Tag Archives: romance review

Paris Nights: Trust Me by Laura Florand

book reviews July 6, 2019 Leave a comment

An American Commando and Parisian pastry chef? Whyever not?

More time spent with some of the world’s finest pastry chefs? Yes, please.

Laura Florand’s frequent theme of learning to be brave in new ways or discovering that you already are? Absolutely!

Trust Me is the third book in Florand’s Paris Nights trilogy, each of which marries up a pastry chef or chocolatier heroine and a covert ops hero, including All for You and Chase Me.  This was the least successful of the three books for me and while I enjoyed the majority of it, some elements of the love story didn’t ring true, or at least were unconvincing to me.

From Amazon: Top Parisian pastry chef Lina Farah is used to fighting for her success. But when a violent attack shatters her security, she needs a new tactic to battle her dragons. Elite operative Jake Adams has never stayed in one place long enough to form a lasting relationship. Lina’s fire and beauty tempt him to give her the hot affair she craves. But her spirit and courage make him long for more. Can he convince a woman seeking forgetfulness to dream of ever after…with him?

I’ve read Trust Me twice now, once when it came out and again now while patiently waiting for author Laura Florand to return from her well-earned kissing book sabbatical. When I started to reread, I recalled that I had found Lina and Jake’s romantic relationship somewhat precipitous, even though that is common in Florand’s books, and was interested to see if that opinion held true. It did. I enjoyed the book for so much of it that I was questioning myself before arriving at an “Oh, ya. I remember now,” conclusion right towards the end there.

Lina, and Chase Me’s heroine Vi, were working in a Michelin starred restaurant kitchen during a horrifying terrorist attack. To make matters worse, if possible, when the members of the kitchen staff took down their attacker, it turned out to be the extremist cousin of Lina’s. Hailed as a French national hero for her quick thinking, Lina nonetheless is also made to feel her otherness as a Muslim woman embroiled in an Islamic extremist attack, so her recovery means not just dealing with the shock of the events but also reclaiming herself and LIFE.

As I said earlier, Florand’s characters generally have instant sparks that morph quickly into deeper feelings. Generally, the pair ends up engaged by the end of the story, but the wedding itself waits for a reasonable and rational period of time. In Trust Me, I didn’t like or buy Florand’s timeline. While Jake is an experienced military professional (who also, no doubt, has trauma of his own), Lina’s entire world imploded when her deranged cousin attacked the restaurant. The story begins very nearly immediately after. While it is admirable and kick ass that Linais defiantly taking control of her life and emotional well-being, the forged-in-fire connection with Jake just feels too soon.  It’s not that the novel lacks Florand’s seemingly small, but swoon-worthy and incredibly intense moments of romance, it packs her usual sweet punch, and it isn’t that I didn’t enjoy the narrative. She just asked that bit too much of my very willing suspension of disbelief.

The irony of my qualms above is that Florand’s The Chocolate Touch is one of my all-time, top five favourite romances. In it, a woman who has recently experienced an extremely traumatic event falls fast and hard for a man with the private personality of a teddy bear and the public persona of a pit bull. So what is the difference here? I guess maybe that the connection between Lina and Jake was not captured in the same way and therefore I found the intensity of their pair bond less believable. Their coupling just felt all too soon.

Laura Florand’s Catalogue gives an overview of her published works of which I recommend many. I ADORE her particular brand of romance.

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

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The Palace of Rogues Series: Lady Derring Takes a Lover by Julie Anne Long

book review, book reviews June 10, 2019 Leave a comment

Huzzah, Julie Anne Long has returned to Regency historical romances. Granted, the cover is displeasing, but the contents are not.

Delilah, Lady Derring is not only recently widowed, she’s also discovered she is virtually penniless, and had the delightful experience of meeting her husband’s mistress, Mrs. Angelique Breedlove, immediately on the heels of the first two shocks. Showing disregard for the notion that they are competitors,  and demonstrating intestinal fortitude and chutzpah, Delilah and Angelique take the jewels they have from the erstwhile Earl Derring and invest them all in the only thing left to them – a derelict townhouse and former brothel called The Palace of Rogues.

Renaming the dilapidated building “The Palace on the Thames” and down to their last farthings, Angelique and Delilah open a boarding house on the London docks. One of her first patrons is Captain Tristan Hardy. He claims to be retired and working in trade, but in reality is working undercover to ferret out a tobacco smuggling ring. He’s not sure whether Delilah and Angelique are involved, but all roads lead to their new business. I cheered Long’s choice of making Captain Hardy fight the Regency version of organized crime. Criminals aren’t dashing or particularly appealing to me and acknowledging their frequent ruthlessness was bonus in my reading experience.

Long brings her trademark wry sizzle to Lady Derring Takes a Lover. The humour is quippy, the writing dry, and the connection between the lead characters carefully built and believable. Long is especially good at portraying even the most jaded hero finding himself in over his head emotionally.

There was nice steam in the build up, in particular Captain Hardy’s realization that while he might be all tough’n’stuff, he rather likes his creature comforts, including the company of a pseudo-family, and especially Delilah. For her part, she is strong arming her way to a new life without ever losing her innate kindness and desire to make a home for everyone around her. She’s a bit naive, but that’s hardly a crime and it’s what helps her succeed. Having spent her life in the roles created for her by other people, her self-discovery leads her to a carefully reckless and droll version of the woman her parents and husband thought they created.

But.

(Did you know there was going to be a “but”? I debated between it and a “however” and decided that “but” conveyed a weaker objection.)

But while the romance is solid, there just isn’t enough of it in Lady Derring Takes a Lover. Always a liability in the first book of a new series, I found the love story took too long getting started and wrapped up rather quickly. It needed more of either conversation and connection in the build up or in the period after they formally get together; however, none of this changes Long’s historical romance status as an autobuy for me, and the tease of the next book piqued my interest and I look forward to reading Angelique’s story Angel in a Devil’s Arms.

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 and Author Commentary & The Tallies Shameful, or on my  streamlined recommendations list.

 

 

La Vie en Roses: A Kiss in Lavender by Laura Florand

book review, book reviews June 8, 2019 Leave a comment

Short Version: I liked Laura Florand’s A Kiss in Lavender, though it felt more serious than other books in the La Vie en Roses series. The love story was heartfelt, the happy ending earned, and it had a substantial, forthright hero and a deeply vulnerable, but assertive heroine with the heart of a lion. I’ve read it twice now and while it’s not as swoony as some Florand, it has a kind of grounded solidity that I appreciate.

Long Version Including Discussion of a Book in a Different Laura Florand Series:

Before going on a well-earned sabbatical, Laura Florand had three book series running concurrently: L’Amour et Chocolat, La Vie en Roses, and Paris Nights. As with any writer, I preferred some books over others, but A Kiss in Lavender is the first Florand in which I felt she managed to resolve character issues from a previous work. Not for the original characters themselves, but for similar ones.

From my review of The Chocolate Heart:

They are two wounded people hiding behind false fronts and suffering from painful miscommunication. Elements that had been successful in the preceding books reached an intensity that left me uncomfortable. Luc is so busy being in control that he becomes almost clinical and Summer is so vulnerable that it feels like she is being used.

In A Kiss in Lavender, Lucien Rosier is visiting his family for the first time after a 15 year self-imposed exile. He joined the French Foreign Legion after learning something that challenged his entire sense of self. Assuming a true nom de guerre, he disappeared and built a new life for himself of which he is justifiably proud.

When Lucien’s Tante Colette hired Elena Lyon to track Lucien and assorted other scattered family members down and bring them into the Rosier fold, there’s a good chance she knew or hoped sparks would fly. Without a functional family of her own, Elena has resolute strength, but a tenderness where relationships are concerned. She has learned the hard way what happens when the adults meant to protect you fail to do so and the lasting impact it can have on your life. The results of all-too-human caregivers are a frequent theme in Florand’s books, and I find that in contemporary romance especially, building a new family is a recurrent motif.

But back to Luc and Summer:  I have recently reread The Chocolate Heart and Shadowed Heart to cope with Florand’s publishing absence. The author seems to both have a soft spot for their broken, loving persistence, and for the characters themselves. She wrote them a book, a novella, and a bonus story. Luc and Summer were genuinely messed up people and neither of them had any business being in a relationship, especially since their personal demons were guaranteed to cause each other maximum stress. In contrast, Elena and Lucien clash, but learn and grow into each other to move forward as a unit which is pretty much the essence of a romance novel.

In A Kiss in Lavender, it’s like Florand has written Lucien and Elena as the psychologically healthier version of Luc and Summer. Lucien, like Luc, is very much in control of himself, but in this case, it’s a quality that nurtures his partner. He is proving his trustworthiness and reliability. When Elena is vulnerable and shuts down, she does so by drawing on inner strength rather than lashing out as Summer does.No longer painfully miscommunicating characters finding moments of bliss between rounds of angst, this alternate story has two people falling in love and persisting, then insisting on working towards shared happiness. None of the four are exactly happy-go-lucky, even in their insistent pair bonds, but at least Lucien and Elena seem like they are united in working towards a stable future.

La Vie en Roses Series:

Continue reading →

La Vie en Roses: A Crown of Bitter Orange by Laura Florand

book review June 5, 2019 Leave a comment

I miss Laura Florand! She’s been taking a well-earned break from a prodigious output of swoon-inducing and charming contemporary romances set in the worlds of pastry, chocolate, and perfumery. Her great gift as a romance writer is in creating the heady intensity of small romantic moments, as well as portraying elements of sexual tension and anticipation. Creating characters, she excels at people who balance each other out, often providing a security or grounding that one of them has lacked.  I’m hoping Florand will return with her final book in the La Vie en Roses series, but I am rereading and reviewing some of her other works in the meantime.

A Crown of Bitter Orange

Tristan Rosier and Malorie Monsard have known each other their whole lives. They both come from old Provencal families devoted to the perfume trade, but while Tristan is grounded by his history, Malorie is torn at by hers.

Living in the same place for centuries means the sins of ones forebearers are sometimes carried by descendants. With scurrilous family members having acted shamefully during World War II and, admittedly, more recently, the marks born by Malorie caused her to leave home immediately upon finishing high school. After the death of her grandmother, she’s back to either finally shutter her family’s landmark company or settle in Grasse permanently.

All of this means nothing to Tristan Rosier. Well, not nothing, he wants to see the Monsard business restored to its former glory, but he doesn’t care about the negative aspects of her family, what he really wants, what he has always wanted, is Malorie. After being seated together to help keep him and his bouncy distractedness in line at school, he was quietly and awkwardly devoted to her for years. Not that she noticed. Malorie liked him well enough, but considered him a bit of a charming pest and was oblivious to anything more because, well, Tristan is lovely to everyone.

Beloved by his protective clan, nurtured in the family trade, and aided by his own hard work, Tristan’s challenges have always been managed. Hard work has brought him incredible success as a “Perfume Nose” for their perfume dynasty. His only major professional setback was when Malorie, in her role as a firm accountant (pun intended) suggested less expensive substitutes for the ingredients in a perfume Tristan created.

With all of that set up in place, the story begins and moves, as Florand often does, very quickly to a romantic alliance full of joy and delightful vignettes with an assortment of family members.  A Crown of Bitter Orange was never less than enjoyable and Tristan continues to be amiable and appealing, as he was in the other series books, but the story never really grabbed me. I liked and understood Malorie, but her relationship with Tristandjust kind of moved along nicely and reached its anticipated and sought out conclusion.

La Vie en Roses Series:
Turning Up the Heat (Daniel/Lea) – prequel novella
A Rose in Winter (Raoul/Allegra) – prequel novella –  Florand can and has done better
The Chocolate Rose (Gabriel/Jolie) – prequel novel I *really* like
Once Upon a Rose (Matt/Layla)  – fun, great light escapism
A Wish Upon Jasmine (Damien/Jess) – not her strongest, it had a lot of promise
A Crown of Bitter Orange (Tristan/Malorie) – not memorable, he’s charming, see above
A Kiss in Lavender (Lucien/Elena) – good, recommended

Laura Florand’s Catalogue gives an overview of her published works — of which I recommend many. I adore her particular brand of romance. Links to my other reviews can be found on my complete reading list of books sorted by author or Author Commentary & The Tallies Shameful.

Practice Perfect Series: Hard Knocks by Ruby Lang

book review, book reviews May 16, 2019 Leave a comment

I feel so on trend! It’s another love story with a concussion plot point as I continue to recover from one.

Acute Reactions was a well-written romance with some comeheregoaway issues in the plotting. It’s looking like a consistent issue with Ruby Lang, but it’s a minor quibble, I really enjoy her dry, funny style, and will be looking for her books. Hard Knocks has less of the vacillation issues and, from what I’ve read of the third book, Clean Breaks, it’s stronger still.

Transplanted Canadian Helen Chang Frobisher is a reasonably newly minted neurologist who has gone into practice with her friends Petra (Acute Reactions) and Sarah (Clean Breaks). When Helen consults on a concussed hockey player from Portland’s sad-sack Oregon Wolves team, she meets Adam Magnus. He’s not the concussed player, he’s at the hospital with his teammate. Helen and Adam are into each other and they share an incendiary one night stand.  She bolts, he’s disappointed, and they move on.

Except that Helen’s visits her family in the Okanagon Valley where her father is sick and declining from Atypical Parkinsons disease. Distressed and aware of the negative impact of repeated head injuries, though she is unable to confirm this is what happened to her dad, she decides to write an editorial suggesting Portland ban hockey for player safety. Adam responds and the two find themselves in public forum discussions about the issue at the same time as Helen is fighting her attraction to him for all she’s worth.

While he’s not fighting the attraction, Adam is dealing with his declining career and what to do next with his life. He’s a really great guy, seemingly perfect at first, but Lang provides excellent background details to let the reader understand how he has gotten where he is. He knows he’s not one of the greats and his hockey playing days are numbered, but he needs to keep his job as he figures out what he’s going to do with the next phase of his life.

Ruby Lang’s writing is really strong when presenting the reality of getting a career/adult life going and the distraction that falling in love can represent. Love, like life, finds a way, but it’s nice to see work being an obstacle to togetherness and emotional availability.

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

London Celebrities Series: The Austen Playbook by Lucy Parker

book reviews May 1, 2019 Leave a comment

YAY! Lucy Parker is back with another wry, gratifying, and witty romance featuring a difficult man and a delightful woman.

Freddy Carlton is theatre royalty, descended from generations of performers and the granddaughter of the playwright of a seminal masterpiece called The Velvet Room. Poised to move into the highest ranks of Serious Acting, she’d rather do work that brings joy to herself and others. We met her as a late teen in Pretty Face and she is now a full adult, though only 23. With her father strong-arming her career from youthful roles towards mature glory, a showdown is coming.

J. Ford-Griffin (Griff) is a theatre historian, critic for one of the serious London papers, and family gatekeeper for a cluster of privileged eccentrics. Acerbic and observant, the reader first meets him as Freddy overhears his incisive and insightful review of her latest stage turn. She can enjoy his wit, even as she is discomfited by his seemingly innate understanding of her ambivalence towards the state of her career. Her exuberance makes him equally uncomfortable, but he gets used to it.

Conveniently, Freddy gets cast in a Jane Austen murder mystery/choose your own adventure play to be performed at the family manor Griff is trying to save from ruin. The live broadcast will provide income for the estate and the weeks of rehearsal mean Freddy and Griff will get lots of chances to find themselves thrown together.  Running alongside this marriage of convenience is a subplot involving a passionate affair between Griff and Freddy’s grandparents. Family secrets and discoveries play a large role in bringing the leads together and complicating the hell out of their relationship to threaten their public and private lives.

Particularly good at both prickly banter and showing the soft underbellies of her characters, Parker provides sparkling acrimony and intimate recognition between Freddy and Griff.  One moment I really enjoyed was Freddy telling Griff not to be so high-handed when speaking to her. Arch verbal repartee is all well and good, but  a real relationship requires sincere interaction.

The live televised theatre production and family histories provide a ready supply of potential sturm and drang  throughout The Austen Playbook. As Freddy and Griff become a couple, they move themselves into the eye of the storm and an entertaining relationship.  I sometimes find it hard to believe that a man this high in the instep could be quite so demonstrative in his affections, but that’s the wish fulfillment part of the genre.

London Celebrities Series:
Act Like It – SO GOOD!
Pretty Face – EVEN BETTER!
Making Up – Good, I’ll get to a review, I have re-read it
The Austen Playbook – see above

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

Practice Perfect Series: Acute Reactions by Ruby Lang

book review, book reviews April 28, 2019 Leave a comment

Do you have any idea how long it’s been since I’ve read a contemporary romance that featured neither so-called new adults, nor athletes?

There is so much to like in Ruby Lang’s Acute Reactions that I could get past what I thought needed work; however, I would like some reassurance that the same structural problems  aren’t found in all of her books.

Instead of starting out with an established medical group, allergist Petra Lale has opened her own practice right after completing her training. Ian Zamora co-owns a successful restaurant and needs allergy shots to cope with his girlfriend’s cat. Things go sideways for him when he visits her practice and is instantly captivated by Petra. She has the same reaction, but her Hippocratic oath provides a road block.

Establishing their careers, Acute Reactions’ leads are driven people. It is their main priority and Lang reflects just what that means for their home lives and romantic entanglements. Ian and Petra are likable, upright, engaging characters in their early thirties. Their motivations and backstories are clear and, while not belaboured, do well to explain their personalities and reactions. Petra should be horrified and distracted by becoming involved with a patient. Ian’s counterbalance is that, as a product of discord, he tries to resolve issues for those around him, acting as peacekeeper.  Their stumbling blocks are significant and believable, but being young and healthy,  love, like life, finds a way.

Lang’s writing is charming and she creates excellent smolder. My challenge with Acute Reactions was the plotting issue of Petra’s repeated comeheregoaway response to her relationship. New couples can go through ups and downs, but she had a retractable leash tied to Ian. He’s smitten, she’s wary, they collide, she runs away. It got old. I shouldn’t be thinking, “maybe these two should just move on”,  while reading a romance; in fact the conceit was repeated enough times, that I was reluctant to start on the next two books in the series Hard Knocks and Clean Breaks . I did because I bought the Practice Perfect trilogy as a set, but I’m giving each of them some side-eye.

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

Brooklyn Bruisers Series: Brooklynaire by Sarina Bowen

book review April 9, 2019 Leave a comment

Brooklynaire was my first DNF of 2019. The story angered me enough that I  both jumped ahead and checked with a friend to see if its glaring blind spot was addressed. It wasn’t and I gave up.

Long Version: Sarina Bowen is a strong romance writer whose work can be uneven and, more importantly, problematic, but I keep reading her books. The Ivy Years series is truly excellent and includes a classic novella, Blonde Date; however, the last novel (The Fifteenth Minute) is, at best, tone-deaf. Co-written with Elle Kennedy, Bowen’s Wags series has similar issues and while I enjoyed Good Boy, in spite of questionable elements, I did not like Stay owing to some love scene issues and the way they blatantly excuse sexual harassment.

In short, Sarina Bowen is a good example of “YMMV’. But none of her usual items were my challenge with Brooklynaire. In it, a workplace romance between a billionaire boss and his operations manager takes off after years of longing and covertly enjoying each other’s scents. I don’t like the boss/employee trope, but I do like a marriage of convenience plot, so I overlooked it and started reading.

Nate is a self-made billionaire who, from a tech startup, has built an empire which now includes a Brooklyn hockey franchise.  Seven years ago, he hired Rebecca to run his small, but rapidly growing office and her role has evolved with the company. Secretly in love with each other, when Rebecca gets a concussion, she and Nate finally start to connect.

Ensuring she gets the care she requires, Nate supports and sends gifts to Rebecca as she recovers in the apartment she shares with her sister, her sister’s boyfriend, and their new baby. Realizing Rebecca needs calm, Nate asks her to come and stay at his giant house. It is a generous and logical progression of the marriage of convenience set up: She moves in, their long simmering interest boils over into a steamy encounter, love blooms, tra la la, the end,  were it not for this flashback to when Rebecca is first hired:

“Salary,” Stew mutters, and Nate makes a reply. Stew nods. “What about stock options?”

Nate’s nose wrinkles “Nah, not for the clerical staff.”

Whatever Rebecca thinks. She isn’t really sure what stock options are, but what she needs right now is a real paycheck, anyway.

Reading Note: Eff you, this better get fixed.

Reviewer’s Note: It doesn’t.

Rebecca has worked for Nate for seven years from a tiny startup to a multi-billion dollar corporation. He has enough money to buy a hockey franchise and he has never, EVER, given Rebecca any stock options or any kind of remuneration appropriately recognizing her contributions. What a dick!  She should be a millionaire. At the very least, she should be able to afford a larger apartment and not worry about her medical bills. This bullshit story decision was made to perpetuate the uneven power dynamic between the two leads. Why couldn’t they be more equal? Rebecca could still come and stay with Nate. Billionaire heroes aren’t my favourite to begin with and sending flowers is nice, but insanely successful bosses who don’t reward the staff that has been intrinsic to their success take a sledge-hammer to my willing suspension of disbelief. Nate was unredeemable, so I quit.

Reviewer’s Fun Fact: I read this book about a woman with a concussion while I had one myself which was pretty challenging. Rebecca’s was much milder than mine and while I started this review at 9 weeks in, I am finishing it at 16 weeks  since screen work is my biggest challenge; thus, even if Brooklynaire is lousy, at least it helped me track my progress.

Sarina Bowen’s Catalog

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

Even with a wink to romance standards, this cover is ridiculous:

The Holidays Series: The Stocking Was Hung, Cupid Has a Heart-On, The Firework Exploded, & The Bunny is Coming by Tara Sivec

book review March 19, 2018 Leave a comment

Tara Sivec caught my eye on a romance newsletter with a book called Zed Had to Die. I started with a sample and got sucked into buying the entirety of The Stocking Was Hung because I am a sucker for fabulously cheesy titles* and I had no idea what the writing would sink to. Sivec’s bailiwick looks to be romps and I’ll just say that I’m glad I got the rest of the books in the series on loan from Amazon Unlimited (or whatever it’s called). There were sufficient cheap laughs and just enough sincere romance to hold my attention for the first two books before I resorted to sliding through the last two.

The Holiday Series Set Up: A thirty-three year old woman, Noel (Noelle) Holiday, has run screaming from her boyfriend’s pre-Christmas proposal, lost her job, and is en route to Ohio for the holidays. Having to face her loving, intrusive, and judge-y family in her current state of disaster is something she dreads. Sitting in an airport bar feeling sorry for herself, she spills her beer on the man sitting next to her and discovers he is hot with a hotness that is hot and, since he, Sam Stocking, feels the same way about her, he agrees to pretend to be her boyfriend for Christmas. A marriage of convenience ensues which is, I admit, my favourite romance trope. They end up engaged by the end of book one, The Stocking Was Hung, officially engaged at the end of book two, Cupid Has a Heart-On, get married in book three, The Firework Exploded, and you can guess what happens with the fertility symbol in book four, The Bunny is Coming.

The four books progress from the marriage of convenience in The Stocking Was Hung through Big Misunderstandings in the last three books. Noel’s family is much more than promised in the set up and the forced frivolity gets ramped up and progressively more ridiculous. There’s a lot of literal and metaphorical flouncing and door slamming. When I started the series, I told myself to lean in to the farce. It’s not like the books took themselves seriously, so it wasn’t my job to either, but there was just so much nonsense; such as,

  1. Noel’s deranged, over sexed transgender aunt who immediately grabs the junk and then continues to sexually harasses every man she meets, offers everyone drugs, or provides unsolicited sex advice.
  2. Noel’s judgemental and over sexed mother who is either criticizing Noel or providing unsolicited bedroom antic advice and details about her own love life.
  3. Noel’s overprotective father who takes that old chestnut about not buying the cow when you can get the milk for free and turns it into a litany of dairy-based “keep your hands off my daughter” threats.
  4. Noel’s parents obsession with their daughter’s sex life and their own with a bizarre level of detail. It’s not romp-y, it’s creepy.
  5. Sam’s dudebro sexism and gay paranoia.
  6. Noel’s dudebro sexism and generally high-strung nature.

There was too much over-reaction from protagonists in their mid-thirties and her obnoxious family in order to drive the plot and it descended into ridiculousness that became painful. Or I’m a humourless cow. One of the two. Given the titles, I may have been expecting too much .

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

*My review of Scrooge McFu*k is still pending.

The Stocking Was Hung (The Holidays #1) by [Sivec, Tara]

Castles Ever After Series: Do You Want to Start a Scandal? by Tessa Dare

book review September 12, 2017 Leave a comment

Tessa Dare’s latest Regency romance series is called The Duchess Deal and I would recommend its first book, Girl Meets Duke, over Do You Want to Start a Scandal? This crossover story between Dare’s Spindle Cove and Castles Ever After novels, features the youngest of the Highwood sisters and longtime troublemaker, Charlotte, who has both eldest sibling Diana’s desire for a loving home and intellectual Minerva‘s sense of adventure.

Piers Brandon, Lord Granville is an agent of the crown performing reconnaissance at a two-week house party in the English countryside. Devoted to his duty to King and country, he is caught off guard when Charlotte Highwood presents herself to him with a warning: Her mother will be trying to force a match between them and they must be careful to avoid it. Before you can say “in flagrante delicto”, Charlotte and Piers are caught alone together and giving the appearance of having crossed several lines. Their betrothal now imminent, they agree to the appearance of an understanding to get through the remainder of the estate. Kissing book plotting has other plans for them. After all,  it is a romance novel truth universally acknowledged that a peer must be in want of an heir.

Autocratic and closed off Piers is drawn to Charlotte’s intelligence and charm, while she soon learns that below the surface and behind his protective walls is a loving and passionate man. As they wend their way through plot machinations, they discover they are mad for each other and all that’s left is the genre’s forgone conclusion. I didn’t buy it for a second.

I tried reading Do You Want to Start a Scandal twice –  once in my original attempt and again for this review. It’s amazing how much of my time was taken up with wondering “How old is Piers exactly?” in the midst of skipping forward to find a more interesting part of the story. Charlotte is “not yet twenty-one” and while Piers’ age is never specifically stated, he must be at least 32. A twelve (or more) year age gap is not unheard of, but it didn’t work here. While I’d like an older heroine, the problem is not actually her age. I just don’t see what she has to offer Piers. What could they possibly find as common ground to build a relationship on? All of her youthful exuberance serves to remind me that he is a person of much greater experience in life and of the world and the writing failed to convince me that they were on the same page.

With the lack of well-matched characters overshadowing the story, I wasn’t especially worried about Dare’s usual requirement that I bludgeon and sequester my willing suspension of disbelief or that the revelation of the true goings on by the supporting characters was preposterous. I require somewhat more Regency and somewhat less modern farce in my historical romances.

Julie Anne Long’s classic historical romance What I Did for a Duke features a large age gap convincingly rendered. She’s twenty years old to his thirty-nine.

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.

Do-You-Want-to-Start-a-Scandal