Review: The Last Wicked Scoundrel by Lorraine Heath

I've been off Lorraine Heath lately, but the amount of domestic violence in Moonstruck Madness made me inclined to examine how a modern Avon author addresses it. It was interesting how less in charge of her life Winnie is than the heroine of McBain's book. The set up for The Last Wicked Scoundrel involves two side characters from an earlier series. Winnie is the widow of a duke and William is the physician that saved her life.

Both Winnie and William have an abuse history. Winnie is an orphan abused by her dead husband. William is a child of the streets with multiple abuse points. Both of them blame themselves and excuse their abusers in a fairly predictable and natural way. William's scars  are internal, Winnie's external. (Cue yet another round of Scar Kissing.) In the three years that Winnie has been on her own, William has refused to cross the class and wealth lines that divide them. Until suddenly, he does.

(Spoiler alert. Part of William's problem has been that Winnie's husband wasn't dead. In an earlier book William and his friends staged the duke's death and shipped him off to Australia. The duke, having failed to die, returns with a fair amount of anger toward his wife.)

Winnie fears she's going mad and her physician is a natural place to turn. Faced with a new proximity, and having spoiler related reasons of his own, William sets about seducing her. This was utterly boring. I was interested in the emotional development of Winnie and William within the short confines of the novella but suddenly we're all about the licking and the stroking and the succumbing. Winnie never knew it could be like this, William has waited so long, yadda, yadda, yadda. Back to the plot.

While those surrounding Winnie consider her late husband a monster, he is properly shown to be a fairly average (if vindictive) man with entitlement issues. He murdered previous wives because they stood up to him. Winnie's failure to do so preserved her life. His thwarted plan for her disposal seems out of character and a bit convoluted, but I was willing to go with it. The acknowledgement that the women prior to Winnie were emotionally stronger but equally abused is important. Abuse is dictated by the abuser. It is their choices that dictate the violence. It is their failings that trigger it.

Winnie compares a moment of emotional damage from William to prior physical damage from her husband. It's important to me as a reader that she recognized it but it's more important that William accepts it. He doesn't tell her she's wrong, he examines if he agrees with her. He does and he makes amends. She is a woman determined to break old patterns. She is not willing to be in any way diminished. Unfortunately the author is working a tough tightrope by having Winnie skirt into TSTL territory. Winnie goes from never confronting a threat to thinking confronting threats alone is a better choice. It's not. It's pretty idiotic. Let's hand wave that and get back to William.

Spoiler Alert. [su_spoiler title="Can't Wait To Get Nasty?"]William killed his mother by accidentally shoving her down stairs while she was beating him. His father sells her body to the hospital and takes off. William becomes a mudlark, then a thief, then a physician to the Queen.[/su_spoiler]

William makes assumptions based on his abuse history that are natural and logical and get left unresolved. Heath addresses his survivor's guilt but leaves the possibility that his abuse was willingly enabled alone. Complicity in domestic violence is still pretty taboo for the historical romance world. Abusers are not monsters, in the sense that they can present normally and defend their actions. Collaborators may feel completely justified in their own choices or love the abuser to the point that they also subscribe to the logic of the abuse. (There's a lot in that basket. Maybe we'll unpack it in another thirty years.)

Overall The Last Wicked Scoundrel was worth the time. I would have liked less sex and more relationship building, but that's pretty much a given for me. Winnie has a few TSTL moments, including one that completely discounts parental rights in the Victorian era, but overall she's trying to take control of her life. William is wonderfully beta. I say give it a go.

* This review originally appeared at Love In The Margins. 

Review: Moonstruck Madness by Laurie McBain

Laurie McBain is an author  often underrepresented in casual histories of the genre. Moonstruck Madness did massive business. I decided to revisit Moonstruck Madness because it was the book I remembered the least. MM is a glorious train wreck of domestic violence and kitchen sink plotting. No wonder I forgot most of it.

We open with Sabrina as a small tween on the battlefields of Culloden. Battle worn and weary, she's fleeing for her life. (I didn't pause to do the math, but I think she's 11 or 12 here. Five years later her elder sister is 18 or 19, so let's ballpark it there.)  Sabrina gathers the remaining members of her family and travels to her deadbeat dad's abandoned estate. Of course she embarks on a life of crime to pay the bills and restore the estate to sustainability. This is a classic 70's / 80's thing. A couple teenage girls, a senile aunt, a servant or two with a very young heir suddenly occupy the family manor and no one ever asks where the money is coming from. Dad is off with the second family in Italy or Spain or wherever, but it's all good.

Enter our hero - Lucien, the Duke of something or other. He's got a controlling grandmother, murderous (and likely incestuous) cousins, a seriously bad attitude and Marry By This Date stamped on his inheritance. He starts out determined to capture the local highwayman, so he shoots Sabrina. In a modern Avon Romance this would form the majority of the plot. Back in the day, we were just getting started. Sabrina taking a bullet from this dude is like the meet cute. Sex happens (ow!) and she's on her way. Over the course of the book Sabrina will be beaten with a whip, slapped across the face, survive multiple murder attempts (by multiple murderers) get married, be pregnant, have PTSD, and THEN start to fall for the Duke. (I left some stuff out, this review can't go longer than my attention span.)  Ok, so after all that she and Lucien start to wonder if they like each other. They do, of course, so a bunch of other stuff happens and then they are in loooooove and the book ends. (Spoiler alert.)

Here's the thing about 70's / 80's big books. For all that I absolutely despise the normality of abuse in the relationships I also really admire how Sabrina is a person with a unique backstory. Her strength and determination to overcome obstacles is not a bug to be addressed, but a feature. Some men admire her, some are fatigued by her, some want to change her, but the women all consider her a person to deal with rather than a problem to correct. She is occasionally self sabotaging and highly emotional, but she's also a teenager. Most of the other women fall into super convenient categories. There's a cheating fianceé whose murder no one cares about enough to even resolve, a crazy psychopath for whom disfigurement is punishment enough, an eccentric elderly grandmother who holds all the power, a psychic sister who longs for a conventional life, and the demented aunt who pivots the plot at the last second. Seriously classic stuff.

What turned me off about Moonstruck Madness (and still does) is the way violence between the hero and heroine is excused. Setting aside the fact that he shoots her early in the book, their relationship is incredibly toxic. He's forcing her into situations she would rather escape. Her sister aids and abets him because of her visions and also because she seems to accept his actions as inevitable. Sabrina is a woman alone, struggling to save people who completely fail to appreciate or protect her. I found this one of the most believable aspects of Moonstruck Madness. When you are in a violent relationship people will not protect you. They will give you up without a second thought because your abuser has learned his lesson, he's really in love, he's never going to harm you now. This is both utterly untrue and a myth our culture refuses to abandon.

But back to Lucien. He's not seen by himself or the book as abusive. There are other toxic men in Sabrina's life largely given a pass while Lucien takes some of their blame along with his own. This sets the reader to be more sympathetic to him than his actions dictate. He's deceptive (so is she!) and occasionally violent (so is she!) but the book couples his shouldering of undue blame with the both sides are guilty twist to absolve him. Even Sabrina, after all that has occurred, parrots the "He'd never hurt me" lines. By the standards of the genre at the time, he won't. He's decided he loves her and that makes it different. 

*This review originally appeared at Love In The Margins.

Review: No Good Duke Goes Unpunished by Sarah MacLean

Sarah MacLean keeps improving, but No Good Duke Goes Unpunished hits some of the same buttons One Good Earl Deserves A Lover did. Also, there's a black guy in this one but he's not going to be the romantic lead of the next book. He's only there for (would it be unfair to say color?) background depth. I sound snarky (and I am) but I appreciated the acknowledgement that the world these characters live in would have some diversity. I held off reviewing No Good Duke Goes Unpunished because the author wanted it to be approached without spoilers and my review is going to be spoiller-riffic. 

The major revelation (of course) is contained in the epilogue. Who is the mysterious Chase? You'll shrug as the heavily foreshadowed revelation is made. I suspected the answer in Book One (felt pretty certain in Book Two) but was thrown off by the Twitterverse reaction. I'm not going to directly reveal this one, but other things I discuss may obliquely do so. Again, stop here to maintain your ignorance before reading the book.

Temple, the powerful fighter known as The Killer Duke, is the hero of this one. Mara Lowe, the women he believes he murdered, steps up to be the heroine. Temple is offered his old life back, the proof of his innocence in Mara's distinctive features. Mara has no former friends, no extended family. There is only Mara and her brother, a man who has taunted and tormented Temple since the alleged murder. Turned out by his father, Temple made his living fighting on the streets before rising to power as an owner of The Fallen Angel nightclub. Nights find him boxing the ruined patrons whose gambling losses fund the club. Days mean distant management of his ducal holdings. Temple is inconsistent but resonant. I found him to be the most fully realized of MacLean's Scoundrels.

Mara could have been a very strong heroine. She was marred for me by the inconsistency of her story. By that I don't mean the lies she tells Temple, rather the trajectory her life takes after he wakes up covered in blood. While I will give Mara her carefully planned disappearance, her reappearance has several difficult elements. If we accept her current career, we have to accept the book's explanation for how she came to have it. If we accept that, then her circumstances when we meet make little sense. Where did her backers go? Why are they unable to assist her in any fashion? How does a woman able to exploit any situation to ensure her own survival not leverage her multitude of secrets into support payments? If we accept that Mara is alone, with no former friends or extended family except her brother, then her career is a major leap of faith.

Up to the final section of the book the relationships between Mara and Temple, Mara and her brother, Temple and his partners, are all solid. An opportunity to explore sudden disability is squandered, but probably wisely. There's the requisite Good With Kids scene, the Jealous Without Cause bit (quickly dismissed) and a nice evolution of the two coming to understand how they both participated in a defining moment in their lives. I could root for Mara and Temple to work things out. Both their backstories made sense. Mara enjoys self harming as much as Temple. Where he fights in the ring, she fights herself. Everything is Mara's fault, everything was caused by Mara. She never stands up and says "wait a minute, that part is all you" without quickly adding "but you wouldn't have done that if not for what I did." Like Chase, I found that aspect of her personality tedious.

Where it all goes wrong for me is during the Near Death Experience. (With the well known Rapid Healing Ability most  NDE characters have.) There is so much talking. So much. Temple's partners are willing to kill for him, but they never do. They do precious little. Each takes their turn standing on stage to loudly proclaim their devotion, followed by almost no action. It's chest thumping for the hell of it. Women save the day repeatedly, almost ludicrously. We tip from only men acting to only women acting as the men flutter about frowning and missing all the points. Soon Mara is busting through windows and disowning the brother she was protecting moments before.

This entire scene makes no sense at all. Mara's brother was the cause of the NDE. The club members have been searching for him with amazing inefficiency. There are any number of charges they could bring against him, if they chose not to murder him on sight. Yet he enters The Fallen Angel freely to confront Temple. Absolutely no part of this makes sense. None of it should happen. The staff and owners stand by, leaving only Mara available to save the pointlessly endangered day. I was face palming all the way through. MacLean had already strained my patience by Temple handwaving a major betrayal by Chase. Chase compounds that betrayal through further actions that put Mara in the Save The Day position.  My "Dude, Really?" trigger flipped over to "DUDE! REALLY?!" Mara and Temple should both abandon everyone they know and never make a friend again. They completely suck at judging people. Anyway, read it but be ready for the Supergirl moments and lower your expectations that The Scoundrels do anything but thump their chests whilst bellowing.

* This review originally appeared at Love In The Margins and NGDGU inspired a spoiler filled rant as well. 

Review: The Sum of All Kisses by Julia Quinn

* A version of this review appear at Love In The Margins. 

Is there such a thing as Eloisa James disease? If there is, Julia Quinn caught a bad case of it. I'm so frustrated by The Sum of All Kisses. We begin in such a fantastic place that I start to think this is going to be my favorite Quinn book ever and we end in such a pile of melodrama that it makes Eloisa's chicken coop scene in When Beauty Tamed The Beast look restrained. Seriously, it's the late night infomercial of melodrama. (Now how much would you believe? Not that much.)

We start off with Hugh, the second son of the very crazy Ramsgate. Hugh was the other party in Daniel Smythe-Smith's duel, (in A Night Like This) leaving Hugh with a ton of baggage and a bad leg. For much of the book Quinn gets Hugh exactly right. He's intelligent, he's capable, he's ambulatory with practical adjustments for his physical stamina. There is the occasional insertion of nonsensical no-woman-will-want-me thoughts but it's initially kept to a minimum. Hugh has a fierce loyalty to those he loves, and he loves Daniel Smythe-Smith so circumstances require him to attend the marriages of Daniel and Daniel's sister Honoria. This obligation places him in close proximity to their cousin, Lady Sarah Pleinsworth. Sarah is equally fierce in loyalty to those she loves which puts Hugh on the wrong side of her before they've even met. Further alienating them is the duel itself causing Sarah to miss her first, and possibly best, chance at the marriage mart.

For much of the book I truly enjoyed Sarah and Hugh. The emotional, dramatic heroine and the arch, cerebral hero are the perfect pair for a dialogue driven novel. Quinn writes realistic sibling relationships and when she sticks to the interpersonal dynamics the book soars.  (The only false note is a sharp scene where Sarah's cousin takes what appears to be a completely unfair shot.  Quinn likes to write with interconnected timelines so I assume this will be explored in the next Smythe-Smith installment.) The exploration of divided and colliding loyalties in the lives of the Hugh, Sarah and the Smythe-Smiths is some of the finest genre work I've read this year. It was love. Until it wasn't.

Toward the third act everything went in the handbasket. Hugh began obsessing over his ugly (CHECK!) leg that kept him from being a real man (No dancing? He loved dancing? CHECK!) and therefore made him ineligible for the love of any woman (CHECK!). There's a scene where his physical infirmity means he cannot rescue her from danger (CHECK!) causing him to consider how much better off she'd be without him. For her part, Sarah goes from never once having kissed a man to being completely up for it on the lawn of her family home. From the first brush of the lips to up the skirts, our girl is full of healthy hunger ready to roll. I sighed. A lot. Not in a good way. Despite my frustration with portions of the injury portrayal, the book still hovered at a high B. Cue the chicken coop. And by chicken coop I mean spoilers. Lots and lots of spoilers.

Seriously. Stop reading right here if you care at all about yourself. I mean it. Not another word. 

Ok. I'm not the boss of you. Let's keep going. So Hugh, who has been dealing with this leg for years and is attractive, intelligent and likely to inherit (or have his son inherit) a title has decided his lack of dancing ability makes him damaged goods. Unlike that fat syphilitic guy over there twice his age, but we won't examine Hugh's self esteem issues too closely because his dad is coming to town. In a book almost entirely devoted to the tricky interpersonal workings of family relationships, Hugh has barely had any interaction with his. We meet his brother Freddie early on and establish that he cares deeply for Hugh. So where is he? He's off being gay. Freddie exists as a prop to illustrate the goodness of Hugh and the vileness of Hugh's father. I could write an entire review based on that choice alone, but Quinn quickly distracts me by turning the melodrama up to eleventy.

In A Night Like This Daniel was trying to stay one step ahead of Ramsgate. Ramsgate wanted to kill Daniel because Hugh led him to believe the duel had resulted in Hugh's infertility. Hugh told Ramsgate if Daniel died, Hugh would kill himself and thus end the chance for a child. I expected The Sum of All Kisses to explore the depression that would make this seem a reasonable course of action to Hugh. We don't. Instead we keep dialing the melodrama up until we can't add melodrama no more. In the final few chapters Quinn shoehorns in a frothing at the mouth backstory for Hugh and Freddie that is completely unnecessary. She has Ramsgate drug Hugh, tie him to a bed and contemplate marrying Freddie off and raping his wife. Sarah storms in and frees Hugh. (Further emasculating him? No, arousing him. Because of course.) She then tells Ramsgate if he backs off she will marry Hugh and bear children, on the condition he leaves them all alone.

No really, she does. This is greeted by everyone as brilliant. Sure, Ramsgate is a delusional, violent sadist, but he keeps his word.  Sarah and Hugh should be good. Never mind that once Sarah pops out an heir (or two) there is no reason to keep Daniel and Hugh alive. It's not like Sarah can turn around and un-procreate. Sarah even acknowledges that Ramsgate will have a place at the baptismal font. Because he's family or something. Sarah pats herself on the back for figuring out this oh-so-obvious solution that eluded those poor dumb men and hold Hugh to her bosom so he can sob out his tortured back history. Daddy hurt mommy in bed, never liked Hugh, hates Freddie for being gay, hired sex workers to repeatedly rape Freddie and... he just goes on and on. It's like trying to track down and kill Daniel wasn't crazy enough so Quinn keeps going in case something will stick. But gosh, we're stuck with the guy so we'll have to make nice at family functions or something. (Assuming Sarah is fertile. I don't like her chances if she isn't.)

I couldn't even with the ending of this book. There wasn't enough face palming and WTFing in the world.  Sarah was as reality challenged as the rest of the room. Leaving the whole Same Love Macklemore vibe of the invisible Freddie aside, if you have any experience with domestic violence this "solution" is impossible to buy into. Ramsgate is a murderous sociopathic stalker. How is he going to do anything other than murder Daniel, Sarah and Hugh once a child is born? Why would he risk exposing the focus of his aims to the whims of these failures? Because Sarah would get mad? Because Hugh might kill himself? So what? The guy wants a do-over on the heir front and he doesn't care very much how that happens. He is very not okay with decades of actions proving it. There is no negotiated peace with this flavor of toxicity. I can't go above a C at this point and only the first two thirds of the book are keeping me from D territory. The Sum of All Kisses should have been a wonderful book but it was ultimately unequal to it's premise.

Review: It Happened One Midnight by Julie Anne Long

It Happened One Midnight would be far more enjoyable as a single title than as an entry in the Pennyroyal Green series. Eight books in I don't care at all about the missing Lyon or the weary Olivia. Every mention of either character detracts from the story. That's a shame because Lyon has an actual purpose this time out.

Jonathan Redmond is Lyon's less paternally satisfying sibling. After multiple disappointments Father Redmond is cracking down on Jonathan in an attempt to mold a child he can approve of. The shadow of Lyon's absence keeps him from seeing Jonathan clearly. Cue inevitable father and son clash. Enter Thomasina, (hereafter Tommy) our heroine.

Tommy is a woman with a mysterious background. (This review is long enough without exploring the holes in it.) She may or may not be a courtesan. She's searching for the security of marriage while keeping her eyes open for other revenue sources. Jonathan brings her into his start up as an investor. Of course Jonathan and Tommy find there is more to each other than they realized. (Duh.) There's a subplot about child labor but the main focus is on Tommy and Jonathan's banter.

Overall It Happened One Midnight is a satisfying romance of the light history variety. Characters are varied enough to provide interest and appear to have lives outside of the time spent in Tommy and Jonathan's orbit. While there are no real surprises neither are there serious offenses. Yet It Happened One Midnight became a rant read for me in it's closing pages. It's not about the numerous errors I understand the finished book contained.

HEREAFTER BE SPOILERS, YO!

If you believe that one of the purposes of genre fiction is to uphold or undermine cultural norms what are we to make of the choices here? Tommy is the bastard daughter of a Duke and the courtesan he allegedly loved. The Duke rejected Tommy at birth yet her mother raised her to revere him, going so far as to claim if she were ever in need The Dukester would step up and assist. (I'm not sure who is needier than an infant, but Tommy's mom isn't the first woman in history unable to accept he's really not going to pay child support.) Tommy goes on to have a horrific childhood complete with near death events. Still she believes, because the child inside her has nothing else.

While Long gives Jonathan the opportunity to confront and insult the Duke, she gives no such moment to Tommy. Tommy's father left her to die. When confronted by Jonathan he confirms his belief that working class children are expendable. Tommy's father is a completely reprehensible person. I felt no sympathy for Tommy's father. He knowingly works children to their death. He knowingly abandoned his own child not once but twice. Why should I (or Tommy) care for him?

Long treats Father Redmond differently. Tommy and Jonathan are both given opportunities to condemn his actions. Despite Redmond being a present and loving father in the past, his current pain is tearing apart his relationships. It is bizarre that he is given more condemnation than Tommy's absent father. Both Tommy and Jonathan threaten Redmond with his greatest fear - losing another child. At this point I expected Long to give Tommy's father an unlikely change of heart through his friendship with Redmond. It would have been unlikely and predictable but Long laid the groundwork for it.

Instead the book closes with Tommy and the Duke estranged. In the book's final pages Long has Tommy return a family keepsake to her father with an encouraging note. It is this encouraging note that moved It Happened One Midnight from the A minus to the Low Middle B grade on my reader report card. In having Tommy urge her father to "be brave" Long wants the reader to believe emotional cowardice is the root of his parental rejection. In doing so she places Tommy's life in a separate category from the other children the Duke would condemn. I don't think Long is making a class superiority comment so much as one of family solidarity. This incredibly toxic message is showing up in too many historical books this year. Our heroines are returning to abusive families and begging for emotional connections. This is not a happy ending, this is a recipe for disaster.

Review: Lord of Wicked Intentions by Lorraine Heath

This was going to be the book where Heath and I break up, but she surprised me. Which is not to say I recommend the title.

Heath is working with a problematic trope in that the hero (Rafe) buys the heroine (Evelyn) at an auction. (Spoiler alert - he's not secretly a reformer.) Evelyn is believable as a highly sheltered daughter of privilege who is unable to understand that her world changed overnight. It takes her quite a while to get with the program.  Rafe is just plain crazy yet he's far more credible than he was in the earlier Lost Lords books. This is a kid who has been traumatized by circumstances very similar to Evelyn's. Both of them lost their father in one breath and found their entire world altered in the next. Where Evelyn's brother auctions her off without her knowledge, Rafe's brothers sell him without his consent. (This somewhat mitigates that Rafe's actions. In his view he's offering Evelyn more of a shot than he got, making him the good guy. In the reader's view he's telling himself pretty lies about his actions. But again, dude is crazy.) I liked the way Heath presented Rafe and Evelyn. It would be unrealistic for a woman in Evelyn's situation to have more options than the distasteful ones Rafe explains to her. Certainly Rafe could have escorted her to any number of charity homes but then we'd have a different book. So Rafe shows Evelyn her only currency is her body and offers to pay an insanely high price for it. Evelyn realizes he's right and makes her own bed to lie in. she gets her Pretty Woman and they work toward HEA.

Overall, Lord of Wicked Intentions is the best of my least favorite Heath series. However, like the rest of The Lost Lords Lord of Wicked Intentions repeatedly pulls the WTF card. There are errors of time and place that threw me out of the story repeatedly. Early on Rafe examine a wide selection of ornate molded chocolates. That's great, but molded chocolate is late Victorian and this book is not. He could've bought rolled truffles, I suppose, but Heath explains them in a way that strongly indicates molds. Rafe takes Evelyn slumming so she can react with horror at the wretched lives of the underclass.  Nobody wants to be the underclass, not even them. Wretched things do happen when you add lack of options with lack of resources. It's still pretty obnoxious to walk Evelyn through it like a cautionary zoo exhibit. Rafe claims to process a million pounds a night at his gaming house. (I don't feel like doing math, so here's an excellent article on Crockford to explain how ludicrous this number is. Just know the guy would be turning over more than 4 billion a month at that rate.) The heroine runs away for obscure heroine reasons and takes shelter with the hero's estranged family. Because of course their desire to se him happy means they've befriended this unknown quantity and placed her needs above his. (That's the kind of family they are.) It's full of things that require a veritable bungee cord of disbelief. I can't leap off a bridge that has the hero divested of all his belongings and scrubbed naked at ten then has him in adulthood stroking a coin he's held onto since the day of his father's death. (Where did he hide it during the strip and scrub?) Toward the end our hero proves his love by administering a beat down to someone who wronged the heroine at the beginning of the book. He assumed a woman being auctioned off for sex was a whore, we must pummel him now. Because love. And he wasn't the winning bid. And reasons. I don't even know.

I closed the book feeling tired of Heath writing in this era. She's had some great stories to tell but Lost Lords feels like she's more than ready to move on. So am I. Hopefully her next outing finds her back in form because I don't think we've got more than one date left in us. There was enough here to make me come back, but not enough for me to fall in love.

DNF Review: Sins of a Virgin by Anna Randol

Maybe I've burnt out.

Each reviewer has their own personal ARC policy. Mine is that I will review your book if I accept it, but the review might not be to your liking. I will make every effort to finish your book and reserve DNF reviews for purchased items. I try to get all ARC's reviewed within a week of the publication date. I have failed Sins of a Virgin as completely as it failed me. I don't think this one is necessarily Randol's fault. I've been trying to read SOAV for close to a year. I keep stalling out very early in the book. I'm not even really reviewing SOAV. I'm using it to talk about reader reaction.

Madeline is a Secretly Chaste Courtesan who has decided to sell herself to the highest bidder. She hires Gabriel to ensure that the bidder she selects will be able to pay her fee. Gabriel is a Bow Street Runner looking for his sister's killer, some of whom are bidding on Madeline. On paper, this should be a good read for me. I'm okay with the Secretly Chaste Courtesan set up because Madeline is up front about her status (hello, book title!) and her reasons for the auction make sense. Except they don't. This coupled with Gabriel's super moral disapproval derailed me fast and kept me from getting far into the novel.

Madeline has spent ten years working as a government spy because reasons. Despite her service to the government, she is left unable to establish herself properly and therefore makes the choice to auction herself off. Here my reader reaction stops the story from moving forward. How are all these heroines pretending to work in the sex trade without ever suffering a sexual assault? In an age where rape was so common and so hard to prosecute, how are they navigating these men while keeping body and soul intact? How has Madeline worked as a fake courtesan without being tested? This myth that these girls can be trained in seduction, live among men and pass as purchasable goods without being assaulted seems so much in line with the Hermetically Sealed Heroine that I can't turn my mind off. What are we reading when we read about these women? Often (as in another recent DNF read but not this one) the hero is busy obsessing over what a durty durty hurr the heroine is while his employees are inexplicably reacting to her as if she is their better. When the hero realizes she is not a durty hurr and falls to his feet in tearful apology we are supposed to feel... something. Something besides impatience.

On the surface the message of the SCC or HSH is one of redemption. You have misjudged me, you have wronged me, I was not the durty hurr you assumed, but the lost daughter of aristocrats, meant for better things than I have had. As an apology, you may elevate me to my proper status. I shall play Lady Bountiful for your people, who saw what you could not. (If it's true that we read to escape into our privileges, then perhaps my recent problems with these romances has been a misalignment of needs.) I cut my teeth on the romances of the 70's, where a woman wandering alone was a woman moments from a gang rape. While I don't miss the days where love meant a disco floor and an act of violence, I do miss the message that the woman was still loved. At the end of whatever happened to her, she was still worthy. She had value. The hero wanted to be with her for her. She was, as is the core message of romance, enough. So often these days I feel that while the heroine has gotten smarter, stronger, more capable, her actual worth has diminished. He wants her even if she is a durty hurr, but it's ok, because secretly she's not. Even if she's been married before the odds are very good he was gay or impotent or drunk. Even if half the men in town claim to have banged her like a townie against a dumpster, it's all a lie. She is too good for that.

If she's good, what are the rest of us? If the message of the 70's and 80's was Stand By Your Man and As Long As He Loves Me, what is the message of the 90's and 00's? Is Madeline a virgin because she's more deserving than the other girls? Because she's smarter, as though being clever can provide safety from predators? What made her immune from being used in every way a tool is used in a time when she would have been so very disposable? I give Madeline credit for honesty - she has decided to exchange her body for money. She will do whatever she is required to do to meet the goal she's set for herself. I'd like to stick around long enough for Gabriel to tell her to tun off the red light, but I haven't been able to. My brain won't stop asking questions the book can't possibly answer.

Spoileriffic Review: One Good Earl Deserves A Lover by Sarah MacLean

*Since we're diving deeper into the book I thought the step back would be a more fitting graphic than the cover. 

A few days ago I suggested you preorder Once Good Earl Deserves A Lover, read it at midnight and meet me back here to discuss where I thought it fell apart. I can only show you the path, I can't make you walk it. If you're reading this without having finished One Good Earl  that's on you, kitten.

With everything I loved about OGEDaL this is not a cliche free book. MacLean deals with the logistics of a girl who wears glasses so well that I forgave that girl being an intellectual. (The details of Pippa trying to tie a mask to her face won me over.) While I'd love to read about vision impaired heroines without their defective eyes conferring intellectual power, I get that this stereotype is hardly negative. But still. Smartacles. The magic of myopia.

With all the Pippa Middleton / Prince Harry shipping in the zeitgeist it took me a moment to get past our leads being Pippa and a tall charming redhead. It certainly didn't hurt that Cross was also an intellectual. (Say what you will about Harry but he's never been known for scholarly prowess.) I appreciated how Pippa dominated the book. Cross was well represented but it's Pippa that drives the story and dictates the action. She never becomes a passive passenger in her own story. The human relationships were (with some exceptions) well defined and realistic. I believed the divide between Cross and his family, as well as the interactions between Cross and his partners. I appreciated MacLean leaving Cross and his sister estranged. It was truthful and appropriate. What was neither was the distance of Bourne. I found his exclusion completely implausible. It's one thing for Cross to conspire with Pippa, it is another thing for his partners to do so. Events escalate to the point that the partners spend 19 million in company funds (300,000 plus pounds converted to modern pounds) without consulting or informing him. (The 19 million spent made little sense. This was a feel good resolution that didn't hold logically. It also put the owners - and thus Bourne -  into business with men they didn't wish to entertain.) Aside from the financial aspect, Bourne is invisible in his own family life. He is a prop used to support the HEA from a prior book instead of a realistic character.  This is Bourne, he likes to bang Penny now - as though there is no other purpose to his existence. Send your prior characters on a tour of Europe if you're going to write them out of their own lives.

Cross and Pippa have a nemesis in rival club owner Knight. Of course Knight has a daughter. Since Pippa has two men on her string you know we're going to end with one of them marrying the girl. It's unlikely, unrealistic and unbelievable. It weakens the overall story when characters not destined to be sequel bait pair off like animals on an ark. There is no need for Knight (or his daughter) to bag an aristocrat. Late in the book events also weaken the portrayal of our extra earl. It's understandable that Pippa would build a plan requiring the full cooperation of a recently rejected lover. It's less understandable that he would comply. Marrying him off to Knight's daughter undermines the only simple explanation for his eager compliance. We needed more characterization of his friendship with Pippa to understand what appears to be an inexplicable willingness to comply with her desires. "Hi, I'm not going to marry you. It's really sweet of you to offer to marry me even if I'm pregnant or just desperate, and I totally adore how you're keeping the offer on the table, but would you come help me win the man I want instead?" What makes him agree? Nothing but the needs of the plot.

One aspect of the book I I really enjoyed was Pippa's frank acceptance of human sexuality and lack of disdain for sex workers. Pippa struggles to understand who would choose such a life (and if they would). I felt MacLean was having it both ways when Pippa tells a prostitute that there is no shame in the word, then tells the hero she cannot condone the life. On the one hand, a heroine refreshingly free of slut shaming. On the other, nod to conservative reader expectation. When the prostitute flips on Pippa she has a wonderful defense of her actions that again, is adjusted to reader expectation by her regret at having wronged our Pipster. I'm conflicted in my feelings about this aspect of the book.

I'm not at all conflicted about the final pages. Cross has his last minute revelation. He runs down the street to make the church on time where he finds Pippa in the foyer instead of walking down the aisle. A public proposal follows, and a babylouge ties it off in a bow. This part of the story couldn't be more cliched if it starred Hugh Grant. Pippa has called off her wedding. Why is she at the church? If not Pippa then at least her family is aware she has jilted an earl and will be subject to extreme public scrutiny. Pippa is sporting a bruised face and a blackened eye. Someone around her (oh, I don't know, Bourne?) might have feelings about her appearance. Someone might suggest (her mother?) that society is going to assume the earl beat her and thus she canceled the wedding or that her father beat her for canceling the wedding. Either way, bare faced Pippa hanging out at the church is going to create unwarranted and unsavory rumors for someone. I didn't believe that she'd appear or that she'd hang out in the lobby. Far more likely that Pippa would be at home or at the wedding breakfast (where her appearance could possibly be explained). Pippa is in the church only to facilitate the cinematic staging of her proposal. In a book so deeply concerned with logic and intellect it doesn't hold together. Plus, babylouge. So, so sick of babylouges.

I still loved One Good Earl Deserves A Lover. Books, like people, don't need perfection to be worthy of affection. We can embrace them and see their flaws simultaneously. MacLean owns me for her next release and probably two or three after that. If there's an author / reader version of reality show immunity, she's got it.

Review: One Good Earl Deserves A Lover by Sarah MacLean

Emotionally, One Good Earl Deserves a Lover is absolutely fantastic. Epic. Sheer greatness. Best Book Of The Year material. Critically, One Good Earl Deserves a Lover has substantial flaws. Much like Jennifer Ashley's book The Madness of Lord Ian MacKenzie reader investment overcomes the structural problems. I was so engaged in the story of Pippa and Cross that I forgave the book everything. In Pippa we have an educated woman free of the cultural bias authors generally ascribe to educated heroines. Pippa does not rebel against conventional femininity nor does she require anyone's defense. She is accepted by those around her. Pippa is not disdainful of people who think differently than she. This is an intellectually curious woman with difficulty understanding and processing emotional cues.

Pippa uses information as a shield against embarrassment, a way to mimic the conventional behavior that seems so alien to her. By studying the strange world most people inhabit, Pippa can move confidently within it. This brings her to Cross, a business partner of her brother in law. Pippa is marrying a perfectly nice man, a man she wants because he wants her. Pippa is aware her interests do not mirror those of conventional society. She is grateful to have found a man who honors her unique qualities. In the interest of conducting herself properly as a wife, Pippa seeks to understand human sexuality. This is a common beginning for historical romance - the naive heroine in need of a sexually experienced tutor. MacLean tweaks the plot by pairing her ingenue with a celibate. Cross is also a prodigy. Where Pippa is emotionally unconnected, Cross is attuned to the way emotions dictate human behavior. He understands and categorizes it the way another might their personal library. What is a mystery to Pippa (human sexuality and attraction) is an open book to Cross. He shares her interest in science as well as her inability to stop thinking critically about the world surrounding him. Where Pippa labels herself as odd, Cross labels himself as continually inadequate. The difference between them is larger than age or experience. It is built by their extended family. One is embraced, the other was rejected. Pippa has never before had a need to decode human interaction. Cross has always been forced to look outside his home for warm appreciation.

Because the emotional strengths of One Good Earl Deserves A Lover outweigh the structural weaknesses I'm going to run a second review after the book's release. It will discuss the dissatisfactions I had with the framing of Cross and Pippa's courtship. I'm splitting the review because I strongly recommend One Good Earl Deserves a Lover and believe it should be read without spoilers. Pre-order this one, read it at midnight and come back on the 30th to see what I have to complain about. All you need to know before you crack the cover is that MacLean has written a celibate hero, a strong female lead and an emotionally satisfying resolution. Enjoy it, for tomorrow (or in two weeks) we quibble.

Review: Deck The Halls With Love by Lorraine Heath

I think Lorraine Heath and I just broke up.

There's nothing seriously wrong in Deck The Halls With Love. The hero was once interested in the heroine but stopped chatting her up because he felt obligated to make an offer of marriage to someone else. He's free, she's not, can these crazy kids get back together? Of course they can. Deck The Halls With Love is a classic novella in the sense that you know exactly what's going to happen. Storms lead to shelter which lead to sexy times which leads to... You've read this before, except you haven't.

It's a shame, because the bones of Deck The Halls With Love are good. If the heroine was engaged to an interesting man instead of a transparent (and rarely seen) fortune hunter then we could have had a book. As it is, the hero was really into her but honor demanded he marry another (who called off the wedding) and now he wants her to call off a wedding she's not really that into. Even then, we could have had a book if anyone truly cared about honor. They don't. Mild spoiler here - the heroine is due to be married in just a few weeks. The hero makes a public proposal. Everyone shrugs and toasts them. Sure, the heroine just told the former groom she wasn't going to meet him at the altar after all, but who knows that? Fortune hunter dude hasn't had time to process the information, much less make a public announcement or discuss it with her family. You'd think someone in the crowd might point out that she's already engaged. Or ask what happened to the other guy. Or something.

A mildly pleasant and fully predictable novella with a few eye rolling moments isn't enough to break me up with a favorite author. What may have killed it for me and Heath comes later, with an excerpt from the final Lost Lords of Pembrook. It opens with the heroine's brother selling her off to a room full of men under the uncaring eye of the hero. This isn't presented as something he struggles with, something odd for him or something morally repellant. It's just what you do sometimes. You're broke so you sell off a sibling. Of course our hero decides she's so touchingly innocent (unless she's a great actress, of course. Can't have him think well of her) that he will inexplicably demand that she be his. In fact, she should be delivered to his house the next day via UPS. Wow. How can I not want to know more about this couple? He's ok with treating women like livestock, she might be too dim to know she's being sold. Will they make it work? I think you're going to have to find out without me.

Review: The Lady Most Willing by Julia Quinn, Eloisa James and Connie Brockway

In this unconnected follow up to 2010's The Lady Most Likely* Quinn, James and Brockway continue the conceit that this is more than a collection of novellas. Where it worked well in the former, it's less successful in The Lady Most Willing. Unlike the prior collection, the stories fail to flow into one tale. I struggled to finish the book. Changes in character that might be forgiven in a grouping of shorts stood out strongly when presented as part of a whole. Adding to my boredom was no real sense of suspense. Here are the couples. Watch them pair off. Four men, four women, an engagement every few chapters.

In the first tale we meet the obligatory duke and his future duchess, the mistakenly kidnapped Catriona Burns. This was the most captivating of the couples, despite being as instantly forgettable as the rest. Catriona becomes our narrator, despite not being the actual narrator of the book. It's a shock when she abruptly departs at the next chapter heading. Now our heroine is Fiona of the ruined reputation and passive aggressive acceptance. This isn't quite the Fiona we think we've gotten to know, nor is her suddenly malicious sister Marilla the same desperate girl we've been reading about. (Where did this strong dislike between the sisters come from?) Instead of two very different girls tolerating each other it's open dislike with a veil of civility. Marilla switches from overly eager young colt to vengeful nemesis. I liked the new version of Fiona but I didn't understand her. The new Marilla I'll get to later. (Catriona is now reduced to ducal snuggle sessions.)

Fiona spends most of her tale in sexual longing. Or not. Honestly, my initial interest in her quickly turned to page skimming boredom. (Everyone thinks I'm a whore. Let's have sex.) There was some weird subtext going on I didn't quite grab hold of or care enough to unearth. Fiona, thought to be sexually open is actually the victim of unwanted male desire. As a result she's repressed her natural desires. Faced with a spoiled young sibling, she carefully guards her inner passions so they cannot be detected. (Sensing a theme?) Of course this leads to sex in the stables. Because that's what this character would do when faced with something she wants. (I liked Fiona better when she was throwing the hero over and planning an independent life.)

Our not so final heroine Cecily has an abundance of everything. Blessed with face, fortune and indulgent parents she has been waiting for The One. Of course she finds him in less than a second. Meeting her hero's eyes as she leaves a carriage, Cecily is certain he's the man she's meant to wed. There is so much going on with Cecily that I don't know where to start. I don't believe at love in a glance, I think it requires at least a conversaton. A women with Cecily's options and experience deciding to seduce a man with a love them and leave them reputation was a hard hurdle to jump. Add in her later qualms about whose place it is to make the first move and Cecily just annoyed me. Toward the end of her story she started to reclaim my attention but it was too late, the book was done. And this brings me to the fourth heroine, Marilla.

I had serious problems with the presentation of Marilla. Is she a woman making the most of an opportunity? Is she a hateful bitch determined to ruin her sister? Is she an underage seductress playing games far above her experience? Is she a sensualist used to indulging herself? Marilla has only one consistent aspect to her character. The other women dislike her. The other men (save her hero, presented as no prize at all) hold her in mild contempt. Every woman in the book is given a sympathetic viewing but Marilla. She's fairly young, she's ambitious, she wants to have fun and she wants to marry someone who will indulge her. During Fiona's story she's malicious, but for the rest of the book she's misguided and impetuous. Because she is obvious in her desires and open in her goals, the other characters strongly dislike her. This rather made me dislike them. It's not that Marilla was so likeable. None of her faces were sympathetic. In a book where each character's personality quirks were explored and explained, only Marilla was freely disdained. Her happy ending is a father figure of a husband. I had issues.

The Lady Most Willing was far from the worst book I read this year. If the shorts were sold independently I'd say grab Catriona's chapters and forget the rest. Since they come as a bundle, you'll have to decide for yourself.

*In reviewing my former thoughts about The Lady Most Likely I discover that a homophobia ran through it not unlike the homophobia on display in Eloisa James recent short Seduced By A Pirate. I need to quit Eloisa James. We're not good for each other.

Review: The Importance of Being Wicked

*I've been off being all medical again, because everyone needs a hobby and reviewing books doesn't have the same flair as recreational use of anesthesia. 

Oh Miranda Neville. We should be a perfect match and yet I find myself turning you away. I admire you so. While I was reading The Importance of Being Wicked I found myself thinking how well done it was, what a refreshing idea this or that aspect of the story was. It was so polite. I didn't want to leap into the pages and shake a bitch or weep into a cotton hankie while urging them to value themselves more. It was all the admiration in the world and none of the emotional passion. This means it's not you, it's me? Or something?

Doesn't help. Let's move on. Your cover is eye catching. I hate it. It's got this shade of dyed red hair seen clutching early bird special menus coupled with a red and rust palette straight out of fall. Her tomato red dress, the crimson chaise, it's a big yawn. The title is fine. I totally want a gig naming Avon romances, except I don't drink. Avon titles are the things you come up with after a long night of partying, the punchy humor that begs for high fives. But they work. They move books and they're memorable.

The Importance of Being Wicked has nothing to do with Oscar Wilde slash (sigh) and everything to do with a Duke. (Can we just move on to pretend kings? All these dukes. I expect Julia Quinn's next book to be You Only Duke Twice featuring a widowed duchess choosing from six lovely dukes. Maybe she's been widowed twice but runs away with an earl. Crazy stuff. Or wait, it could be The Duke Of The Month Club! Our heroine has one year to choose from an assortment of dukes reaching their majorities! A free YA suggestion. It's a gift. Holidays. You know.) Thomas The Duke comes from a long line of men who marry rich women. His dad screwed that up, so Thomas wants to get back on track. Caroline is the completely broke widow housing his teenage bag of cash. Enter hijinks.

Actually there are hardly any hijinks. Neville does a great job with Caroline. Impetuous and bad with finances, she's the girl who never wants to leave the party. As long as she's hosting, people love her. With the food and wine on offer the artistic community she adores will fill the silent corners of her home. Caro wants to have fun and forget when the bill collectors come round. She's always one step ahead and two bits short. Mostly this is her ex husband's fault. Disappointing, but it's a time honored truth that a widow in want of finances is rarely to blame. Thomas The Duke is super interested in family honor, almost as much as he is in refilling the family coffers. When the bright and beautiful butterfly of Caroline crosses his path he wants to forget everything and follow her.

It's a classic set up. Neville gets deeper into the motivations and causes of the characters than most authors bother with. Caroline is alternately frustrating and delightful. Thomas is a little less clearly drawn but he's a character that can't communicate emotionally so there's that. Problems are generally addressed and worked out leaving the conflict one of putting two lives together, not finding authorial reasons to keep them apart. What kept me from connecting to The Importance of Being Wicked was the sheer amount of sequel bait it held. Here is a character, here is a ton of background, here is a different character. Rinse and repeat. So many side threads are left unresolved. I got tired of waiting for a player to factor in a meaningful way or have their own storyline summed up. The canvas felt too infinite, the players too multiple. This one is a friend but also a nemesis, an enemy but also maybe a relative, a thief but also maybe.... my patience wore out. Tell the story you are telling me. Don't lay the case for a different one. I stop caring about what we have when I'm constantly told what I'm getting. The product placement may be skillful, but it's not necessary to the tale.

Overall, my admiration for The Importance of Being Wicked overpowered my weary rejection of it's chorus line. If you like Tessa Dare or Julie Anne Long I think Miranda Neville will fit the bill nicely.

Review: A Notorious Countess Confesses by Julie Anne Long

Isn't the cover for A Notorious Countess Confesses perfectly seasonal? While I love the warm tones, I don't know that it fits the characters. This is one of those Vicar meets Courtesan books. (He's Jesus, she's Magdalene, can two crazy kids from such different backgrounds make it work?) I mean, look at her face and posture. She's thinking "As if" while he's working on his best Fabio moves. I think he's whispering something like "You promised we could!" At least they have heads. With a crop treatment the gripping hand would turn menacing. Taking the story out of it, it's well done.

But back to our Magdalene. This is the seventh novel in the Pennyroyal Green series and my first Julie Anne Long. I enjoyed about 85% of it, putting her on par with Eloisa James. In fact, I enjoyed Long's style so much I was halfway through the book before I realized she'd named her lead couple Adam and Eve. (I got over it and kept reading.) Long does a great job with Adam's uncertainty. Instead of a fire and brimstone vicar he's a man of doubt doing the best he can to muddle through. While the world of Long's Pennyroyal Green is absolutely wallpaper historical, her depiction of a conflicted man of faith rang very true. Likewise, the inhabitants of her fictional town are appropriately hypocritical. I had a little more trouble with Eve. I'm getting rather tired of famous courtesans who've barely had sex at all. In Eve's case, she's had two protectors and a spouse. A woman does not become a legendary courtesan without a nightly rate. But we will give Eve her backstory. There are plenty of readers who will balk at any number.

Eve has decided to live a respectable life, now that she's widowed. (With a fairly small living from her dead husband's estate and a number of financial responsibilities it seems unsustainable. I gave her that too.) While she could return to her former life, she wants a new one. While Eve is ready for a fresh beginning the village is already familiar with her past. Who else for Eve to turn to but the town's moral center? Adam isn't just a local boy made holy. He's the town heartthrob. Despite being of a lower financial status, Adam is the subject of many a local girl's hopes. His well attended sermons are dissected and discussed among the single girls. I found the relationships between Adam and Eve, between Eve and the matrons, between Adam and the girls plausible. The relationship between Eve and the girls made me roll my eyes. With nothing in common beyond their age, Eve is soon giving advice on men to them. This advice is rather modern. Be yourself. Make him treat you like a queen. Confidence is beauty. Eve has seen the darker sides of men. I think she'd lead with other aspects of the male / female power dynamic but if she's still a romantic who am I to argue?

85% of A Notorious Countess Confesses was a pleasure. Early in the book Eve tells Adam she has serious control issues. She makes the choices in her life, not the men. Eve's number one statement to Adam is about self determination and self direction. This is a key aspect of her personal security. Of course the HEA blows that all to hell. Adam not only disregards this, he treats her like a child while he does it. 90% of those reading A Notorious Countess Confesses will find the ending jaw droppingly romantic. Adam covers all the bases. He makes a public stand that couldn't leave anyone in doubt of his emotional stake. Eve is thrilled. I'm thinking she had a head injury somewhere along the way because the Eve from the front of the book would see right through this. I don't want to spoil the ending. Let's use a completely different example to illustrate the point. Suppose your lover invites your mother to live with you. And maybe your mother in law. Without asking you. And let's suppose both of them are out of work and emotionally needy. I'm guessing you might have feelings about that. Feelings you might express loudly, amid the slamming of a lot of doors. Because if you wanted your mother and mother in law as housemates, you could certainly arrange that yourself. As Eve is neither stupid nor completely illiterate, Adam's end of the book assumption that he knows best in all things made me crazy. Fortunately for him, he'd banged the brains right out of Eve so she found it charming. I give these crazy kids six months.

Review: Lord of Temptation by Lorraine Heath

Hated it. Hated it so much I had to stop 75 pages in and rant. Hated, hated, hated it. And I love Lorraine Heath. From any other author, Lord of Temptation would have hit the DNF pile without regret. From Lorraine Heath I had to struggle on in the belief that surely it would get better.

It did not.

Lord of Temptation is full of weary shortcuts that sketch in concepts  rather than paint portraits of real people. I didn't believe in any of these characters. Our hero is well detailed in my prior rant. He's a pirate captain and a lost lord and the sort of man who thinks of women as prey. Heath attempts to counter balance his creeptastic ways by having him passively take a few beatings and spend a lot of time thinking about what a creepier creep he'd be if not for our heroine's magically attracting ways. Our heroine is 85% social convention adherent and 15% sex positive adventurer. She's the sort of girl who can say things like "Look, I know I agreed to marry you, but five minutes ago I was banging that guy I told you I wasn't into like a shutter in a storm. Let's still get hitched, okay?" After she and her fiance work through that epic moment of truth and arrive on the morning of their wedding she asks him to stand up for her while she marries someone else.  Because it would be good for her reputation. Since I was desperate to like anyone in this novel, her refusal to be a consistent character (unless stunningly self absorbed was the object) irked me. Granted, her fiance doesn't love her but it's still all kinds of tacky from a woman who has already embarrassed the man half a dozen other ways.

My nickname for the hero, The Pirate Stalker, was more apt than I could have predicted when I first applied it. He spends more time thinking about how he usually leaves women, how when he is done with them he just disposes of them, than he does the heroine. Sleeping with the heroine is high on his list. Not having the heroine change him is right up there too. This was the sort of book where the hero spends 90% of his time whining about how the heroine is trapping him with her magic vagina. She wants things he doesn't. In real life we call that irreconcilable differences. In Romanceland it often means they haven't sexxed their problems away yet. So they have at until they do. Compounding my inability to care about this shallow pond is the unrealistic sibling relationship. In the prior book three young boys escape certain death and vow to return for their revenge. They plan their return for ten years out (legally dead at seven, but never mind that). This book resumes events two years after the return. The three brothers are still emotionally estranged, if cordial. This leads Heath to write some truly ridiculous scenes. Tristan (the hero) barges into his brother's Rafe's office (after a two year gap) to demand information on the heroine. Rafe tells him he has a nephew and Tristan is like, ok, cool, so about my question? These men are so far apart that even the news of a child isn't transmitted between them but they can barge in and out of each other's homes without challenge? Later Tristan does almost the exact same thing to his other brother. "Hi, give me what I want. Ok, bye." Whose life works like that?

You can't even cheer on the side characters. The Pirate Stalker has his own stalker, a deluded young woman determined to chain him to her side on the basis of nothing. He refuses her to her face and continually shows preference to another. Of course she steps forward and claims he is her lover. Then, scant pages later, she sits in public, in society, openly, at his surprise wedding where she is easily subdued by a whisper. Her eyes open and she realizes she's been ignoring the man for her all along. Since said man is willing to move past years of deluded thinking and a false accusation of seduction, I suppose she's right. Mental, but right. This is the sort of shortcut plotting that passes for depth in Lord of Temptation. I'm fighting to give the book two stars when I do my Amazon review because there are truly worse books out there, I just don't think Lorraine Heath wrote them. If you're looking for escapist sexxy times 1978 flashback pirate pages, Lord of Temptation is for you. It was absolutely not for me.

Review: The Way To A Duke's Heart by Caroline Linden

Yea, go ahead and buy it.

I love almost everything about this book. I like everything on the cover from the color balance to the "Bitch, please" stare of the heroine. Linden finishes her The Truth About The Duke series with the best of the three. (I admit I had my concerns about this one.) Having reviewed both the prior books I decided to finish the series out. I'm so glad I stuck with Linden. In fact, I liked The Way To A Duke's Heart so much I think you should go ahead and start there. Nothing really happens in the prior books that is vital to the third. Look, I'll get you ready. There's this Duke In Waiting named Charlie. He's got two brothers and an inheritance issue. His brothers have tried to help but both of them wised up and dumped the ball back where it belongs. Charlie has had enough time to feel sorry for himself and work on his Daddy Issues. It's crunch time. (That's it. You're good to go.)

Our heroine is an awkward businesswoman on a mission. With her brother considering investment in the latest canal scheme Tessa is off to investigate the legitimacy of this enterprise. Trusted by her family, unable to trust those outside it, Tessa doesn't want to suck up to a charmer in the hotel lobby. Since Tessa might hold the key to Charlie's dilemma, he charms her elderly companion instead. Tessa says ok, whatever, that's cool. I've got books to audit and swamps to slog. You do you, Charlie. I'm busy doing me. Which she does. Sadly for Tessa, Charlie is trying to do her too. (But not that way.) He pretends an interest in the canal investment as a pretext for investigating Tessa's involvement in his dilemma. Continuing Linden's tradition of bucking some time honored Regency conventions it turns out that Tessa is a completely disinterested bystander. She has nothing at all to do with the mysterious blackmailer that's been mucking up Charlie's life. Nor is she willing to be a diversion while Charlie evades his responsibilities.

The evolution of Charlie from sulky party boy to Duke Of Tessa's Dreams is very well done. Both characters know who they are and (more importantly) why they are. Tessa and Charlie offer each other the same thing - someone to take them seriously and hold them accountable. Charlie respects Tessa's intelligence. As a man well aware of his own shortcomings he can easily see the strength in hers. For her part, Tessa has no experience of him. She sees a man well positioned to make changes in people's lives so she expects him to do so. While she guides him toward responsibility he leads her into frivolity. They are well suited to each other and to the plot. It's a nice balance Linden maintains for almost the whole of the book. My only complaint about The Way To A Duke's Heart arrives shortly after The Truth About The Duke is revealed. The truth itself is satisfying in content and execution. The events just following that are a failure for me. In exploring his past Charlie falls into one of my genre pet peeves. "If I had sex with you and you're not the hero / heroine, you completely suck." Yes, Charlie has a Crazy Bitch Ex in his past (as does Tessa) and the CBE briefly becomes the books focus. Handled just a little differently the CBE would have lifted the book from very good to possibly brilliant. As it stands the CBE bogs us down before being swept to the side as Tessa and Charlie get on with the getting on.

If you've been following the series or not, The Way To A Duke's Heart is a fun read. I like Linden's way with characterization. With this book the author moves off my TBR and onto my auto-buy list. (If nothing else, her strong voice knocked Charlie Sheen out of my mind for the entire read. I didn't think that was going to be possible.)

Review: The Ugly Duchess by Eloisa James

I suppose instantly forgettable isn't the best way to describe a book I plan to recommend. Here's the difficulty. I read The Ugly Duchess a week ago and had some fourth act problems with it. I decided to wait a few days before writing the review. In the interim I completely forgot what my problems were. I also forgot everything about the book itself. Scanning early reviews didn't trigger any recollections so I read the darn thing again. I still like it and I still have issues with the fourth act.

The Ugly Duchess is a forced marriage of deception tale. Theo is the sort of gawky and insecure young heroine romance loves. She's smart and ready to rebel. Her mother dresses her inappropriately, her guardian taps into her funds. In an effort to impress a young man she admires Theo reveals a caustic way with words. Of course this will (eventually) lead to her finding out the price of those words as she earns her own moniker (and the book gains it's title). Remember ladies, be nice or be silent.

Theo's bank account has been raided by her guardian, the father of our soon to be Duke, James. James must marry Theo to obscure his father's crime. As it happens, James and Theo are already in love yet unaware of it. I'll give Eloisa James that because the portrait of our hero and heroine as young teens is so pitch perfect. Everything is emotional. Everything is unforgivable. Everything is the most important thing to happen to anyone ever. They romp about like the puppies they are, reveling in their new freedom from their parents, eager to grab the reins of their lives. Everything will be different now. Of course, parents are not so easily dismissed. The reins of life can be hard to control. Soon the bubble bursts. Theo is left abandoned, alone but for her mother (she apparently had no friends but James) and her money. She sets herself to rebuilding his estates and repressing everything about herself that James loved. (It defies logic, but there it is.)

James falls in with pirates. At first it's just for the thrill of it but later (when he needs to make things right with Theo) he reveals his true calling was freeing slaves. Because of course it would be. Never mind that when he decides to embark on piracy it's nothing at all to do with slavery. Both Theo and James are afraid to face their true selves, afraid to demand their true lives because of the self inflicted shame they carry. A major theme of The Ugly Duchess is life after parents. Who are you without your parents to appreciate? Who are you without your parents to defy? Who are you when death removes the mirror you've viewed yourself in? For both James and Theo death has been a major force for personal reinvention. We rejoin James and Theo as a couple when seven years have passed. Theo is preparing for her new life as a legal widow. James has had a sudden revelation and returned. Instead of the warm and passionate woman he left, James finds a repressed woman who finds the idea of sex unpleasant.

Here we fall into the fourth quarter abyss. I feel as though Eloisa James loses interest in her books at the close. They either dip into the farcical or speed to the end. Here, when James and Theo reunite as different people with an ocean of life experience and pain between them, is where the story should begin. Here, with no desire for sex or children, with no true excuses for abandonment, in the ashes of their youth, is the meat of the tale. Except it isn't. Theo goes from frigid to fire with haste. It's a high school reunion. The star couple has an Appletini or six and shack up for the rest of the event. The love they had for each other as children is pasted onto the adults they became then used as an excuse to wipe away the intervening years. One moment a character doesn't ever want children, the next they adore babies. One moment the thought of sex inspires self contempt, the next it's bloomers in the bushes. Add to that a closing chapter with the requisite show of brute force in defense of Theo's honor (violence - so hot and manly) and it's like a hundred other books.  Which is a shame. The first 2/3 of The Ugly Duchess is wonderful enough to still make this a four star read for me.

Review: Scandal Wears Satin by Loretta Chase

 Loretta Chase is a victim of high expectations. Scandal Wears Satin is a perfectly serviceable book with a few flaws. Unfortunately when you write like Loretta Chase does you end up being graded on a curve. This is my least favorite Chase book but it still beats most of the wallpaper historical authors working. I want to establish that I know this book would kill as a debut novel. As the second installment of The Dressmakers series it collapses under it's own weight.


Scandal Wears Satin wants to be too many things to too many characters. This keeps it from truly serving any. It also has a tic. I hate that. It can be J.D. Robb running an anal, it can be Jayne Castle and her coff-tea, it can be Loretta Chase and the surname Noriot. I don't care about the context, a tic drives me out of the story and up a wall. In Scandal Wears Satin the word Noirot is an all purpose wallpaper covering a multitude of plot needs.  Why does Sophy do that / think that / feel that? Because she is a Noirot. Often repeatedly. The problem is that while Chase understands enough of what being a Noirot means for the explanation to satisfy, the reader does not. It was her Noriot pride and her Noriot lack of morality and her Noriot style coupled with her Noriot wit that made Sophy a chore to hang out with. Sophy has what could be a fascinating backstory kept hidden from view by the gauzy hand wave of her surname. Sophy also has three sisters. What richer soil is there than the sibling relationship between women? It's never used. Occasionally her older sister (from the prior book) will comfort her or she will worry about the possible reaction of the third sister. (The third sister is nearly invisible.) We have Sophy, from a family of grifters who died of cholera in Paris. She sneaks around London in disguise, works as a columnist and is co-owner of a dress shop. Her sister has recently married a Duke. So of course we spend all our time with Longmore.

Longmore's family is even more fascinating than Sophy's fabled Noriot line. First of all, he's titled and rich. His sister is impulsive and somewhat spoiled. His mother dislikes Sophy. Ok, that's it, we're done. Of course the problems of the extended Longmore clan are the most interesting place to go with this story. It is obvious. Even a Noirot could see it. Or someone who isn't a Noirot. I get confused. Anyway, we also have a street kid with a host of nicknames and a few deft skills that is also just window dressing. His story doesn't go anywhere either. 90% of Scandal Wears Satin involves getting Longmore's incredibly boring sister out of the incredibly predictable problem she's gotten herself into. While there are some interesting side note (Love, love, love Hampton Court as a retirement home) most of the book is just waiting for a different book to happen. Why does Sophy even like Longmore? She thinks he's an idiot. Why does he feed her delusion that he's slow? He shows every sign of intelligence. Why does the rival shop from the prior book enter the picture at all? It doesn't affect the plot in any significant way. Everything about Scandal Wears Satin leads to why? Perhaps it all becomes clear in a third book, perhaps not. Either way I wanted more from the excellent start to this series than I received from Scandal Wears Satin. Maybe it's the Noirot in me.

Review: A Night Like This by Julia Quinn

Smythe-Smiths,  I adore you.

Quinn writes firmly in Regencyland. She's not interested in layering on the historical accuracy. Where she excels is light comedic romance with well conceived side characters. You don't read a Quinn book solely for the hero and heroine, you read it for the ensemble cast. Few authors can pull this off without sliding into slapstick. There's something reminiscent of Alcott in Quinn's best books. If anyone ever markets Little Women With Land Sharks they need to tap Quinn for the job.

In this second book of the Smythe-Smith series we pick up independent of the first but in the midst of it's conclusion. Daniel has returned from a three year duel induced exile to find his best friend involved with his sister. Daniel left a slightly spoiled but basically good man and he returns as someone much older. He is not haunted by his experiences, but he is informed. Which will be needed since he has set his sights on his cousin's governess. Anne has made some unwise choices in her youth which led to her own exile from the rich and entitled. Of the two, I liked Anne better. Daniel has a strong sense of family and a realistic self importance (without being overbearing) but he doesn't quite spark for me. I never fully engaged with Daniel, although I liked him.

Anne has the clearer eyes. She cannot afford to lose her job (and thus her safety) because Daniel won't stop flirting with her. She makes every effort to avoid him, but Daniel is still the oldest son of a privileged family. What he wants to do, he does. Anne's inability to shut him down encourages his pursuit, even as he realizes it's not in her best interests. Anne knows that a few choices made differently would make Daniel's interest in her fairly acceptable. Those choices belonged to a younger woman, a woman she can't admit to being. Quinn places the bulk of A Night Like This firmly in her area of strength. When the focus is on family (Daniel, Anne's, the Duelist's) the book glides. The children Anne oversees squabble appropriately. The adults meddle in appropriate ways. Late in the book is where A Night Like This hits a few wrong notes.

Anne and Daniel both have stalkers. For the most part, this is handled exceptionally well. Until it isn't. I don't think the final chapters are poorly written, there is just a bit too much for my taste. Anne's stalker has a viable reason for his actions. I believed him just as I believed the actions of her parents. Unfortunately Quinn doesn't believe him. As a result she gives the stalker a secondary motivation that I couldn't buy. It was a step too far. Without that additional motivation, I would call this one a complete home run. A Night Like This is still a great read. If Quinn decides to move forward a generation, I hope Anne is the matriarch chosen.

*PS - While I love the colors chosen for this Cinderella cover, I have to question the model's balance. Either her legs are exceptionally long or she's about to take a facer in the mud. Unstable ground, spike heels, long skirts and that leg extension? Tragic.