim Crow means a wagon train is the most logical choice. She finds 35 women to join her and sets up the trip, but she needs a wagon master…
Enter Jackson Blake. A former (Jim Crow again) deputy US Marshall, he wants to get back to Texas to clear his name and to lay his ghosts to rest. He hires on with Grace as a way to get there. The book makes it clear that home/Texas is not only not a safe place for him to be, it is not a safe place for ANYONE of colour to be. It is a time of devastating violence and he should not be going back. Jackson’s internal battle between his need to make things right and common sense is one of the central conflicts in the story.
Despite Indigo’s pre-Civil War setting, Always and Forever was actually the most graphic and disturbing in terms of giving witness to the burden and potential horror for people of colour at the time. Indigo reports the experiences of many people, Always and Forever shows us: The hero is actually drawn (as in “hanged, drawn and quartered”) in preparation for lynching what is left of him. It was heartbreaking and extremely difficult to read.
I found the preparation for the wagon train fascinating. Not just organization and purchase of supplies, but the actual training, practice and extensive coordination the women undertake to get ready. That said, the plotting of this book was actually the weakest of the three. Grace and Jackson consummate their relationship and he decides that it was so amazing she must have been impregnated and therefore they must absolutely, positively get married rightright away. This results in a little more Come here! Go away! than was necessary.
Beverly Jenkins is a very good writer and I am so pleased to have discovered her. Despite the realities of the characters lives, I would not describe the books as dark, but rather as possessing a verisimilitude uncommon in my romance reading experience. There are trauma survivors and victims strewn throughout the genre. In these three novels, the difference is that the characters are at risk of being victimized again. The history lesson interjections are interesting even when they slow things down a bit, and I loved the feeling that Jenkins just really wanted you to know more about the remarkable real people living and working at the time. To her back catalogue!
The Lost Lords of Pembroke Series: Lord of Wicked Intentions by Lorraine Heath
Lord of Wicked Intentions, now that is a proper title for a historical romance novel!
Lorraine Heath is on my romance B list. B- really, but this was the best book of hers I’ve read so far. It’s the third and last in her Lost Lords of Pembroke trilogy and so much better than the boring and annoying preceding novel, Lord of Temptation, and the overwrought first novel, She Tempts the Duke. You’ll note that despite the B- factor, I have indeed read all three books, but I only paid for one of them and I regretted it.
Following the romance series convention of the toughest nut getting his story last, Lord Rafe is the youngest of the three Easton brothers and the most damaged. Rafe, Tristan, and Sebastian (every romance writer has a Sebastian, eventually) fled for their lives from their murderous uncle. The 15-year-old twins went to the military, Sebastian the army, Tristan the navy, and they left their 10-year-old brother Rafe at a work house terrified and alone. Fifteen years later, he has clawed his way out of poverty through whatever means necessary and available to him, and is aged beyond his years by experience. Rafe, like so many self-made men in romance, runs a gambling establishment. He has wealth beyond the dreams of avarice, a kind heart he does his best to conceal, and some serious physical contact issues. He’s attractive and damaged in the way that is appealing in romance novels and RUN, RUN, RUN AS FAST AS YOU CAN! in real life.
The daughter of an Earl and his mistress, Evelyn Chambers has grown up very sheltered. Taken in by her father and raised in his home after the death of her mother, she is left vulnerable to the whims of her (legitimate) brother when their father passes away. After promising “she shall have all she deserves,”, her brother promptly sets up an auction of his sister’s innocence to pay off his gambling debts to Rafe. Disgusted by what he sees, Rafe forgives the debt and brings Evelyn home for himself. He’s not a good enough man to decide not to make her his mistress, but he is kind, they fall in love in the process, and Rafe exacts some rather lovely revenge on Evelyn’s feckless brother.
Evelyn is the strongest characterization in the book and a great heroine. Heath manages to make her naive and innocent, but not a fool. It’s quite a tightrope walk and Heath absolutely succeeds with it. Caught off guard by the reality of her circumstances and its implications about her father, Evelyn rises to the occasion with a calm dignity and believable self-possession, while still being appropriately hurt and let down by the revelations. Evelyn matures and takes on responsibility for herself and her future in tandem with Rafe’s unburdening and the relinquishing of his demons.
Lord of Wicked Intentions was a compelling, romantic, and entertaining read. Romance readers buy a lot of books, but we don’t keep very many. There is both an assumed disposability and a sought after re-readability in the genre. There are books I have read many times (there’s that shame spiral I’ve been looking for) and while Lorraine Heath wrote a very enjoyable book, it doesn’t inspire revisiting. It was a great distraction, but not a keeper. Just the same, thank you to Malin for giving it to me when a distraction was exactly what I needed.
If you’re interested, the ultimate “hero from the gutter” historical romance is Dreaming of You by Lisa Kleypas. Derek Craven is a tortured hero masterpiece and a magnificently rakish character. Lisa Kleypas also has the ultimate Sebastian in another classic, The Devil in Winter, as Rachi3879 recently discovered.
Also by Lorraine Heath:
Deck the Halls with Love – from this series
As an Earl Desires
The Scoundrels of St. James Series:
In Bed with the Devil
Between the Devil and Desire
Surrender to the Devil
Midnight Pleasures with a Scoundrel
The Last Wicked Scoundrel
London’s Greatest Lovers Series (snort):
Passions of a Wicked Earl
Pleasures of a Notorious Gentleman – bonus tirade in my review!
Waking Up with the Duke
The (Shameful) Tally 2014 and links to my other reviews.
Along Came a Duke/And the Miss Ran Away with the Rake by Elizabeth Boyle
I was given Along Came a Duke plus And the Miss Ran Away with the Rake by the lovely Malin to help occupy me during my ongoing two-sprained-ankles-and-a-broken-foot extravaganza. Elizabeth Boyle is a new historical romance author to both of us and I found her style to be entertaining and light, but ultimately forgettable.
Along Came a Duke
Plot Summary: Preston is a duke. Tabitha is a poor relation much abused by her family. She inherits wealth, but her family tries to control her marriage choice so as to maintain control of the money. They fail.
This was the weaker of the two books. They fell in love very quickly and things went on too long. It was fun though. Fun and amusing.
And the Miss Ran Away with the Rake
Plot Summary: Romeo and Juliet with different names (Henry and Daphne) and a happy ending. Also, by turns an epistolary romance.
As a joke in Along Came a Duke, Preston placed a “wife wanted” advertisement in the newspaper for his sensible, yet wonderfully handsome uncle, Henry. Now Henry has to deal with the repercussions and ends up writing to a woman who took him to task for the ad and who just happens to be a. Tabitha’s best friend and b. a McCoy to Henry’s Hatfield.
There were some lovely moments in this book, in particular a scene at Preston and Tabitha’s engagement ball in which Henry and Daphne fall in love at first sight and without benefit of introduction. Things go awry when the truth comes out. The action then shifts to Preston’s family estate for the celebration of his wedding to Tabitha and to focus on Henry and Daphne’s “I’d like you so much better if you weren’t my sworn enemy” relationship.
It was pleasant. How’s that for damning with faint praise? Very pleasant. I was quite caught up in the story, it was funny and silly, but then it went on too long and …
I jumped ahead to the ending.
Both stories felt too immature in their own way, like books about young adults instead of grown ups. The romance was well-conveyed, but lacked weight and wasn’t successfully frivolous enough to compensate for any shortcomings. Boyle did include enough Regency-esque details to go a little bit further than most in creating a historical mood, and she should receive some sort of award for Least Annoying Play on a Nursery Rhyme in Jejeune Book Titling.
Love with the Proper Husband by Victoria Alexander
And with that the Victoria Alexander historical romance experiment is over. I’d read a novella and a novel and decided to give her one more go with her highest rated book on Amazon: Love with the Proper Husband.
There’s a woman, Gwen, whose sister ran away when she was young and then her parents died, but not at the same time, and she was left penniless and alone, so she went to the United States and worked as a governess there, even though she doesn’t like children, but then a solicitor sent her free passage home because of something with her father’s estate, and she’s not penniless after all and has a house, and she will be financially secure, but she can have even more money if she gets married but she doesn’t want to.
There’s this guy, Marcus, whose dad was friends with Gwen’s dad and he finds out from the same solicitor that there were conditions in his father’s will that no one ever mentioned before and he will lose everything, and so will his mum who he loves dearly, if he doesn’t get married before he is 30, in three months, but he has to marry Gwen and only Gwen or all his wealth and privilege will go away.
The guy asks Gwen to marry him and she says “No!” and he says “Please”, and then Gwen finds out that her long-lost sister is dead and she had three little girls she has to take in cause the only other person available is, as the girls point out, a “pickleface”. So Gwen needs money to raise the plot moppets and agrees to marry the guy and things proceed from there in the standard fashion.
The book was fine. It was pleasant and moved along nicely, it had some funny moments, and was nothing special whatsoever. He was a charming. lovely guy, but Gwen was what is known as TSTL* in the vernacular of the genre and she was so more than once, but still it all turned out fine because it always does in these books that’s the point and it’s the journey not the destination. The End.
TSTL: too stupid to live
Victorian Fashions and Costumes from Harper’s Bazar 1867-1898 edited by Stella Blum
“Jesus Christ, I love a pleat!”
Such are the things I exclaim while looking at books of period costume.
In my consumption of historical romance novels, one of my main areas of interest, other than the banter, is the clothing of the era. My like (Oooh, bustles!) or dislike (Regency, bah!) of the women’s clothing has an impact on my enjoyment of the book. I like to think I know what I’m talking about. I don’t really. I have a rough understanding of the progression of the basic silhouette through the decades of the 19th century, but that’s about it. I have a lot of gaps in my knowledge. Large gaps. More gaps than knowledge, frankly. HOWEVER, the advantage of being a parent at Christmas is the need to fill everyone’s stocking, so Santa brought me three books from my Amazon wish list –
- Victorian Fashions and Costumes from Harper’s Bazar 1867-1898 edited by Stella Blum
- Victorian and Edwardian Fashions from “La Mode Illustree” edited by JoAnne Ollan
- Victorian Fashions: A Pictorial Archive selected and arranged by Carol Belanger Grafton
Those last two are literally picture books and I will therefore not count them toward my tally despite poring over them. The Harper’s Bazar volume is mostly a picture book with chapter introductions by decade explaining changes in fashion/culture and then varying degrees of detailed descriptions of each Harper’s Bazar extracts. The introductions were very interesting and informative. The individual fashion plate descriptions were more challenging and required a lot of vocabulary I lack. My comprehension was basically limited to “so very pretty”, “not pretty”, and “this was before less was more”, but still extremely enjoyable nonetheless and I know I will look at them, and read the summaries, again and again.
Spindle Cove Series: Beauty and the Blacksmith by Tessa Dare
I’m not going to lie: I love the cheesy title. It sets just the right tone.
Tessa Dare is one of five writers on my historical romance autobuy list and she earned her place there owing to sheer entertainment value. There are different ways for these books to be enjoyable, but Dare’s best books are of the “romp” variety. She is such fun! Oh, there will come a time when she will challenge your profound willingness to suspend your disbelief, but it will be (mostly) be worth it.
Dare’s current series is set in the small seaside town of Spindle Cove where young single women go to recuperate from illness, embarrassment, and/or hide from the world. Local resident Mrs. Highwood has three daughters: Charlotte, for whom I hope a story is in the offing; Minerva, a spectacled academic who has recently married a lord (A Week to Be Wicked); and her favourite daughter, the ethereally lovely Diana, on whom Mrs. Highwood has pinned all of her ambitions. It was Diana’s poor health that brought the family to Spindle Cove and while it worked as a restorative, it also left her at a loose end: Now that she is healthy and has a full life to look forward to, Diana has to decide what kind of life she wants.
Before I had even begun reading Beauty and the Blacksmith, my willing suspension of disbelief was being challenged. Diana couldn’t seriously end up with a blacksmith, could she? Is he the younger son of a lord in hiding? Did he watch Diana from the edge of ballrooms and follow her here? I was very curious to find out because of all the tropes of historical romance that I question, the marriage between someone from the gentry and someone “low born” is the one I regard with the most jaundiced pseudo-historical eye. Unless one of them is rich (him, always him), then all bets are off.
All bets are on. Aaron Dawes, while a strapping sweetheart of a man, is really a blacksmith. One who makes jewelry on the side and this could turn into a loftier career for him, but a blacksmith nonetheless. It fits in nicely with cowboy/fireman/fighter pilot on the Pyramid of Manly Professions, but it slaps the face of historical reality. Dare’s characters get away with all sort of suspension of disbelief-y shenanigans, but this was too much for me. The voice in my head kept saying, “But he’s a blacksmith, but he’s a blacksmith, BUT HE’S A BLACKSMITH,” with ever-increasing volume and HTML formatting. What that voice really meant is that something fell flat in making the pairing sufficiently believable. Diana and Aaron have been mooning over each other from a distance for two years, but how exactly did this mutual yen turn into a convention defying love? Dare included discussions of the ramifications of the relationship, but not enough attention was given to the actual falling in love part of the story. Which is not to say I didn’t enjoy the novella, even disregarding the even more patently ridiculous things that happened later because of the “romp” factor, I really did. It just wasn’t quite as fantastic as it could have been.
If you have an e-reader and 99 cents, Dare has a novella called The Scandalous, Dissolute, No-Good Mr. Wright which is charming. Her best novel, so far, is A Week to Be Wicked, and she has one called Any Duchess Will Do (read: The Duke and The Barmaid) coming out at the end of May. I have already “autobought” it.
A complete summary of Tessa Dare’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 which includes the aforementioned observations.
Mrs. Julien Presents 