Tag Archives: romance

Written on Your Skin by Meredith Duran

book review June 29, 2014 Comments: 2

“He had made jokes for himself, expecting no one else to catch them,
and indeed no one else had.” (103) Yep.

While as well-written as all of Duran’s Victorian romances, Written on Your Skin never really captured my interest and wasn’t my cup of tea, although it did have some great moments. To find out if it might be your cup of tea, please read on.

Phin is a spy working for Her Majesty’s government in Hong Kong. Poisoned at a party, he finds help in the surprising form of Mina Masters. A beautiful flibbertigibbet to whom he is attracted against his better judgement, she surprises him by saving his life and helping him escape. Four years later, Phin’s inheritance of an earldom has allowed him to leave the service and he is flailing against himself and his past with a controlled, narcotic enhanced stupor. Mina re-enters his world when she calls in the debt owed for his life. Together, they are trying to track down her missing mother, but Mina is a complicated woman hiding behind as many masks as he is. Phin, for his part, is also trying to keep Mina safe by limiting her participation and, very much against her wishes, her appearances in public.

Trust is the through-line in Duran’s work and Written on Your Skin is no different. Both Phin and Mina have life experiences that have driven them to create false fronts for the world. He simply doesn’t know what to do with himself or how to act naturally around his old friends, in particular the louche set he used to run with. Mina has learned to play dumb, coquette, bohemian, or whatever it takes to protect herself and control her circumstances. Each has fought battles to get where they are. Magnetically drawn to each other, they have to break through all of their posturing and self-protection. How do they trust each other? Can they trust themselves?

The quality of the writing is consistent with the rest of Duran’s books, I just don’t really enjoy a lot of MacGuffin-y machinations. I’m not sure if the book had too many, or if it just felt that way because I was never really that engrossed by the story. It’s probably the latter.

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

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.

Bound By Your Touch by Meredith Duran

book review June 19, 2014 Comments: 2

This book is great. You should read it. Details below.

Featuring a delicious rake who needs to get his act together and a bright spinster who needs to set herself free, Meredith Duran’s Bound by Your Touch is a Victorian romance with an Egyptology maguffin and themes of disentangling oneself from unhealthy relationships and a thinking person’s feminism which emphasizes the importance of giving women responsibility for their choices as a component of true equality. All of this is supported by clever writing, appealing leads, and a believable romance.

Lydia Boyce is her family’s designated grown up. She has two sisters, one of whom is an endless pill, and an absentee father. Devoted to his pursuits in archeology, he has convinced Lydia that her role as his representative and protector is more important than her own personal and emotional interests. When a counterfeit item ostensibly from her father is delivered to the rake in question, Viscount Sanborne, hijinks ensue that lead to many interesting places in terms of both story and for the characters’ emotional growth.

Romance novels are full of constrained and plain women who are overlooked by those around them. What I liked about Lydia is that although she is aware of her so-called failings when compared to her more demure and pretty counterparts, she nonetheless does not try to change herself into something she is not. Moreover, and I loved this detail, what Lydia does not and cannot know is that she is sexually attractive to the men around her. It is not a woman’s responsibility to be appealing, but it is nice to have a fiercely intelligent heroine who is unaware of the effect she has on men.

Sanborne is likewise complicated. He is a charming and gorgeous, but also a drifting, gormless scapegrace who has been coasting along with a very fast set buoyed by his own unassailability and enmity for his father. He needs to grow up and find a way to deal with his demons. Lydia is a seemingly odd match for him, but like most people, Sanborne has unsuspected depths he finally allows himself to look into as he becomes the partner she needs.

Meredith Duran is a fantastic writer who successfully balances entertaining, sincere romance with genuine and complicated characters. Her books are great. You should read them.

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

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.

The Scandalous Highlanders Series: The Devil Wears Kilts by Suzanne Enoch

book review February 12, 2014 Leave a comment

enochThere is an entire historical romance sub-genre based around Scottish Highland lairds and the tartans that love them. You can recognize the books instantly by the swathe of kilt and bare, muscular chest on the cover. I don’t read them because I get preoccupied with how cold everyone must be in Northern Scotland. Hitting on two genre quadrants, the new Scandalous Highlanders series from historical romance novelist Suzanne Enoch features members of a Scottish Highland family looking for love in Regency London. It’s kind of brilliant cross-marketing, really. The men are enormous, testosterrific, and entrenched in a kind of noble feudalism; the women are bright and steely Bennett-Dashwood-Elliots.

Rowena MacLawry of Glengask has fled her Highland home in hopes of having a London season. Her brother Ranulf, the Marquis, tracks her down at the home of their mother’s friend, Lady Hest. The Hests have two daughters, the older of whom, Charlotte, is our heroine. Ranulf and Charlotte clash in the standard “He’s a philistine!”, “She’s a busybody!” manner yet somehow manage to overcome their differences, indulge in sexual liaisons, and become betrothed. All this despite internecine clan warfare, English obnoxiousness, real estate purchases, morning rides, and a stable fire trying to distract them. The days are just packed.

The Devil Wears Kilts was fine, better than most and less than some. Suzanne Enoch is the tiptop of my romance B List. I read a lot of her work, but I avoid paying for it. I’d say I won’t bother to read more in this series, but who are we kidding? It will come to the library and I will bring it home with me. The books will be mostly enjoyable, but never quite enough somehow to lift them to the next level. I have inserted links to other Enoch books below and recommend the titles in bold.

With this Ring Series (fell swoop review)
Reforming a Rake
Meet Me at Midnight
A Matter of Scandal

Lessons in Love Series (fell swoop review)
The Rake
England’s Perfect Hero

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 Heart by Laura Florand

book review February 9, 2014 Leave a comment

To borrow from a previous review:

The Chocolate Heart is book five in Laura Florand’s Amour et Chocolat series. 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 Heart is not best of the series, that’s The Chocolate Touch, but The Chocolate Heart was certainly an absorbing and mostly entertaining read.

Summer Corey has been told all her life that she is spoiled and ungrateful. Her parents see her as property to be picked up and dropped as they see fit. The latest gambit in their cycle of attention and neglect is to give her a 4 star hotel in Paris as a Christmas gift. Their goal is to lure her back from the South Pacific island where she has been living and working as a teacher in blissful self-imposed exile. Summer must stay in Paris for three months to gain another expensive gift that she actually wants, a communications satellite something-or-other, for the island residents. She hates Paris, the hotel business, and dessert.

Luc Leroi is the charming perfectionist, and practically perfect in every way, head pastry chef at the hotel Summer has been given. He is driven and has worked relentlessly to reach the top of his profession and stay there. He’s only 30, but since he started when he was 10, it seems reasonable. He is always gorgeous and most of the time he manages to be charming, but Summer completely flummoxes him.

The Chocolate Heart has the most challenging of any of the American woman/French culinary deity combinations in these books. Summer is sympathetic, but not always likeable, and Luc is a victim of his own self-restraint. 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. It’s not romantic, so much as really unhealthy. Florand seems to realise this, too, as the book has a lengthy “several years later” epilogue to let the reader know that Luc and Summer are in a better, healthier place.

I do not recommend The Chocolate Heart, except maybe to visit favourite characters from other books in the group. This is the complete series for those who want to know with (order of preference):

  1. The Chocolate Thief – Pretty good, it took me from 99 cents on Kindle to the complete series. (5)
  2. The Chocolate Kiss – A very good fairy tale that made me forgive the metaphor. (2)
  3. The Chocolate Rose – Excellent passion, it needed just a little more love story. (3)
  4. The Chocolate Touch – My favourite of the group, it was really sweet and intense. (1)
  5. The Chocolate Heart – The weakest of the group. (6)
  6. The Chocolate Temptation – Steamy, not quite as good, but still very readable. (4)

A complete summary of Laura Florand’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.

Nothing to Commend Her by Jo Barrett

book review February 5, 2014 Leave a comment

If Pride and Prejudice is the ultimate You Are Everything I Never Knew I Always Wanted romance, Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca is the perfect illustration of what the romancerati refer to as The Big Misunderstanding. If at some point during their courtship or honeymoon, Maxim de Winter had managed to blurt out, “My wife was a vain, inconstant shrew and I loathed her, you little fool”, everyone would have been spared a lot of agita. Nothing to Commend Her has two Maxims and two The Second Mrs. de Winters. Both keeping secrets, both refusing to have basic conversations or ask simple questions that would clear everything up.

I wrote the preceding paragraph before I finished Nothing to Commend Her. I was taking a break from rolling my eyes and groaning. I often get review ideas while reading the book, such as a romance review template, and this time I planned one around the following elements:

  1. I got this book for free on Amazon.
  2. Jo Barrett is a new author because they often give books away to appeal to new readers. This was how I found this gem from Caroline Linden.
  3. As Barrett is a new author, I would write a constructive criticism review of her book with helpful hints for Ms. Barrett and her editor. I did that before with Shana Galen and Anya Wylde.
  4. I was going to be nice about it.

Then it turned out that Jo Barrett has published over thirty romances, both historical and contemporary, and now I can’t really see the use in pointing things out. She’s clearly making a living, so I’m just going to do this:

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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 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.

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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.

 

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.