Tag Archives: romance

The Travis Series: Smooth Talking Stranger by Lisa Kleypas

book review November 13, 2013 Leave a comment

“I had always gone in the other direction, toward men like Dane who made you kill your own spiders
and carry your own suitcase.That was exactly what I wanted. And yet someone like Jack Travis,
unimpeachably male, so damn sure of himself, held a secret, nearly fetishistic allure to me.“

Jesus, GOD, YES! Lisa Kleypas, you just get me. You marry suitcase guy and secretly hope he will carry heavy things for you anyway, not because you can’t, but because you are lazy. You read romance novels for fetishistic allure guy.

Ella Varner is the product of a repeatedly broken home and, far worse, of a narcissistic and manipulative mother. Through time and counseling she has built a healthy life for herself. The same cannot be said for her mother or younger sister. When Ella’s sister leaves her one-week-old baby with their mother, Ella is summoned from Austin to Houston to help sort out the mess. Ella drops everything, including her long-term, vegan, environmental activist live-in boyfriend, to go and help out. This turns into a three-month sojourn while Ella’s sister receives psychological counselling.

But enough about the maguffin and on to the main event of any Lisa Kleypas romance: Jack Travis is Ella’s first candidate for the child’s father despite his protestations that he a. “always holsters his gun” and b. did not have sex with Ella’s sister. He is quickly dismissed as a possibility, but sticks around anyway because of his interest in Ella. Jack is a self-made man and the son of a billionaire. He’s tall, dark, handsome, friendly, helpful, possessive in a secretly attractive way, smart, sexy, supportive, wry, a good listener, seductive, mature, chivalrous, manly, mellifluous-voiced, physically fit, generous, emotionally available, funny, polite, mad for Ella, and willing to take on a newborn. I’ve never said this about a romance novel hero before, but this guy is too good to be true. Jack is too perfect. He’s certainly a very comforting fantasy. Who wouldn’t want Captain Perfect to show up in your life while you are in a crisis, worship the ground you walk on, and provide the moral support you need? It would have been fine if the final timeline had worked differently, or if the do-gooder boyfriend was not painted as an unsympathetic jerk, or if I could believe for one second that someone unexpectedly and without any experience taking care of a newborn baby could have the time or inclination to fall in love with anything other than the notion of a full night’s sleep.

Smooth Talking Stranger features the trademark Lisa Kleypas smolder. Her heroine is independent, self-sufficient, and kind. One certainly can’t fault Ella for falling for Jack. The problem is that the point of a romance novel is not that there is a perfect man, it’s that two people find something more in each other or fit together in a way unique to their personalities. Succumbing to the magnificence of the ultimate man misses the point.

This was my first Lisa Kleypas contemporary romance, but not my last. Please visit my complete summary of Lisa Kleypas’s catalogue for recommendations.  Start with Dreaming of You or The Devil in Winter. Both are classics of the genre.

Addendum: Having made a point of Jack being too perfect, I have reread the book because of the “nearly fetishistic allure” factor.

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

FBI/US Attorney Series: Something About You and About That Night by Julie James

book review November 12, 2013 Leave a comment

Same willing suspension, different disbelief.

I don’t read contemporary romances because they don’t provide the narrative distance my obsession calls for, but I was looking for a book to fill an evening and I had quite liked Julie James’ Love Irresistibly, plus my romance spirit guide, Malin, had spoken approvingly of Something About You.

Girl overhears murder. Boy is investigating. Boy and girl have history. Boom chicka wow wow.

Jack Pallas is a glowery, stubbly, hot FBI agent. Cameron Lynde is a successful Assistant US Attorney with a stereotypical “women love shoes” fetish. Cameron ends up in protective custody after overhearing a murder in the hotel room next to hers. The victim was a woman a senator was paying to have sex. Mercifully, as I dislike murder mystery sub-plots, the killer’s identity is revealed early and not the point of the novel. The point of the novel is that Cameron needs protectin’ and she and Jack need to get around to the kissin’ and the lovin’. There were legalities and procedures that strained credulity and/or reality, but it is a romance novel and I can’t be bothered to get my knickers in a twist about suspected jurisprudence inadequacies as long as I’m being entertained.

Something About You had leads with excellent chemistry, he was kind of delicious, as well as fun secondary characters, a nice dose of humour, and, saints be praised, a completely non-stereotypical gay best friend. The novel helped me pass a pleasant evening and I would recommend it to do the same for you.

About That Night is my third Julie James book, my second in a week. I only read it because I was trawling the romance spinners at the library and I stumbled across it. The reviews said it wasn’t as good as the other novels in the series and they were right. Each of these books features either an FBI Agent, a US Attorney, or both (see above). This time it’s the middle one.

Boy and girl clicked, but missed chance. Boy is back, but a felon. Boom chicka complications wow wow.

Kyle and Rylann (I know) met in university, but life got in the way of their incendiary spark. Eight years later, Kyle did something impulsive and stupid that landed him in prison. Rylann is the Assistant US Attorney who represents the federal government in the hearing to commute his sentence to time served. The story behind the sentencing change is covered in the book A Lot Like Love which falls between Something About You and About That Night in the series.

Julie James is a competent writer who gives good smolder. These books are all set in Chicago and I suspect residents will recognize all the local sites and eateries mentioned. Because I don’t live in Chicago, these details did not disrupt my reading experience with any intrusions of realism.

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

A Man Above Reproach by Evelyn Pryce

book review November 11, 2013 Leave a comment

This Regency novel won the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award in the Romance category, in addition to being an overall finalist. Very well done, Ms. Pryce. I can understand why she won. I will definitely be adding her to my Fingers Crossed for Potential list, so Caroline Linden best skooch over.  As this book clearly sets up a trilogy, there will be at least two more chances to see what Evelyn Pryce can do.

Josephine Grant has fallen from society and is eking out a living running the bookshop she inherited from her wastrel father and by playing piano in an upscale brothel, the Sleeping Dove, at night. Elias, the Duke of Lennox, an intimidating and often dour aristocrat, is dragged to the Sleeping Dove one night for a wallow in debauchery. The only problem is that he is not and does not want to be that kind of man. Elias sees Josie playing piano and is instantly drawn to her. He is arrogant and high-handed, but ultimately well-intentioned. Josie isn’t for sale, but she is drawn to the gorgeous, stern man who insists on speaking to her while she plays.

There are a couple of problems in the book, such as initial bumpiness in the hero’s conduct and the plot hangs on a Big Misunderstanding at one point, but they are issues that occur in lots of these kinds of novels and they can be ironed out.  The writing overall is excellent and entertaining, and you do really feel for the characters.

The book is a free loan for Prime on Kindle, but maybe go ahead and buy it to encourage a writer starting out. She has what it takes and needs the chance to write more.

The (Shameful) Tally 2013

A Woman Entangled by Cecilia Grant

book review November 6, 2013 Leave a comment

It’s time to talk about sex in romance novels. Not in a prurient way, but in terms of how it works for the story and how it can enhance, or diminish, the portrayal of the relationship.  The candor begins after the jump, if you want to head straight there.

A Woman Entangled by Cecilia Grant is the third novel in her Blackshear trilogy.  I have read books one, A Lady Awakened, but don’t really remember it, and two, A Gentleman Undone. The second novel ended with a scandal and book three, A Woman Entangled, addresses the aftermath that occurs when your brother marries a courtesan and your own reputation is scathed by association.

The entangled woman of the title, Kate, thinks Elizabeth Bennet was an idiot to turn down Mr. Darcy when he first proposed as Pemberley would have been more than enough to make up for an unhappy marriage. Kate is beautiful and practices being fetching in the mirror in hopes of leveraging her loveliness to make an advantageous marriage. She thinks this will redeem her family from the isolation it endures because her father had the audacity to marry against his parent’s wishes. Family friend and her father’s protegé, Nick Blackshear, has been in love with Kate for three years. He hasn’t the pedigree to please her, and his family has its own recent scandal to contend with, so he has told himself he is over Kate, even as he watches her to see the kind and thoughtful woman she hides beneath her carefully presented surface.

Kate and Nick move towards their happy ending by dealing with their own individual issues. The story is believable, their motivations logical, and I was glad they reached the happy ending. Cecilia Grant is an excellent writer in terms of both style and structure. Unlike the narrative distance run of the mill historical romances often create, a kind of demi-camp reality somewhere between the 19th century and now, Grant anchored her story in appropriate mores and conduct, until…

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Flowers from the Storm by Laura Kinsale

book review November 5, 2013 Comments: 2

If such a thing exists, Laura Kinsale’s Flowers from the Storm is part of the historical romance canon. It’s a classic of the genre that still appeared at #6 on All About Romance’s 2010 Top 100 List 18 years after publication. I voted on their list for 2013 and included it myself. An intense and sometimes painful read, Flowers from the Storm’s status as one of the best romance novels ever written is completely understandable.

Christian, Duke of Jervaulx is a mathematician and a rake. We meet him acting on both inclinations early in the book: the latter leads to a duel, the former to working with a Quaker academic and his daughter Archimedea, called Maddy. When Christian has an “apoplexy” (stroke) shortly after presenting a mathematical paper, he disappears from their lives until Maddy and her father come to live at a rest home/psychiatric hospital run by her cousin. Christian is a patient and a troublesome one at that. When Maddy meets Christian again, he has been brought very low and is presumed mad. She realises he is “not mad, but maddened” and approaches her cousin saying she has “An Opening”, a spiritual calling, to help Christian. The apoplexy left his language processing centers damaged, but Christian finds he is able to communicate first through mathematics and later with language as Maddy works with him. He recognizes in her a chance to escape the hospital and seeks to do so by any means necessary.

Progressive for The Regency, the hospital is every dehumanizing psychiatric care nightmare rolled into chapters: abuse, restraints, ice baths, isolation. Kinsale shows us Christian’s muddled, struggling mind and I found these sections harrowing and must confess to jumping forward to a less upsetting section of the book to console myself before going back to continue reading chronologically. Mercifully, Maddy and Christian get away from the hospital, but a marriage of convenience is required to prevent him from being sent back as it will give the impression of a fuller recovery.

Romance novels can succeed on many levels, but the best ones have the same thing in common: If a writer can honestly portray the emotional lives of her characters, everything else will fall into place. Flowers from the Storm is not a light-hearted romance, it can be a tough read precisely because the characters are so well drawn and the reader feels their struggles. Christian and Maddy are two puzzle pieces that fit together only because of the situation they find themselves in. In either of their previous lives, their relationship would not have worked. Forced by circumstance, they build something together that is more than they ever would have been separately.

Thank you, Malin, for reminding me that I had not read this yet and for promising me Christian and Maddy would leave the hospital soon when I emailed her in a heart-wrenched panic.

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

Love and Other Scandals and The Truth About Love by Caroline Linden

book review November 4, 2013 Leave a comment

Caroline Linden is on my woefully short Fingers Crossed for Potential list. Last year, I stumbled upon her The Truth About the Duke trilogy and would recommend those books as follows: One Night in London is really good; Blame It on Bath worked well and was [fans self]; and The Way to a Duke’s Heart had a charming male lead, but some story issues. Linden’s latest historical romance, Love and Other Scandals got off to a great start, but lost its momentum due to structural choices.

Joan, the heroine of Love and Other Scandals , is a delight. Pert and cheeky, she has a wastrel brother with a very attractive, rascally friend, Tristan. The two are introduced, they banter, I wasn’t quite sure of the reasoning behind Tristan’s actions, but things proceeded apace when there was an abrupt shift in the story about a third of the way through. Have you seen Moonstruck? Do you remember the scene when Cher arrives at Lincoln Center to meet Nicolas Cage and the soundtrack includes a wry “ba-bum” as she steps out of the taxi and the love story proper begins? The transition in Love and Other Scandals is a lot like that, but instead of building on what went before, Linden reorganized the setting and the story lost its way. It’s not that it was horribly transformed, just disjointed, so, in spite of appealing leads, I can’t recommend the book.

On another note, Caroline Linden has a delightful short story, The Truth About Love, in a collection called Once Upon a Ballroom. Not about two people finding love, it’s a vignette in the life of a plain, bookish woman who has married a notorious former rake. Damien, the erstwhile rake and current besotted husband, has been away from Miranda for several weeks and rumours have begun to circulate of an affair. Prurient friends and relatives gather around Miranda, ostensibly to commiserate, but really to revel in saying, “I told you so.”  Using Miranda’s perspective, it is a take on the happily ever after readers rarely see. Romance novels are full of overlooked spinsters discovering connubial bliss with gorgeous, fascinating men, but just how easily does a reputation die and how does a woman who has found herself the subject of unexpected male attention trust that he really is a reformed raking making the best husband? It was really enjoyable, so I did some research to see if The Truth About Love was an epilogue to one of Linden’s novels, but had no luck. If you happen to know of such a book, I’d be grateful for the title so I can review it and bump my Cannonball Read total from 61.5 to 62.

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 Lady’s Tutor by Robin Schone

book review October 18, 2013 Leave a comment

Enough with reviewing sweet and lovely romances. Let’s take a look at something awful and absurd: Robin Schone’s The Lady’s Tutor, a Regency romance of the “sexual tutor” variety. If you want to read a good book featuring this trope, proceed immediately to Sarah MacLean’s One Good Earl Deserves a Lover, consciously ignore the jejeune titling, and have at it.

The Lady’s Tutor fails on many fronts, but there was one aspect of the book, one word actually that sums up everything that is wrong with this fornicaterrific novel. That one word does not encompass the story elements that include

  1. Villainy smeared with sexual deviance and a dollop of you-have-got-to-be-kidding.
  2. Prejudice that the “exotic” man knows the sensual arts by virtue of being foreign.
  3. The fact that The Lady’s Tutor includes concepts like “the sensual arts”.
  4. A hero so well overly-endowed as to be simultaneously laughable and alarming.
  5. The hero’s mother advising the heroine to relax her throat muscles to accommodate her son’s aforementioned equine resemblance
  6. The hero sharing horrific and devastating personal information during coitus.

… but it comes darn close. The one word that sums up all that is wrong with this fornicaterrific novel is “pubes”. The Lady’s Tutor, a Regency romance by Robin Schone, includes the word “pubes” not once, not twice, but three times. PUBES! THREE TIMES!

Why are you still reading? I can’t possibly add to or augment that one salient detail.

The (Shameful) Tally 2013

The Runaway Duke by Julie Anne Long

book review October 18, 2013 Leave a comment

Julie Anne Long has written a classic historical romance, What I Did for a Duke; two excellent ones, A Notorious Countess Confesses and It Happened One Midnight; a rather delightful novella, To Love a Thief; and an assortment of very enjoyable books in her Pennyroyal Green series. The Runaway Duke is one of her earliest novels and I read it for back catalogue completion purposes only.

Through a convenient and maguffiny series of Napoleonic War events, Conor Riordan, fifth Duke of Dunbrooke, has shucked off his title and is living incognito as an Irish groom at the home of the novel’s rather young heroine Rebecca Tremaine. In The Runaway Duke, the two take it on the lam when the  villain mistakenly compromises the wrong Tremaine sister, Rebecca, and she is going to be forced into a reputation saving marriage. Hijinks ensue.

I mentioned in a review of another author that I often find a writer and think that she shows promise only to discover that she has already published a lot of books. That is not the case here. I knew going in that this would not be of the current quality I expect of Julie Anne Long. The Runaway Duke has issues including heavy plotting, an unbelievable false identity (no one would volunteer to be Irish at that time in British history), and the story does goes on a bit; however, all of the elements that would develop into Long’s signature style are present: wonderful humour, clever writing, charming central characters, and, yes, the fact that maybe, sometimes, I don’t know, I’m just saying, she can be a skooch twee.

One of the things that people suggest when trying to save me from the ignominy of reading so much romance is that I should write one. It’s as though all of the shame they think I should feel for my reading choices, and that they feel on my behalf, would be washed away under the cleansing justification of “research”. There is nothing like reading an early effort by a talented author to intimidate any writing   impulse right out of me. I am far too lazy to write a book in the first place and far too impatient to be willing to write several before I have the chance to be even remotely as good a novelist as Julie Anne Long now is.

A complete summary of Julie Anne Long’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.

Miss Whittier Makes a List, Mrs. Drew Plays Her Hand, and Reforming Lord Ragsdale by Carla Kelly

book review October 15, 2013 Leave a comment

Miss Whittier Makes a List was loaned to me by Rochelle at the same time as she sent over The Other Guy’s Bride by Connie Brockway. I was grateful for the loan and even more grateful that Carla Kelly’s writing was good. Miss Whittier Makes a List was the best of these three historical romances and it inspired me to buy two more. They were the most enjoyable read from a new-to-me author I have had in quite some time.  The books were a change for me in terms of the sensuality, or lack thereof. There are variations of sexual activity for every taste in the romance genre and I have read everything from vanilla sex to thisclosetoerotica to vanilla kink, but not novels limited to one or two kisses. Carla Kelly falls into this last category, referred to as  “just kisses” by the romancerati, but even these were not explicit. Anything beyond kissing that takes place in these novels is either fade-to-black or gleaned by straining through oblique references; nonetheless, she manages to politely convey impolite desires.

Miss Whittier Makes a List 1994

Hannah Whittier sets out on a trip from Boston to Charleston to visit family and, her parents hope, meet a nice Quaker man to marry. Waylaid by a British naval ship and then shipwrecked by French privateers, she is found and taken on board by that same British crew and their intriguing captain, Daniel Sparks. Unfortunately, the ship is not bound for Charleston and Hannah must go along for the ride in the hopes of eventually being able to make her way home. Before her sundry nautical catastrophes, Hannah made a list of desirable qualities in a husband. Word gets out.

I’m not big on grand adventure romance novels, but this one was just fantastic and I have added it to my recommendations list. Daniel and Hannah are an interesting pair who seem to be opposites but are, of course, an excellent match each for the other. I must warn prospective readers though that Miss Whittier Makes a List’s main characters have an age difference that while historically realistic may be discomfiting to readers.

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The Other Guy’s Bride by Connie Brockway

book review October 10, 2013 Leave a comment

This review is putting me in the unusual position of recommending The Other Guy’s Bride by Connie Brockway, even though it wasn’t really my cup of tea. My historical romance obsession still has me in its talons, no movement there, but the novel wasn’t  in a style I enjoy which, I must emphatically note, comes with the addendum “…because I am boring.” I don’t like a lot of subplot in my romances and while this book’s subplots do not runneth over, they didn’t exactly runneth under either. It’s a romantic adventure, as opposed to the romantic romance I generally prefer. If you are looking for a cleverly written historical romance that doubles as a fun romp, this could very well be the book for you.

The Other Guy’s Bride is set in the golden age of unmitigated gall, theft, pillaging, cultural appropriation Egyptology and this features heavily in the sub-plotting.  Seven years before the story proper started, a jilted Jim Owen ran off to join the Foreign Legion and ended up a dead man in Egypt. Just months from making his grandmother happy by being declared legally dead, a young woman comes into his life to turn everything upside down. Owing a debt of honour to her fiancé, Jim agrees to escort Mildred Whimpelhall across the desert to said fiance at a remote outpost. Hijinks ensue, not the least of which is the fact that Mildred is actually Jinesse Braxton, the accident-prone daughter of a family of renowned archeologists.

Determined to make a name for herself in Egyptology, Jinesse stole Mildred’s identity and is taking advantage of Jim’s escort to get her to the dig of her dreams. By proving the existence of a heretofore  apocryphal city, Jinesse hopes to establish her archeological bona fides. Jim is instantly attracted to “Mildred” and stunned that this vivacious, bright, and amazingly sanguine inexperienced desert traveler could be interested in her waiting prosaic fiancé, particularly as she doesn’t seem to know his first name. “Mildred” is the type of person to whom things happen, scrapes, escapades, freak weather patterns, and Jim is there to step in and to support her as necessary. The relationship that develops between Jinesse and Jim, the well-intentioned funny woman who falls down and the affable, unflappable rogue, is charming and often wry.

The Other Guy’s Bride is quite campy and an enjoyable adventure. Connie Brockway’s writing style is entertaining and droll. I would have liked a little more [insert funky bass line here] and a little less romp, especially since the consummation devoutly to be wished took place (SPOILER) in a cave during a sandstorm when there should have been sand in every nook and cranny of the cave, of the hero, and of the heroine.

Thank you to rochelle for loaning me this book even if Connie Brockway did not make her way onto my library list.  rochelle also loaned me a book by Carla Kelly that I enjoyed very much indeed despite a complete lack of [insert funky bass line here].

The (Shameful) Tally 2013