All of the books that I read this year were romance novels (i.e., were marketed as romance, were written by romance genre authors, or can be considered as belonging to a particular subcategory of romance). One of my goals was to read at least one romance novel from every decade of the past 100 years (1920s to 2020) and I'm happy to say that I succeeded. I hope that putting the reviews of all my reads this year on one page like this will help to emphasize the genre's evolution and growth over the decades, as well as the variety that its many subcategories offer to readers. You can read more about old romance novels on my Facebook group "Vintage Paperback Romance Novels" (please join!).
A note about the ratings: Goodreads uses a 5-star rating system, with 5 stars being for the best books, 1 star being for the worst. Goodreads doesn't allow half stars, but I have used them here for this blog. Here is what I intend each star to indicate:
5 stars = I absolutely loved it, highly recommended
4 stars = very enjoyable, better than average
3 stars = enjoyable, a good solid read
2 stars = didn't enjoy it, had problems with it
1 star = I hated it (Thankfully I've not yet given a book only one star.)
Bias alert: My own reading preferences skew towards historical romance, so those novels are more likely to score higher with me than other types of romance novels. Also thicker novels (300+ pages) are more likely to be rated higher than thinner books (200 pages or less) because I tend to be more impressed by their grander scale. My favorite novel that I read this year was The Yankee Widow by Linda Lael Miller (2019), a 460-page historical that takes place during the US Civil War.
BOOKS I READ IN 2020:
Rating: 3 stars
Read: March 15-19, 2020
Review: This was Emilie Loring's first novel (although she had written for magazines several years previously); my copy is the 4th printing of the 1969 Bantam edition, which was book #42 in their line of Loring reissues. (Loring wrote 30 books before her death in 1951; 20 more novels were published under her name after her death, ghostwritten by others.) It's fascinating to read a romance novel written almost a hundred years ago, which contains the trope of "a marriage of convenience" (where a couple marries for reasons other than love). In this case, the couple marry because a wealthy oil tycoon, Daniel Glamorgan, wants his daughter Geraldine ("Jerry") to marry into a family with a good name (since the Glamorgans have money but not respectable status). Peter Courtlandt is in financial debt to Glamorgan, but Daniel offers to not foreclose on his home if Courtland's son Steve will agree to marry Jerry, whom Steve has never met. The arrangement is agreed to, but then there is another complication (and familiar trope): a deceased relative's will states that Steve can only inherit if he lives on a remote ranch in Wyoming with his wife for a year. This is also reluctantly agreed to, and so the couple move to the ranch and eventually learn to be married in more than name only.
Most of the novel takes place out on the ranch and has the feel of a western (albeit in the 1920s); unfortunately I enjoyed the novel more before they went out west since the drawing room banter was more fun to read. The writing style can sometimes be a bit of a chore to get through when it is spending time describing how things look, and the characters are not particularly likable. There are a lot of folks that show up out here by the ranch, including (a bit unbelievably) ones from earlier in the book as well as Steve's wartime (WW1) past. The narrative drags and doesn't really get interesting until Chapter 14, as the mystery about the criminal plot picks up. This paperback edition is "A Bantam Romance" (as it says on the cover), but the romance angle doesn't come into the forefront again until near the end of the book, almost like an anti-climax after the criminal plot has been foiled.
However it is written well and there are some interesting observations on life here and there. The age of the novel lends an extra historical appeal, too. For example, in chapter 3, when Jerry argues with an old man, she says "What a pre-nineteenth amendment sentiment." (The 19th amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which gave women the right to vote, was ratified in 1920.) The silent film actress Nazimova is mentioned at one point. Of course there are also some racial stereotypes on display, to the novel's detriment. One of the young men working on the ranch (who is involved in the novel's secondary romance) is often quoting lines of classic literature -- lines which may have been common knowledge in 1922, but were mostly unknown to me. A modern reader might have fun Googling the lines that are quoted to find out where they came from. While I'm glad I read the novel to obtain a taste of an early Loring effort, I doubt that I would read it again for pleasure or recommend it to others. It was just too much of a chore to get through in order to savor the small bits of enjoyment that it offered.
Rating: 3 stars
Read: June 30-July 15, 2020
Review: This book was originally published in 1932, although the copyright info inside says "1928, 1932," which suggests to me that it first appeared in a periodical (magazine or newspaper) in 1928 before its hardcover first edition was published in 1932. (I don't know if the 1928 version differs from the 1932 book version.) My own copy is a Paperback Library edition from June 1968. This is a thin novel, running only 176 pages, but it took me a long time to read because the story is slow-moving until the last few chapters when things pick up speed, when some intrigue is thrown into the plot with the disappearance of some architectural plans and the surprising reveal about who stole them.
I'd wanted to read a Kathleen Norris novel for a while, since she was a popular (albeit now largely-forgotten) writer in the development of the romance genre in the first half of the 20th century -- so I chose this book first because it wasn't too long. (Previously I'd only read a short story that she had written, not an entire novel.) I wasn't sure initially if her books would necessarily be considered "romance" novels, given that the bulk of her output pre-dates the establishment of the paperback "romance novel" genre. (She was born in 1880 and died in 1966.) I'm happy to report that Younger Sister is very much a romance novel, with a HEA for our couple. The book does have the widest age disparity of any romance novel that I've yet read: our heroine Beatrice is 20 years old and was working for our hero, the wealthy Hugh Challoner, who is 48. Bea is the younger sister (hence the book's title) of Hugh's secretary Marcia who is 29. Marcia falls ill, and Hugh helps them and their mother, in the process falling in love with Bea and marries her in the middle of Chapter 2. Marcia and her mother are sent off to California to recuperate, while Bea spends her days with Hugh living in his mansion and enjoying a carefree lifestyle.
Norris' descriptions of tennis and golf games, and the various outfits worn by the characters, imparts a fascinating and attractive picture of life among the well-to-do in the 1920s and 1930s. I have to admit that I love reading about this life of leisure as might be seen in an old B&W movie of the period. And Norris' writing style, particularly the scenes of nature, are well-written and evocative. (A sample from page 100: "The light of sunset streamed across the world and lay blood-red on the pine needles, and in stripes of red down the rough trunks. An exquisite and unearthly silence reigned, even though there was a faint sound of laughter and voices from the direction of the kitchen, and now and then the distant honk of a motor horn. A little rabbit came fearfully from the brush and stood listening, his head raised; the sun's light shining through his ears turned them to glass.")
The conflict of the novel concerns Hugh's son Bert, a flirtatious and unfocused (career-wise) young man who is actually older than Bea. Bert's attentions toward Bea do not go unnoticed by his father, and only confirm his own self-doubt about the wisdom of having married such a young girl. Although 20 years old, Bea's innocence about life often makes her seem even younger; it was her fresh and youthful outlook that made her so attractive to Hugh in the first place. But he begins to think that he has been selfish in marrying her. Some misunderstandings and lack of communication -- even an occasional lie -- contribute to the problem, as well as the involvement of a woman who had been friends with Hugh's deceased former wife and wishes that she had married Hugh instead of Bea. The various problems are straightened out satisfactorily by tale's end, with a small moment of sadness for one of the characters on the final page, the one who doesn't get to be the recipient of Bea's love. (So, for those people who turn up their nose at happy endings, the book also provides a sad ending as a bonus.) I had my doubts at the beginning whether I would like this novel or not, but as things moved along it got better and better. By the last few chapters, I was reading faster and even looking a page ahead in suspense at what would happen next. It's a bit old-fashioned, but for those like myself who are partial to vintage stuff, that only adds to the book's appeal.
Rating: 4 stars
Read: April 5-8, 2020
Review: This thin 191-page novel by Faith Baldwin (1893-1978) was originally published in 1933; my copy is a paperback edition published by Warner Paperback Library in Sept. 1973. It is a bit surprising that publishers in the 1970s often re-released such old novels with new covers that look contemporary (the characters depicted with then-modern hairstyles and fashions) when, as in the case of this book, it was really 40 years old. According to a Kirkus review, it was "serialized in Good Housekeeping under the title Jigsaw." The novel deals with two young adults, Peter and Margie, who grew up together and have feelings of love for each other. Peter's beautiful and elegant mother Grace has decided to leave Peter's father Chester (for whom the Great Depression has hit hard) in favor of a wealthy good-looking playboy named Kim Crosby. This development has caused a lot of anguish in the extended family (I'm leaving out a lot of additional characters in this short summary).
I very much enjoyed the writing, which sometimes reminded me of watching an old B&W movie from that time, with amusing dialogue and interesting scenes of people interacting. The writing was fascinating from a historical perspective, too; for example when Margie distinguishes her own level-headed generation from the beer-crazy Jazz age that preceded it. "Flaming youth's a heap of cinders and sheiks and shebas only exist in novels no one reads any more," she tells Peter. The impact of not only the Depression is felt here, but the consequences of the Great War (WW1), with one character having been psychologically harmed by his wartime experience. The novel emphasizes the damage that divorce causes to others beyond solely the couple involved, with Grace's husband telling her: "You can't blunder into marriage, believing, and then smash your way out as blindly, leaving destruction." When Grace informs her father (automobile pioneer August Smith) that she's no longer in love with Chester, he replies: "Not IN love. Loving. That's different. Building. You haven't built much. If you had you'd think twice before you pulled down with your own hands what your own hands had carpented together." The condemnation is made easier due to Kim Crosby being such a self-centered cad who soon turns his attention to Margie, who is half his age.
Baldwin wrote well, in a style of the times that seems almost like the omniscient narrator is taking the reader into her confidence, with an occasional observation on human nature, reminiscent (to me) of one of my favorite writers, O. Henry. There is one quirk that I didn't like that much: her tendency to break up a sentence in a way that makes the reader have to stop and untangle it. Here's an example from Chapter Six: "She was, he realized, observing her more closely day after day, an extraordinarily pretty girl, her loveliness dependent less on feature than on coloring and youth and altering mood." A writer who put clarity ahead of effect likely would have written the same sentence this way: "Observing her more closely day after day, he realized she was an extraordinarily pretty girl, her loveliness dependent less on feature than on coloring, youth and altering mood." And yet Baldwin's unique style helps to distinguish it from the norm, and perhaps she was more concerned with how the sentences sounded than how they looked on the page.
I enjoyed this novel more than I expected to. I assumed that it would be stodgy and old-fashioned, but young people are young in any era and their breezy manner kept things fresh despite the book's age. So, now I want to read more books by Faith Baldwin.
Rating: 3.5 stars
Read: May 2-22, 2020
Review: This book was originally published in 1946 by Hutchinson & Co. The UK publisher Arrow Books released it in paperback in 1970; my copy is an Arrow Books edition from 1975. (In the U.S., Pyramid Books published this novel in 1974 as book #68 in their line of Barbara Cartland books.) I'd only read one other Cartland novel before (a later one, written in 1989) and so I was surprised that this story takes place in the present, instead of the 1800s like the other Cartland book I'd read. This early Cartland novel also seems more substantial than her thinner later books when she was churning one out every month. The novel begins initially from the perspective of the hero, but soon switches to the heroine's perspective for the rest of the book. This is unfortunate because it has the effect of making the hero, John, a less sympathetic person since his feelings and motivations are kept hidden from the reader. The gist of the story is that our heroine Ann is the oldest (adult) daughter in a family where both parents have died. (Her father, a doctor who treats John, dies early in the novel.) John is wealthy and instead of simply using his wealth to pay the family's bills so that they can stay in their home, he asks Ann to marry him with the understanding that they are not a romantic couple. Ann goes to live with John and meets his family (consisting of some memorable characters) and in the process Ann becomes more aware of her previous poverty-stricken status and gradually upgrades her appearance to better fit in. This part of the book almost reads like a Regency romance, even though it takes place after World War Two. Ann is a very serious, somewhat pious person, who tries to fix the lives of others, but can't fix the problem of her somewhat cold relationship with John. Near the end of the book, he tries to force himself on her, but stops before doing more than kissing her and tearing her nightgown at the shoulder. There is some unfortunate language in the text about Ann surrendering to John as her master, and many readers will see the ending as less romantic and more pathetic. For me, the final sentence's mention of her tears as she kisses a triumphant John disturbingly brought to mind Winston Smith's professed love for Big Brother at the end of George Orwell's 1984. Also near the end there are a few scenes where characters engage in lengthy dialogue at Ann, explaining their life story (turns out John doesn't express emotions because he was raised that way) which reminded me of an old B&W movie where an actor would give a little climactic speech with syrupy music flowing underneath. For all its faults, however, I liked this book. Sometimes I only wanted to rate this 3 stars, but given its length and its complexity compared to later Cartland, and a satisfying finish (despite some loose ends and that "master" stuff) I'll go with a 3.5 star rating.
Rating: 2 stars
Read: April 26-30, 2020
Review: This book, as the introduction by the author explains, was originally published as a novel for younger readers, although the old-fashioned writing style would not really be ideal for young readers today. (An example: "Marie Louise continued to snuggle down under her eiderdown, while she went through her devotional exercises, but she had no time to linger over these or to indulge her feeling of lassitude." Imagine page after page like that and you'll get the idea.) It turns out that this is not a romance novel, despite the cover image of the elegant couple staring into each other's eyes and the book's subtitle: "A Cycle Between Two Creole Weddings." In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Avon Books published many of Keyes' novels from previous decades, with her name appearing like a brand logo on the front covers along with an illustration depicting a couple together in a romantic pose. (My copy was published by Avon in Sept. 1970.)
Keyes was a woman who wrote about women and relationships, but her novels do not conform to the modern rules of a romance novel. If one is expecting to read a romance, one will be disappointed. The female lead in this novel, Marie Louise Villere, is introduced to the reader as a child and we watch her grow up in subsequent chapters. The man that she will eventually marry, Fernand Claiborne, is mentioned in Chapter Two (page 40), again in Chapter Three (page 54), and the focus of one paragraph in Chapter Eleven (pgs. 163-164). He doesn't begin courting Marie Louise until the final chapter (Chapter Twelve, page 169). Their wedding day is described on pages 174 and 175. The book ends on page 176, so obviously this story is not much of a romance. Perhaps theirs was a great love story in real life, but if so that is not effectively conveyed by Keyes.
Although ostensibly a novel, the book is based on the real life of an actual woman who lived in New Orleans in the 1880s (although exact dates are not given) whom Keyes met when she was in her old age. There is no plot per se; the narrative consists of a seemingly random series of scenes from Marie Louise's childhood. The book's main interest lies in its numerous historical details. If one likes history, that's great, but for the average reader the frequent digressions describing clothing and daily routines in minute detail, and the continual introduction of more friends and neighbors, may soon prove tiresome. Several times I had to reread a paragraph because I found my mind wandering elsewhere.
Even as an attempt at faithfully recreating the past, however, the book has a blind spot in its lack of self-awareness when it comes to the characters' privilege and perpetuates that privilege in the omission of those persons outside their social status. The best example of this is probably Chapter Seven which concerns our young heroine's friendship with Winnie Davis, the daughter of Jefferson Davis, and her visits to their estate, Beauvoir. The Davis family is portrayed sympathetically, which many readers will find nauseating. African-American characters are not demonized in the book, but are barely present -- a subtle way of indicating their insignificance. On page 76, there is a paragraph mentioning the Villere family's Black servants, who are superstitious about pecans from a particular tree. Two of the servants are named elsewhere in the text ("Victorine, the parlormaid, and Mathilde, the chambermaid") who are "both coal black, of medium size, and without marked characteristics beyond their kindness, efficiency and good manners." The reader learns more about what the Villere family had for breakfast each morning than about the Black people serving invisibly in their midst. More time is spent on the lighter-skinned characters: Placide, the son of the family's cook Clarisse (who "was a very light multatress"); he "was even lighter than she" and "did not consider himself a servant, and was not referred to as such." Placide gets a whole page devoted to himself, which consists mainly of his laboring as a shoe mender. "Placide was a credit to his class and his kind," Keyes writes on page 123. "His sister Rosa, who was a beauty and could have passed for white anywhere...."
One could dismiss this objection as simply a sign of less enlightened times, but I think that excuse lets Keyes off the hook instead of holding the writer accountable for the choices she made about what was important to include and what wasn't. And for Keyes, including detailed accounts of a trip to the candy store or the workings of a dollhouse were evidently more important than the lives of the Black people serving the Villere family every day. Had their stories been included, this would have been a more interesting and worthwhile book. So far this is the only book by Keyes that I've read, and the bias toward the privileged class evident in this novel makes me question whether I ought to bother reading the others that she wrote, if they have the same blind spot about race as this one does. Unfortunately, despite all of the historical details and research that clearly went into writing this book, it's a 2-star rating for me.
Rating: 2 stars
Read: May 23-26, 2020
Review: Cecile Gilmore (1898-1986) "wrote romantic fiction in the 1940's and early 1950's," according to her New York Times obituary, writing at least 13 novels (although only seven are listed on FictionDB and only four on Goodreads). My copy is a Berkley Medallion paperback apparently published in 1962. The copyright page says that "a shortened version" of the novel had appeared earlier in Redbook magazine, and the front cover says "Complete and Unabridged." Since the book is only 126 pages long, such a blurb seems a bit unnecessary -- we're not talking Gone with the Wind here. Once again, this being an early romance novel, the "rules" that have grown up around the genre have not yet taken hold here. Instead of this being the story of a romance between a man and a woman, told from their meeting until their union, what we have is the story of three married women who have gone to the Virgin Islands to secure an easy divorce from their husbands. As they spend their days on the beach, eating light meals at the small hotel, or waiting for the boat with mail to arrive, each one of them individually encounters a handsome young man named Martin Jardine to whom they tell the story of their unhappy marriages.
Early on (page 34) there is a hint that Martin is more than what he appears when one of the women asks him if he is trustworthy and he replies "As trustworthy as -- as God" (which I chalked up to clumsy writing at first). When the women tell their stories, the narrative switches over to first person for awhile and then back again, perhaps to make their talking look less like a lecture. The novel has a slice-of-life feel to it, but that also makes it a bit dull, too. The beach setting provides a sensuality to the tale, somewhat undercut by the dangers of the environment ("there are barracuda that can kill you, and poisonous coral you can cut yourself on and die of lockjaw, not to mention nasty little sea urchins with their dreaded barbs, and something slimy that blisters you like hot, splattering grease if it touches you"). There are two instances of animal cruelty depicted which are disturbing, including the deliberate drowning of a friendly dog.
It was refreshing, however, to read a story about three married woman bonding over their troubles, including a fourth, older woman who runs the hotel they are staying at. It was interesting to read some of the descriptions of how wives were expected to behave during this era, which contributed to their unhappiness. And the handsome young man Martin is described in a way that reflects the female gaze. (An example: "She was curious to see him closer, after what the others had told her, so she approached him with confidence, her eyes cataloguing him as she came. Tall and broad-shouldered, narrow and lean-looking from the waist down.") In the end, two of the three women go back to their husbands and it turns out that the third woman technically isn't married since her "husband" already has a wife. Martin's true identity is never fully revealed, presumably being some mystical force of Nature that tries to prevent women from getting divorces. The third woman doesn't meet her true love interest until the last few sentences of the book, which gives the story a bit of a Twilight Zone style twist but leaves a lot of questions unanswered.
I'm only giving this book 2 out of 5 stars because I don't think it worked. It tried to impart a sense of mysticism about Nature and also make a romance out of it using the lives of three women. But while there are a few good scenes here and there, it doesn't make a ton of sense in the end. I appreciated the sensuality of the setting, but the plot felt contrived and ultimately the novel wasn't satisfying to read.
Rating: 3 stars
Read: April 26-29, 2020
Review: This book was originally published in 1956 under the title City Nurse; my copy was published circa 1980 by Modern Promotions (Unibook). Despite the title, the novel takes place primarily in the mansion of Peter Callaway, a wealthy invalid who requires a live-in nurse (our heroine, Linette Stokes), the house being located in the country, away from the city (Atlanta, GA). Linette takes Callaway's grumpy manner in stride and develops a romantic relationship with Dr. Powell who occasionally visits the house to check on the patient. There is a secondary romance involving Peter's niece Anne and a truckdriver that she met when her car ran out of gas on a remote country road. Chapters 9 and 11 focus entirely on Anne's romance and can almost stand alone as its own (albeit incomplete) story. Interestingly there are two prominent Black characters in the book who are portrayed sympathetically, although they are subservient stereotypes: Ezra the elderly butler and Amanda the overweight cook. The book is short, only 128 pages, but nonetheless I found it a satisfying read.
Rating: 3 stars
Read: October 13-19, 2020
Review: Ace Books tended to be vague in providing publication info inside their books; this one says "Copyright, 1957, by Frances Sarah Moore" and "An Ace Book, by arrangement with Thomas Bouregy & Co., Inc." From what I've learned on the internet, this Ace paperback edition was published in 1963 (see here and scroll down to D-577). The novel was first published in January 1957 by Avalon Books, a hardcover imprint owned by Bouregy. Frances Sarah Moore was a pseudonym of Canadian writer Elsie Frances Mack (Mrs. Norman Mack). The plot of the novel concerns a young nurse named Margi Leigh who has inexplicably inherited a large house from an elderly patient who passed away. The house is presently occupied by three eccentric old ladies. Margi has no intention of keeping the house because she needs the money from its sale in order to marry Sam Ryall, a young doctor who works at the hospital and who is just beginning his medical career. Sam had declined to have a romantic relationship with Margi because both had no money and Sam had financial obligations to his brother's education as well. So, it just wouldn't work out. If Margi can sell the house for $25,000 (in 1957 money) perhaps then Sam will be willing to marry her. As for the three old ladies living there -- "well, that was just too bad..." (page 31).
One of the good things about doing a historical retrospective of the romance genre (as I've been doing this year) is that it forced me to read and finish some novels that I otherwise would have given up on. For many readers, life is too short and there are too many books to read to waste time on one that isn't enjoyable, so they DNF it ("did not finish"). I personally never give a Goodreads review to a book that I didn't finish because a book can change halfway through, or the characters can grow on the reader after awhile. At the beginning of this book, I thought the heroine Margi was not likable due to her attitude about money and I felt the same about the presumed hero Sam. But as Margi spends more time with the eccentric old ladies and the nephew of one of them (who becomes the new romantic interest, although Margi doesn't realize that until the end) the story became more enjoyable and the characters more likable. Margi learns to grow as a person, ultimately realizing that "everything she did and thought and felt had been and forever would be interwoven and related to the thoughts and feelings and deeds of everyone with whom she came in contact" (page 158). In other words, she was not alone and she mattered to others.
There's a bit of a "meta" moment when Margi recalls her mother on page 13, feeling "Pity for all the years Ma had wasted in gripes and alibis and grade-B movies and paperback novels. And the junk Ma went for! Give her a good book and she'd use it as a doorstop..." Moore was a good writer and I think she knew it. Although this paperback is marketed as a nurse novel, with a depiction of the heroine dressed as a nurse on the cover and an ad on the back page for eleven more nurse novels from Ace Books, it often reads more like general fiction about a young woman's decisions about her life that involves her romantic future. I enjoyed this novel more than I had expected to. There is a happy ending for everyone involved, even if things don't turn out exactly as Margi had planned.
Rating: 3 stars
Read: April 12-13, 2020
Review: This book was originally published in 1958; my copy was published circa 1980 by Modern Promotions (Unibook). The novel is a typical 1950s romance, suitable reading for a teenage reader, with a scenic fishing camp as the backdrop. The young, somewhat-immature and naive heroine Jill wonders if the new secretive young man Hank (who unexpectedly showed up at the camp that her parents run) is really the one for her. (They've only known each other for a few weeks, but it is already true love between them.) The title is a reference to love being more important in a relationship than money. The lesson is reinforced by the wise comments of Jill's parents as well as the negative example provided by Maureen, a money-hungry pursuer of Hank's affection. It's not a bad book, but not great either; it reminded me of the prose equivalent of an old romance comic book, although with a more involved storyline. All in all, a pleasant if unremarkable read.
Rating: 4 stars
Read: March 25-26, 2020
Review: This book was originally published in 1960; my copy is a 2nd Ballantine Books printing from Jan. 1977. This is the first novel that I've read by Alice Chetwynd Ley (1913-2004), but it won't be the last, as I hope to read more of her books after having thoroughly enjoyed this one. It reads like a traditional Regency novel, although the time period is not specified and only the title indicates that it takes place in the Georgian era (late 1700s). If one is looking for a lot of historical references in one's fiction, look elsewhere. The novel's strength lies in its plucky and likable young heroine Amanda Twyford, the banter amongst London society ("the Town" as it is called), and an intriguing mystery about a secret group that holds sinister rituals in a ruined old abbey. The latter subplot offers the highlight of the book when Amanda disguises herself among their number to investigate their meeting-place during a nighttime thunderstorm, in a scene reminiscent of a Gothic romance or an old Hammer horror movie. The bulk of the story, however, consists of Amanda's attempts to break off her sister's marriage of convenience to the disreputable Charles Barsett (the rake of the book's title). Ley throws the reader off the trail with a twist near the end about whose character is noble and whose is not that came as a bit of a surprise to me, but not without some plausibility. I read this book in only two days, which is fast for me, which indicates that the story is a page-turner that kept me interested, wanting to see how things would turn out. Recommended!
Rating: 3.5 stars
Read: February 10-19, 2020
Review: My copy is the 3rd printing Fontana Books (U.K.) paperback edition from 1970, and although at heart a "romance novel," it doesn't conform to some of the expected conventions of the genre as we know it today (aside from the HEA, which it does have). A young woman named Julia Harburn is waiting in a park to meet her fiance Morland when another young man, Stephen, befriends her. The first half of the novel has Julia living in London discovering her decreasing interest in the clueless Morland and her growing friendship with Stephen. In the second half of the novel, Julia has relocated to Scotland to be with her dying uncle, and becomes friends with another young man, Neil, while receiving letters in the mail from Stephen. And then Morland shows up to try and take her back to London!
Only a few chapters from the end of the book, I still didn't know which of the three men she would end up with. This kind of breaks one of the "rules" in today's romance novels, where the eventual love interest shouldn't be absent from large portions of the novel or introduced late in the story. The hero and heroine should be together for most of the novel, but that is not the case here. Another unpredictable aspect is that when Julia was staying in London, the landlady's grown daughter Peta is mentioned a few times but is never actually "on stage" -- just referred to by her mother. I kept thinking that she would show up in the flesh at some point during the story but she never did.
The author has a literary quirk that another Goodreads reviewer mentioned -- about characters repeating back words in response to others -- which can get a little distracting once it is noticed, but I think it helps add to the realism of the scenes. One can "hear" the dialogue in one's head as one reads it, like it is being acted out by actors with a natural-sounding verbal exchange. The writing itself is enjoyable, with some cultural and literary references throughout. I was surprised to see the n-word used once casually by one of the characters, which unfortunately reflects the attitudes of the time and place this was written.
I was not sure whether to give this book 3 or 4 stars, so I'm going to say 3.5 stars. The book does have a very leisurely pace with not a lot happening during large sections of the book. Still, the everyday way of life depicted in the novel (going to the market, buying hats in a hat store, receiving letters in the mail, etc.) is charming and appealing. The author also has an amusing way of putting things, and I was glad that the heroine was independent and stood up for herself instead of "obeying" the men in her life. Overall an enjoyable slice-of-life type read.
Rating: 2.5 stars
Read: July 20-August 26, 2020
Review: This book was written by Norman A. Daniels (the husband of gothic romance author Dorothy Daniels). It was published by Domino Books, an imprint of Lancer Books. As noted on Wikipedia, "Lesbian pulp fiction became its own distinct category of fiction in the 1950s and 60s, although a significant number of authors of this genre were men using either a male or female pen name." This novel falls into that category. However I think it also works as a h/h romance novel given that there is an HEA for the lesbian couple. I'm rating this book 2.5 stars because the first half of the book was only a 2-star read for me but the second half got to 3-star territory. The story is written in first person tense from the POV of the heroine Lizbeth except for a couple scenes in which she was not present. In addition, much of the novel is told in flashback: pages 36-47, 49-57, 61-78 & 84-131. (Page 131 gets us back to the events that opened the novel.) The plot is about a lobbying group trying to blackmail some Senators to vote for a certain bill (which will make millions for the lobby in the stock market). The Senators are pressured to vote for the bill or else their daughters will be exposed to the public as lesbians, with photographic and audio evidence to prove the claim. A small group of lesbians who work in Washington, D.C. (which includes Lizbeth and her lover Phyllis) are likewise being blackmailed by the lobby to provide this evidence, or else risk exposure and loss of their government jobs.
Most of the characters in this novel are unlikable, which makes for an unpleasant read. Lizbeth and Phyllis come from dysfunctional families and are the victims of male sexual harassment, which is used to explain their lack of interest in men and attraction towards women. Although Lizbeth and Phyllis regularly meet with other lesbians for what is described as an "orgy," the two women are faithful to one another and don't have sex with other women. When Lizbeth is forced by blackmail to have sex with a Senator's daughter, Phyllis suppresses her jealousy to take the incriminating photos. In the end, Lizbeth and Phyllis expose the lobby's crimes by admitting to being lesbians in front of a national TV audience and a Congressional committee investigating the blackmail charge. Lizbeth and Phyllis choose their love and loyalty for each other, and the continuation of their relationship as a romantic couple, at the expense of their careers in Washington.
Lesbian pulp fiction like this novel existed as prurient reading material in a conformist, repressed era. But a reader looking for titillation would be disappointed, as the sex acts are never described. At one point during the "orgy," a "threesome" is mentioned, but what they are doing exactly is left unsaid. The writing has a straight-forward, to-the-point, non-flowery style that reminded me of Arlene Hale's nurse novels of the time. To the modern reader, of course, the judgements and assumptions about homosexuality in the text are outdated and annoying to read. And yet, there is also apparent sympathy for them by the author. "Don't place us in a peculiar category," Phyllis says on page 71. "We're not something on exhibition in a cage. We're people, too, normal in all respects except in sex." She was speaking to another lesbian, but the words could be directed at the reader, or the world in general -- even the genre of lesbian pulp fiction itself.
On page 90, Phyllis discusses her attempt to "cure" herself in the past by seeing a psychiatrist. "I finally asked myself what the hell was I doing? Ruining the kind of a life I had learned to love? For what? A man's brand of sexual relations? Perhaps a chance for the lousy psychiatrist to try some more of his experiments on me?" On page 115, Lizbeth says, "The psychologists have all sorts of reasons to explain why we deviate from the normal, but I'll bet not one of them ever gave any credence to the idea that maybe we deviate because we like it." This was written at a time when the American Psychiatric Association still classified homosexuality as a mental disorder, so in that respect the sentiments expressed were affirming of their orientation. Such examples are of historical interest for the way in which lesbians were viewed by mainstream society prior to the rise of the gay rights movement in the 1970s. It's not a pleasant read, however, given how many of the characters are hypocrites, cowards, liars, victims, backstabbers, and adulterous sleazebags. There is some hope at the end, however, when Lizbeth and Phyllis stand up for the truth -- not only about the blackmail plot but about their identity as lesbians and their commitment towards each other.
A NURSE'S STRANGE ROMANCE by Arlene Hale (1964)Rating: 3 stars
Read: May 6-8, 2020
Review: The original title of this novel was "Symptoms of Love" when it was released by Ace Books in 1964. My copy is a later Ace edition, under the title "A Nurse's Strange Romance," apparently published in the 1970s. Arlene Hale wrote a lot of nurse novels in the 1960s -- so much so that this book has "An Arlene Hale Nurse Novel" branding on the cover. The book is short, only 128 pages, but the text is small. The book starts out pretty slow, setting up not only a love triangle between Nurse Meredith and her two male doctor friends, Steve and Meredith's boyfriend Ryan, but one that involves a fourth person, a woman doctor named Carol that Ryan falls for. Then there is the fifth person in this romantic pentagon: Betty, a young patient of Ryan's who has become infatuated with him. Betty is dying, so Ryan spends more time at her bedside, causing her ugly brute of a brother, Bruce, to demand that Ryan marry Betty to make her happy or else Bruce will physically harm Carol. At the same time Ryan finds that he is no longer in love with Meredith, but lacks the courage to let her know about Carol, and moreover to let anyone else know about Bruce's threats against him. Meanwhile Steve has been making advances on Meredith that would not fly in a mainstream romance novel today, frequently kissing her without consent to make his feelings known. By the halfway point of this novel, it has become like a soap opera with the blackmailed Ryan lying to his own friends to prevent his secrets from coming out, which only makes things worse. As I was reading it, I kept thinking that Ryan makes for a terrible romantic "hero" due to his cowardice in the face of Bruce's threats. In fact, I wanted to smack Ryan and drag him to a police station so that he could get the cops involved, such was my frustration with his choices. However, in his defense, he did all of this to protect Carol which demonstrates how much she meant to him. Also, the fact that I was irritated by what Ryan was doing is a demonstration of Arlene Hale's skill as a writer in getting the reader to care about what was happening in the story, implausible as the unfolding drama may be. Fortunately everything works out in the end and everyone gets their HEA -- even the dying Betty in a way -- except for the villainous Bruce who gets what's coming to him.
Rating: 3.5 stars
Read: June 18-20, 2020
Review: This book was the popular Harlequin writer's first novel, originally published in the UK by Robert Hale in July 1965. (Presumably not being a Mills & Boon release may explain why it was not subsequently reprinted by Harlequin in North America like most of her other novels.) My copy is the Pocket Books paperback edition, published in the US in October 1972. This is one of the first romance novels that I ever bought to keep, since I purchased it in April 2018 in a huge lot of over 1,200 vintage Harlequin paperbacks. Of those 1,200 books, I kept only 10 of them since I didn't consider myself a romance reader at that time. Still, even then I realized that it was something special as I perused the first few pages, and hung onto it -- although I didn't get around to reading the whole book (only 174 pages) until now. One odd quirk of the novel is that there are no chapter breaks whatsoever, which made me realize how much I need those breaks to pace my reading.
The book is about the title character Caroline, who works as a typist in a large office building. Caroline is only 17, although she turns 18 around halfway through the book, and lives in modest circumstances, sharing a flat with a 19 year old friend named Amanda. The company she works for is owned by the wealthy Adam Steinbeck, an impressive man who is 39 years old (he turns 40 halfway through). Adam had a wife who passed away some years ago, and has a grown son named John attending university who is around Caroline's age. Caroline and Adam fall in love, but Adam is concerned about the age difference and when he learns that Caroline went on a date with a young man while he was away on a business trip, he ends their relationship. Caroline had only gone on the date with the unpleasant young man (a co-worker) to put to rest the rumors around the office about her and Adam, but Adam doesn't stop to hear her side of things. So, unfortunately, we have the second half of the novel all about how these two people who are clearly madly in love with each other being separated and avoiding each other. Adam's son John, who previously was hostile towards Caroline because of her involvement with his father, soon falls in love with her himself and even though she doesn't love him she agrees to be engaged to him, which makes matters worse for everyone. The story is resolved happily after a rescue scene which is a bit more dramatic in tone than the rest of the book, and yet feels like a crowd-pleasing climactic moment that one might find in an old movie.
Not being a Harlequin novel, the writing may have escaped any edits for taste (as Harlequin was known to do) since there is a mention of abortion on page 75, and this racy description (for a 1965 romance novel) on page 63: "the revers of the pyjama jacket falling apart to reveal the curve of her firm breast." The fact that this is a love story between a 17 year old (going on 18) and her 39 (going on 40) year old boss is obviously problematic, but Mather herself was only 19 and already a wife and mother when the book was published. (Anne Mather, whose real name is Mildred Grieveson, was born in 1946.) Evidently the 19 year old author was untroubled by the idea of a woman only a year younger than herself being romantically involved with a man twice her age. Caroline's relationship with the boss does help her in the office, since he is able to protect her from getting fired for being late for work, but eventually she inherits money from a relative that enables her to quit the job, removing that particular ethical problem. I found this novel to be very well-written, an impressive debut by Mather, the only drawback being the frustrating lack of communication between the two leads during the second half.
Rating: 4 stars
Read: October 20-21, 2020
Review: This book was published by Paperback Library in October 1965 and was billed as "A Paperback Library Gothic Romance" on the cover. The back of the book contains an ad for 22 more gothic novels from the publisher, which indicates the popularity of the genre at this time. There's also an ad on the last page for books #1-6 of the short-lived "Paperback Library Romance" line of contemporary romance novels, apparently an early attempt at competing with Harlequin's category romance line. This was the first Dorothy Daniels book that I've read, and one of her early gothic novels; she would go on to write over a hundred more in the 1960s and 1970s, usually thin books under 200 pages (this book runs 160 pages counting the ads). The story takes place in 1890 and is narrated by 18 year old Beth Harrington following the death of her mother. She leaves her home in Virginia to stay at the mansion of her aunt, former actress Celeste Ward, in New York. When Beth arrives, she finds that every Sunday visitors make a pilgrimage to her aunt's estate to pay their respects at the tomb of her late husband, Leland Ward, a beloved benefactor. Celeste's obligations in greeting the well-wishers on her lawn each week prevents her from hosting Beth for long, and the married couple who run the house are unfriendly towards Beth. During her overnnight stay, Beth hears footsteps on the terrace above her room, but when she investigates she sees no one making the sound, although she does hear laughter in the distance. Celeste later changes her mind and convinces Beth to stay, although the nighttime disturbances continue and twice there are attempts on her life.
The "romance" aspect of this novel isn't introduced until page 68 when a young man named Clay Fleming appears one Sunday to enquire about the disappearance of his father Stewart who knew Celeste during her acting days. Clay and Beth become fond of each other and he enlists her help to see if she can learn more about his father's whereabouts since he suspects the inhabitants of Celeste's mansion know more than they are saying. This story is primarily a mystery novel with the spooky trappings of a mysterious and malevolent figure haunting the place. But the conclusion wraps things up with an HEA and wedding for our couple which should satisfy romance readers as well. I was amused to see on page 44 that there is a moment of literal bodice ripping, though not while the clothes were being worn: "Marie spoke as she attended to the ripping of the dress, separating the bodice from the waistline." I read this novel in only two days, partly because I was eager to see how the mystery would be solved and partly because it was well-written. I won't spoil the ending here and will only say that I guessed a little of the solution, but not all of it, and was happy to see one of the suspects innocent of any crime. The writing style is pleasantly old-fashioned, which adds to the gothic atmosphere. It's not exactly scary, although I admit that I deliberately avoided reading it after midnight just in case!
Rating: 3 stars
Read: March 19-25, 2020
Review: This thin 128-page novel was originally published in 1967 in the U.K. by Fleetway (according to the copyright page); my copy was published in the U.S. by Magnum Books in the early 1980s (no exact date given). It took me a lot longer to read this novel than it should have, though that's probably not the book's fault. It's a pleasant-enough story, about a young woman going home to England to help her widowed father, only to discover that he has remarried whilst she was away at school. During her trip home, she meets a young man who becomes a potential love interest when he turns up later at her father's house. Also vying for our heroine's affection is the moody son of her father's new wife. (He becomes more likable as the story moves along.) The ending neatly wraps up the loose ends, although there is a bit too much coincidence involved to make it all seem plausible. Nonetheless, I enjoyed the book; it was a pleasant if unsubstantial diversion.
Rating: 3 stars
Read: December 28, 2020
Review: This book was originally released by Mills & Boon in the UK in 1969. In North America, it was published as Harlequin Romance #1371 in February 1970. My copy is a 3rd printing from December 1976. It's a thin book, only 189 pages long with slightly large type, that took me around four hours to read. The plot concerns a 20 year old named Alma Craigie who has traveled with her dancing partner Michael Jefferson to Germany, along with another English dancing duo, to compete in a ballroom dancing contest. Unfortunately Alma and Michael fail to secure a spot in the finals due to Alma having gotten distracted by a German admirer, Dieter Moevendahl. Alma and Michael return to England, but eventually it becomes clear that Alma's heart is no longer in her performance which threatens to end their dancing partnership, as well as shutting the door on any chance of a future romantic relationship between them.
This is a short and sweet romance that is a little bit predictable, although with a couple minor surprises along the way (such as the interest of a third man in marrying Alma). It's well-written and held my interest, and was short enough not to overstay its welcome. A trademark of Harlequin Romances of the time was their travelogue appeal, offering the reader an inviting glimpse of life in a faraway land, and this book accomplishes that with its visits to Germany and Blackpool. It's also informative about ballroom dancing (about which I knew nothing) with the rules about amateur versus professional status being a key plot point. An enjoyable and memorable novel despite its simplicity.
Rating: 4 stars
Read: October 27-November 24, 2020
Review: This book was a paperback original published by Avon Books in April 1972. (My copy is the 11th printing -- undated but presumably mid-1970s due to its $1.50 cover price and lack of a UPC barcode on the back cover.) Often cited as the first modern romance novel, this highly-influential historical was notable for its racy content, a reflection of the loosened rules regarding such depictions amidst the sexual revolution of the time. What perhaps distinguishes it from previous lusty historical epics is that it was written by a woman with interest in matters pertaining to women (rape, pregnancy, motherhood), including feminine sexual desire for a problematic man. The stormy relationship between this passionate couple is nearly a constant in the story from the moment they meet, with every other aspect of the plot (which includes murder and blackmail) secondary in concern.
The book's heroine is Heather Simmons who lives in poverty with her sadistic Aunt Fanny and timid Uncle John until one day when she is sent to stay with Fanny's fat brother William in London. Once there, he attempts to rape her and she stabs him with a knife, presumably killing him, and then flees into the night in panic. She is soon picked up by two sailors who assume that she is a prostitute and they take her aboard their ship to their captain, an American named Brandon Birmingham. Brandon has his way with her (i.e., rapes her) and she escapes, fleeing back to the squalor of Aunt Fanny's home. When it becomes apparent that Heather is pregnant, Brandon is pressured to marry her (which is hastily arranged) and he takes her with him back to America as a wife in name only. Due to a misunderstanding about separate bedrooms, Brandon and Heather believe that the other does not truly love them, which causes them to refrain from having sexual relations despite their secretly growing love for each other.
It's an enjoyable novel, but a slow-moving one; there are only ten chapters, but they are long ones. For example, Heather arrives at the waterfront to sail for America on Brandon's ship on page 116, but they hang around the port sharing a room at a nearby inn for several nights. They don't actually start sailing for America until page 184, and don't finally arrive at his mansion until page 229, halfway into the book. There were stretches in the middle of the story where I was enjoying what I was reading, but it lacked the page-turning quality to make me eager to see how it ended. For much of the novel there is little to drive the narrative apart from the couple's rocky relationship, nothing to make the reader want to turn the page except for seeing whether the two will become lovers again (and perhaps wanting to learn the gender of her baby when it is finally born). After the child's birth and Brandon and Heather become lovers again, the book still has 80 more pages left, so a subplot about a murderer in the area becomes the next impetus for the reader to turn the pages to see how that mystery ends. Fortunately this late introduction of a new subplot makes sense storywise since it wraps up some loose ends from the beginning of the book in a satisfactory way.
I think that a large part of the book's appeal for its original audience was that it has an intense focus on the relationship of the couple, Brandon and Heather. A category romance would have a similar laserlike focus, but Woodiwiss' book is triple the length, giving an epic treatment to their romantic bond. There is also Brandon's spurned ex-lover causing trouble, who memorably gets called a "bitch" to her face, which will appeal to viewers of TV soaps. The book's romanticized setting of the turn of the previous century (the novel takes place in 1799 and 1800) probably added to the book's popularity, making it seem more dramatic and substantial than a typical romance novel of the time, like an "instant classic" of the genre.
Last year I read Flames of Passion, a 1982 romance novel by Sheryl Flournoy, which I rated 5 stars. I can see now how The Flame and the Flower influenced that book since they have a similar basic plot: a ship's captain rapes a virgin picked up from the London docks that he thought was a prostitute, marries her and takes her back to his plantation in America. The heroes in both books have Black servants (not slaves), the most notable in the Woodiwiss book being Hatti, an older Black woman (occasionally described in the text as a "Negress") who conforms to the stereotype of the "mammy" like in Gone With the Wind (played in the movie by Hattie McDaniel, perhaps the inspiration for the name "Hatti" here). In the Flournoy book, the "mammy" character is named Mattie. It's tempting to think of The Flame and the Flower as being the "urtext" from which later novels sprang, although it's probable that Flournoy's book was inspired by other sources as well, and Woodiwiss' book was itself influenced by previous works.
Reading about the suffering of Heather at the hands of various people earlier in the novel made me realize that the romance genre can be considered an optimistic counterpart to the horror genre. The reader is able to experience the trials, tribulations and triumphs of Heather from the comforting distance of the printed page. It is not that the reader wants to suffer when reading about suffering, but one wants to be able to experience another's life story without having to live it. The pain that Heather goes through is part of the heroine's journey, makes her a more sympathetic character, and confirms the hardship and unfairness that many women readers understand from their own lives. Her story is an epic tale with the reassurance of a happy ending that gives her struggle meaning -- that life isn't a pointless parade of endless cruelty but a series of unfortunate circumstances that can be overcome.
The most problematic aspect of the novel, of course, is that it's about a woman falling in love with her rapist. Brandon's actions are excused in the novel by the powerful desire which Heather causes in him. Later in the novel when he can stand his celibacy no longer, he vows to take her by force if need be. In order to bed his own wife, he thinks: "Damn, it's come to rape" (page 350). At the same time Heather ponders her own response: "Does he think there need not be words spoken of love nor soft caresses to soothe my body? Am I truly then to him a possession and not a wife, a whore who's met his fancy? Oh, once he played himself upon a frightened girl. Well, no longer am I frightened nor just a girl. I am a woman and he will truly know my vengeance for I will fight and claw and scratch..." (Reading this sentence I was reminded of Helen Reddy's song "I Am Woman," which was released the year before.) In the end, because this is a romance novel and not a horror story, Brandon's true nature and devoted love for Heather (and her genuine love for him) redeems his original sin against her. Nevertheless Brandon is a lot more likable as a character during those moments when he is not barking orders at his wife; had he been more agreeable throughout I would have liked this novel even more than I did.
Overall I found the prose well-written, and I'm sure that the characters and situations will linger in my mind for some time. It's not a novel that is easily forgotten. The only reason it's a 4-star for me instead of a 5-star book was because the plot occasionally dragged and Brandon's behavior towards Heather was so troublesome.
Rating: 4 stars
Read: December 29-30, 2020
Review: This was book #1 in Bantam's popular Barbara Cartland Library series, published in November 1973. (My copy is a 2nd printing.) At the time Cartland also had a long-running numbered series coming out from Pyramid Books, and by the 1980s the Pyramid line would be replaced by two numbered lines from Jove. For many readers, the prolific Cartland was their introduction to the romance genre, and this first volume of the Bantam line was their introduction to Cartland.
The plot is about a young woman named Perdita who pretends to have married a man she just met (Ivon, the Marquis of Melsonby) in order to avoid being forced into marriage with her abusive guardian Sir Gerbold (who just wants to marry her to get his hands on her inheritance). Ivon agrees to the fake marriage (the "daring deception" of the book's title) for a reason of his own -- to avoid getting married to one of his mistresses who is scheming for a more permanent union between them. The story takes place in 1850, with Cartland noting that "the gay roistering days of the Regency were over" (page 14) and that "in the new strait-laced respectable regime of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert... the slightest breath of scandal was frowned on." Predictably, Perdita and Ivon fall in love, but are afraid to let the other know this fact out of fear of driving the other away for breaking their platonic arrangement.
The novel almost reads like two stories stitched together. Chapter 7 feels like the end of the book, with the resolution of the plotline about Perdita escaping the evil Sir Gerbold. Up to this point, the book felt like a 4-star book to me, occasionally getting into 4.5 territory (such as the adorable scenes with the children of Ivon's sister, or the climactic showdown with Gerbold when he kidnaps Perdita). The last three chapters of the book (Chapters 8-10) move the setting to Morocco in North Africa, as Ivon (accompanied by Perdita) is sent by the British government to investigate the disappearance of white women in the area. Perdita is captured by the sultan who has a hatred of the English due to time spent at Cambridge where he was called the n-word by his classmates. Perdita is forced to become one of the sultan's wives, but is rescued by Ivon before the ceremony can take place. Unfortunately these last three chapters contain stereotypes about Muslims that many readers will find offensive. These last three chapters were a disappointment for me and frankly a bit of a chore to read; on their own I would rate them only 3 stars at best. My 4-star rating for this book is based on the majority of its 220 pages, not the last three chapters which I found unnecessary and anticlimactic.
There is a tendency to dismiss the books of Barbara Cartland as entry-level romance, eventually dropped by readers for their sameness as they graduate to the work of more challenging and realistic romance novelists. And yet, when compared to other romance novels of the 1970s, I think this book has much that would appeal to readers today (aside from the last three chapters). We get to hear the thoughts and perspective of the hero in addition to the heroine; his motivations are not shrouded in mystery as is so often the case in vintage romances. While Ivon is promiscuous, he is honorable and likable -- not the "alpha-hole" commonly found in old-school romance. Perdita, too, while small and virginal, is not entirely helpless, despite occasionally needing Ivon to rescue her; she demonstrates strength, courage and resourcefulness in escaping from her guardian in the first place. In the middle of the book, it is Perdita who rescues Ivon from being shot by a jealous husband, using her quick thinking and actions. And she manages to outwit the sultan and escape, with Ivon's help from outside, at the end of the story.
Cartland's writing takes a little getting used to, since by this time she had settled into her style of using only short paragraphs consisting of one sentence each, apparently to make the text read faster. She began churning out novels on a monthly basis, like the writers of pulp magazines in the 1930s, making it easy to dismiss the results as hackwork. And yet, the top pulp fiction writers of other genres are often affectionately regarded by fans of those genres, their output admired for its economy, the simplicity of the style giving their prose a punch. In romantic fiction, there is a tendency to overwrite in order to evoke a specific emotional response in the reader, but Cartland allows the reader to draw her own conclusions from the description without belaboring the point. An example is in Chapter Two when Perdita removes her wet clothing in the presence of Ivon, whom she has just met. Another writer likely would have made the eroticism of her undressing more obvious, perhaps adding descriptions of Perdita's embarrassment or the stirring of the Marquis' loins. Cartland however describes it matter-of-factly, and so it can be interpreted by the reader as completely innocent (if one prefers) or implying an intimate scene with an unstated sexual undercurrent.
The famous Cartland ellipses ("...") are also present here, limited only to the heroine's dialogue in order to indicate a reticence to speak or a breathless response. Cartland uses them so that the reader will "hear" the heroine's voice the way that Cartland wants it to be heard, or as how Cartland herself voiced the dialogue aloud (since I suspect that many of her novels were simply dictated to save time). Admittedly, though, those ellipses -- as well as the one-sentence paragraphs and the suspicion of a writer simply dictating the tale -- can be off-putting. Reading the first few pages of this book, I wanted to stop reading it (even though I've read two of her novels before), thinking it was a dud. But gradually I got accustomed to her style again and was able to appreciate the story despite its style, and eventually to wonder why I would criticize a writer for having her own unique writing style in the first place. Having her own distinct voice ought to be a virtue, not a defect.
Rating: 3 stars
Read: June 3, 2020
Review: This book was originally released as Candelight Romance #132, published by Dell in Feb. 1974, which is the edition I have. (It was also later re-released as Candlelight #248 in 1978, with a new cover that correctly illustrates the heroine's hair as blonde, unlike the brown-haired heroine on the cover of this edition.) The novel is a traditional Regency but with a few steamy (and problematic) scenes of the hero Ian and heroine Heather in bed together where he forces himself on her. From page 111: "He pulled her to him, and his grip was like steel, his arms like cords. One arm behind her back, one arm around her neck, he held her tight. Even as she cried out, he was ruthlessly pressing his mouth to hers. Their open lips met, held, clung. Heather felt something melting inside her.... He was bending her so that her whole body was flowing against his.... [S]he felt the intense heat of him thrusting at her body, urgently, possessively, as he gripped her and held her voiceless with his ardent lips on her lips. She could fight no longer. She would have had to fight herself as well as him." Pretty steamy stuff for a category romance in early 1974.
The plot concerns Heather's attempt to arrange a marriage of convenience with Ian in order to prevent her fortune from being taken by a relative, the scheming Joseph Bannister. Ian needs the money in order to save his castle home and Heather needs a husband. So she boldly proposes this idea to him and he accepts, although informing her that he has a young nephew, Daniel, that he takes care of. The beginning of the book moves along very quickly, with Heather and Ian getting married on page 38 and they immediately set off for his castle. Heather soon becomes a mother figure for Daniel, and the tender relationship between the boy and her is actually the highlight of the book.
I enjoyed reading this novel, but the hero's tormenting of the heroine with his actions, his apparent flirtation with another woman, his bringing a bunch of jerky "friends" to their home for an extended stay without consulting her about it, was highly annoying. Roberts is able to manipulate the reader's emotions to keep the story interesting, but at the expense of the likability of the hero. There were moments that I hated this guy for what he was doing to the heroine, and even though I was confident that there would be some explanation at the end to justify his callous behavior, it's a little hard to forgive and forget after witnessing the cost of his "plan." Sure, it would have been less suspenseful if Ian had informed Heather about what he was doing from the first, if the two characters had communicated their thoughts to each other rather than jumping to conclusions, but at least it would have felt less manipulative -- both to Heather and to the reader. The same goes for Heather allowing Bannister to also stay at the house; his stirring up trouble heightens the drama of the story, but also makes the reader wish Heather would kick him out the door, and her failure to do so looks like taking politeness to an unreasonable extreme. If Roberts hadn't contrived to make Ian so cruel in his actions, I could have rated this book 3.5 stars, but instead it will have to be only 3 stars. It's a quick read at only 207 pages, which I consumed in one sitting (of almost 5 hours).
Rating: 3.5 stars
Read: July 20, 2020
Review: This book was Candlelight Romance #169 (May 1975) and billed on the cover as "An Arlene Hale Special" and "A Candlelight Romantic Suspense" (as were #170-172, released the same month). It's a quick read, only 203 pages, written in Hale's typically straightforward and unadorned prose style. Hale keeps the plot moving along with a wide cast of memorable characters and an intriguing situation, about a woman named Jen who is allowing her twin sister Gail and her 5 year old son Dickie stay with her at her home, located in an area surrounded by forest (and yet near the city where both work). While the cover might suggest a gothic, the novel is set in contemporary times and plays out like a mystery novel. Gail has been acting strange lately, unwilling to explain a dent on the fender of Jen's car when she was using it, and secretly taking an interest in the case of a local missing girl. Gail is separated from her angry husband Burt and there's also her old boyfriend Gus, the local car mechanic, who still carries a torch for her. Meanwhile, Jen has two men wanting to marry her: Larry, her longtime coworker at the insurance office, and a new client named Christian who has temporarily moved into town. So there are a lot of suspects to consider in this mystery (and I haven't even named them all). I found the story enjoyable from beginning to end. I was a little worried about how the author was going to resolve the love triangle since whoever Jen chose to marry would result in one of the men being rejected by her -- both of whom went the extra mile to help her solve the case at the end. Or there was the possibility that Hale would have Jen choose neither, which would have felt like a cop-out, and I hoped that wouldn't happen. Hale ended the story perfectly, however, with Jen choosing the man that I had hoped she would. There are a couple implausible aspects to the ending of the mystery, but that didn't detract from my enjoyment since they added to the drama. (And if they really felt Dickie's life was in danger, they left him alone and unprotected way too often! My only gripe.)
Rating: 4.5 stars
Read: October 22-25, 2020
Review: This novel was published by Pocket Books in December 1976. Not only is it a Gothic romance that involves a murder mystery (as usual for Daniels) but it's a ghost story as well, including supernatural aspects that are not explained away as a human trick. One funny thing about my experience reading this book is that when I picked it up and read the first 12 pages, I found that I didn't like the writing style. I had just read a Dorothy Daniels novel from 1965 prior to this, and the writing in this 1976 novel seemed too plain in comparison. In fact, I suspected that perhaps it was ghostwritten by her husband (Norman A. Daniels), since the one book of his that I'd read also had a plain writing style. So, I set the book aside and read a 1977 Dorothy Daniels book instead, and that one I liked very much; then I read a 1978 Dorothy Daniels book and enjoyed it as well. So finally I picked Juniper Hill back up, started reading it again from the first page, and eventually found that I enjoyed it more than any Daniels book that I had read so far!
The story takes place in 1922 about a 19 year old woman named Kathy Cromwell living in San Francisco whose parents died in the 1906 earthquake. Kathy was raised by her Aunt Liza who lay dying in the hospital as the story opens. Shortly before Liza died, she refers to a "Doris," but Kathy believes this was due to delirium. She later discovers that someone had been paying Liza $300 a month for most of Kathy's life, which Liza had been putting in a bank account for Kathy. Kathy works at a hotel as a pianist, and for years she has been playing an incomplete tune that she always assumed to be her own invention. But one day an older couple visiting the hotel recognize the tune and inform her that their Juniper Hill mansion (one of the few to survive the earthquake) is haunted and that almost every night the piano plays that same tune on its own. This musical manifestation is the only evidence of ghostly activity, but the couple ask Kathy to stay with them at their home for a few days in the hope that she can help solve the mystery and make the ghost go away. One night during her stay however, for the first time, the ghost bangs on the keys in a harsh manner and then causes items to go crashing around the room. Later some visitors arrive at the home, including the former owners (who never had a ghost problem when they lived there) and a medium who attempts to make contact with the ghost. At the same time, one visitor to the house is murdered in a non-paranormal manner and attempts are made on Kathy's life by the same killer. So, the novel combines a ghost story with a murder mystery.
I wondered at first whether there would be a romance in this Gothic romance, and thankfully it has that as well. Bill Jeffers, first appears on page 79 (of a 208-page book, counting ads), but he very quickly becomes Kathy's romantic interest. In fact, this novel might have the quickest example of instalove that I've yet encountered, since they profess their love for each other and talk about getting married on page 88 -- only 9 pages after they met! Bill proves helpful in Kathy's attempt to try and solve the mystery as well as trying to protect her from getting killed. At one point it looked like Bill had betrayed her by telling a lie, but thankfully he's not the person trying to kill her. (If this had been a non-romance novel, there would have been no guarantee of this, and I think that would have made for a disappointing and infuriating read.) Bill and Kathy get their HEA, and even the ghost is happy I think. I've always liked stories that involve ghosts and musical instruments (especially pianos) because there is a certain old-fashioned elegance evoked by the idea, a literal "haunting melody." I'm also glad that the ghost was real and not part of some elaborate plan cooked up by the killer in Scooby Doo fashion. Overall a highly satisfying and memorable story.
Rating: 4 stars
Read: October 22-23, 2020
Review: This book was published by Signet in January 1977. Daniels was writing other Gothic romance novels for Signet in the late 1970s, most of them branded with her name in an oval on the covers. The popularity of the Gothic romance genre had declined by this time, and these covers have a brighter look than the nighttime scenes of her previous novels. The Signet books are among her last Gothics; her final novels in the early 1980s were historical romances instead. As usual with Daniels, this novel is more of a mystery story than a romance, although there is a romantic subplot. The plot concerns a 19 year old named Cora (the story's narrator) who, following the death of her Aunt, returns to the island on which her family's mansion is located. Both her father and mother died under mysterious circumstances; her father fell down the stairs to his death, a suspicious accident, while her mother is said to have committed suicide by walking into the sea to drown. Cora occasionally hears a rustle of the silk dress that her mother once wore (which explains the book's title) suggesting that her spirit remains in the home. Meanwhile attempts are made on Cora's life, presumably by someone who wants to have the island for themselves since she has declined all offers to sell the property.
The only person who can be trusted is her fiancé Joel. The nice thing about this being a romance (of sorts) is that the reader trusts that the couple will get their happy ending and that the story won't have it turn out that Joel is the one trying to have her killed. It's reassuring to the reader that in a world of danger there is at least one person who Cora (and the reader) can trust. Probably the best scene was when Cora was walking in the thick fog around the house, barely able to see anything and trying to avoid being murdered by an intruder. I don't think the scene could have been done effectively in a visual medium like film because there was literally nothing to see, but it worked very well in prose. I'm rating this book 4 stars, but I do think that the events depicted in the last two chapters felt rushed and implausible. Things are wrapped up a little too neatly, and the aftermath of all this drama is quickly summarized in the book's last two sentences. Since we would never be seeing these characters ever again, I would have liked to have seen those last two sentences expanded in a short epilogue, to conclude the story in a less hurried way. Other than that, I found the book very enjoyable.
Rating: 3.5 stars
Read: October 23-24, 2020
Review: This book was published by Signet in June 1978. It's a well-written mystery with a romantic element which, like the other Dorothy Daniels novels that I've read, involves a young woman's life being threatened by some unknown person. In this novel our heroine (who, as usual with Daniels, is the book's narrator) is 20 year old Laura Ashton. Both of her parents are dead -- her father presumed drowned in a yacht that sank near the New England inn run by Laura and her sea captain father. After the accident Laura went to work in a department store in Boston, but she returns to Hermitage Hill after being informed that authorities suspect her father is still alive, that he faked his own death in order to steal diamonds that were aboard the boat before it sank. Upon arriving at the abandoned inn, Laura encounters a friendly and helpful Jim Cronin (prosecuting attorney on the case, and romantic interest) as well as a bearded stranger she sees on the grounds who may or may not be the person trying to kill her.
Although the book looks like a Gothic romance from the cover, it's more of a traditional mystery or suspense novel. The mysterious hermit lurking in the forest is the only spooky aspect, but there is nothing supernatural suggested about his presence. Laura and Jim fall in love pretty much immediately and plan to be married; the marriage is mentioned on the book's last page and the couple do get a happy ending after the mystery is solved and the villains defeated. Overall I found the story a satisfying read, but not quite rising to 4-star level due to the lack of goosebumps that I had expected to receive.
Rating: 3 stars
Read: December 28-29, 2020
Review: This novel by Catherine Linden (not to be confused with the more recent romance author Caroline Linden) was published by Avon Books in May 1979. The book begins intriguingly with Paige Hamilton rescuing a young boy named Robbie from a lake and then being taken to the mansion of the boy's uncle Sir Garen to recover from an injury she sustained during the rescue. Paige is an unwanted presence in the home in the opinion of another woman staying there: Selina, who had been engaged to Garen's brother who died in a car crash a year earlier. Paige's attempts to leave are foiled due to her injury and eventually, after she has recovered, she agrees to stay as Robbie's tutor, gradually developing romantic feelings for Garen, much to the annoyance of Selina who has designs on Garen herself (and no love for the little kid). On the cover, Selina is the blonde standing in the doorway witnessing an embrace between Garen and Paige, a scene which happens on page 113.
From the front cover, this novel looks like a historical romance or a gothic; indeed the author index at FictionDB mistakenly labels the book a traditional Regency. In fact it is a contemporary romance set in Scotland, more of a "romantic suspense" but with the suspense aspect in the background for much of the story as the focus is on the mundane day-to-day activities of the heroine. As a result the writing is reminiscent of the style of the Harlequin Romance line of the 1970s, and therefore fails to live up to the suggestive promise of the book's racy-sounding title and clinch cover art. Paige is an independent "liberated" woman who doesn't respond favorably to Sir Garen's sometimes forceful manner, tearfully running to her room to escape his grasp whenever he makes a move on her, even though she is secretly in love with him.
This contradiction -- of having a modern woman behaving like a helpless heroine of old (or, as it says on page 117, "like a terrified child") -- demonstrates the difficulty of fitting a 1970s woman of the "Women's Liberation" era into the confines of an old-fashioned romance's story requirements. Garen's behavior is also contradictory, sometimes sensitive and caring, other times arrogant and mocking, like a man who doesn't know which century he inhabits. On page 132, we read: "No one, she had once vowed, would ever take possession of her. Above everything, she would cherish her independence, her right to do what she wanted when she wanted and how she wanted." However this feminist goal is undone by Garen's control over her heart. "In every way he was her master and she his helpless slave," the text reads on page 142. "It was a galling thought to one who had valued her freedom and independence so highly, but suddenly that freedom and independence seemed like a very cold, hollow thing to her, something that could never warm her when the cold wind blew across the moor." A comparison could be drawn here to the retreat of the feminist movement as the more conservative decade of the 1980s dawned, as the political goal of equality faded before the more primal human need for love, family, well-being and security. The novel doesn't make that connection, but it's a product of its time (and reflecting the values of an earlier time, too, since it was surely old-fashioned even then). Overall I enjoyed the novel for the characters and the setting, although it wrapped up a little too quickly at the end.
Rating: 3 stars
Read: December 30-31, 2020
Review: This book was Candlelight Romance #575, published by Dell in June 1980. The book's author, Rosalind Welles, was a pen-name of African-American writer Elsie B. Washington (1942-2009). Candlelight editor Vivian Stephens had been attempting to bring more diversity to the line, and this was the first category romance novel by a Black author featuring Black characters. The novel takes place in London where an American, Kathy Goodwin, works as a journalist for Upbeat magazine. Her co-workers are somewhat prominent in the story, with her fellow reporters Alyce and Adrian having the novel's secondary romance. During one assignment Kathy meets Lloyd Craig, also an American, a division manager at TransGlobal Oil which has important dealings with the oil-rich west African nation of Dagnombi. Lloyd is only 34 years old, but carries himself with a self-assurance and authority that greatly impresses Kathy.
Earlier this year I read a 1940s novel by Frances Parkinson Keyes that I described as containing "frequent digressions describing clothing and daily routines in minute detail." The text of this novel shares that quality, packed with so much information that occasionally it felt like a tourist guide, although I wasn't sure what parts were actually real and what parts weren't. (I googled Dagnombi, for example, and it turns out that there is no such country in real life.) Many of the details are so specific, however, that I often wondered how much of it was drawn from the author's own life. One refreshing difference from Keyes is that marginalized people are not pushed to the page margins, but occupy the story's center stage. "Brixton, in South London," reads page 137, "is home for hundreds of thousands of black Britons, most of them of West Indian extraction." This is followed by a description of walking the streets there: "There were hairdressing salons whose windows displayed photos of black women with beautifully styled hair arrangements..." A few pages later, Kathy talks with her friends that live there: "The talk drifted to the similarities between life in the Caribbean Islands and in Africa, and life for blacks in Britain. Aubrey and Gwen also wanted to hear about black life in the United States."
How was "life for blacks in Britain" at the time? One wouldn't know from reading the Harlequin romance novels back then, which were North American editions of books written exclusively by white authors for UK publisher Mills & Boon. Prior to the 1980s, Black characters were largely absent from those books, certainly not cast in the lead roles. Having Entwined Destinies take place in London, showing the lives of minorities living and working there, functions as a terrific rebuke to the erasure that is evident in the London-based Harlequin books, exposing the racism that presumes people don't exist because of the color of their skin. Unfortunately, it's doubtful that Harlequin/Mills & Boon comprehended their own lack of diversity (i.e., their racist policies) in their depictions of the UK that this book quietly challenges.
Race was not the only way in which this novel broke new ground, but the love scenes have a sensuality that anticipate the Candlelight Ecstasy line that Stephens would introduce at the end of that year. "His lips moved to her breasts as he gently pushed the robe aside," we read on page 126. "The room spun away from Kathy as she clung to Lloyd and he planted slow, stirring kisses around her hardened nipples, then again along her neck and shoulder." Lloyd's perspective is rarely shown in the book, as everything is experienced from Kathy's POV, so that Lloyd is the subject of the "female gaze" rather than the other way around. "She had to admit that Lloyd Craig's physicality had stirred something deep inside her," says page 31. "The combination of his sensuality, his striking intelligence, and his evident power created a force that Kathy found magnetic." For once in a category romance novel, the "hot guy" was a Black man, and that was revolutionary.
Critics might complain that the novel presents an idealized, glamorous vision of successful Black characters, where skin color is never an issue in their lives. A scene on page 167 seems to anticipate this critique, when Kathy attends the screening of a film about a man from Trinidad living in Britain, followed by a panel discussion that addresses the screen's portrayal of the persecuted hero. "There was some argument that the film had not shown any of the positive side of West Indian life in Britain, but Aubrey and the other moderators explained -- why they felt it was important to tell the story the way they had." Entwined Destinies is told the way it is told because it is a romance novel that wants to make the reader swoon, not a documentary about racial oppression.
Although the book is well-written, the prose is sometimes overloaded with details that don't pertain to the romance. Those details are interesting, but not as interesting as the scenes between Kathy and Lloyd. If there had been more scenes with them together, and less about Kathy's mundane journalistic assignments, it would have been a more exciting read.
Rating: 3.5 stars
Read: November 25-December 14, 2020
Review: This book was Harlequin SuperRomance #1 (June 1980), the first of the long-running line of longer novels that Harlequin released in order to offer readers stories with more complexity than the standard category romance could provide. This one runs 384 pages which sometimes feels a bit too long, but by the end is not long enough. Despite the historical look of the cover (depicting a scene on page 218), it's a contemporary romance about Liona, an English journalist in Spain who is following a popular bullfighter named Miguel. She had been covering him for a story, but the two fell in love. When the novel opens, the two are already secretly engaged, but Miguel is injured in the ring and sent to the hospital to recover. Miguel's older brother Rafael, a former bullfighter, is opposed to their marriage, and much of the novel consists of Liona and Rafael's love-hate relationship, with Miguel barely present physically but his existence psychologically hanging over them. As it turns out, Rafael is the book's love interest, not Miguel.
I enjoyed reading this novel primarily for its setting and its educational value concerning bullfighting. My feelings about the hero's behavior switched from sympathy to loathing, and back again, depending on the circumstances. For example, his decision to leave bullfighting and his generous treatment of a young man caught illegally bullfighting are admirable, but his controlling attitude towards Liona was infuriating. When Rafael informs Liona that she must marry him to prevent a scandal, and when he attempts to rape her at various times, I wanted this guy to burn in hell for eternity. However, the heroine's behavior was almost as annoying, most notably when she promptly agrees to marry him despite apparently hating him. (I took a few notes while I was reading the novel, and when I got to that scene on page 269, I wrote down one word: "bonkers!") However, it turns out that the reason she said yes is because she really did love him, but doesn't let the reader know until page 296 when she informs another character of her true feelings. And she doesn't let Rafael know she loves him until page 335. As for Rafael, well, we know by the end that he loves her, even if he doesn't come right out and say the words, because of the funk he is in, running off alone to the place where they first kissed, which is where she finds him and they reunite. Unusually, it is the heroine who does "the grovel" at the end of this book to win him back (never mind that he raped her, she had called him a coward).
So, as can be seen from the above, this novel does have some problematic characters. On the other hand, it is well-written, and I think the author knew what she was doing when she wrote it this way. Occasionally a reference is made in the text comparing the romance to the ring, where the bullfighter is waving the cape to distract the bull. But the cape is an illusion meant to distract the bull from its true opponent. Not all is what it seems here: Rafael's mother, for example, presents a solemn, imposing face to the world, to mask her inner pain from a tragic past. Liona's professed love for Miguel turns out to have been an illusion, with Rafael the true target of her affection. So the actions of the characters are better understood through the lens of literary symbolism than as a model for real-life behavior. Incidentally, there was another illusion in the story, the truth of which was not revealed until page 314, that unfortunately got spoiled for me because it was revealed by another Goodreads reviewer -- a reminder to me that I ought not read the reviews until I've read the book. (Which is a little frustrating, because how do you get a heads-up about whether it's worth reading until seeing what others have said about the book already?) Anyway, overall I enjoyed this novel and thought it was written well, but the two main characters were not very likable and occasionally infuriating. So, a mixed bag.
Rating: 3.5 stars
Read: August 31-October 7, 2020
Review: This book was published by Jove in February 1981. The novel is briefly mentioned by Janice A. Radway in her 1984 book Reading the Romance as having received a 5-star review in the newsletter of the romance readers that she was studying. I don't rate it as highly. The novel occasionally veers into being a 4-star read, especially near the middle of the book where it becomes an atmospheric gothic tale in the classic tradition. But the trope of the heroine's actions being controlled by others, either by remembrance of a past life (another person living again through her) or supernatural influence (hypnotic seduction by a vampiric lover), is unappealing in her lack of agency over events. The novel is sectioned into three parts (there are no chapter breaks): one titled "Lorrie" that takes place in 1952, the next (and largest) part titled "Barbary" that consists of the journal of Barbary Clinton from 1918 which recounts her experiences in the 1860s; and the final part titled "Maude" which is from Lorrie's perspective again (when she's not being possessed by Barbary's memories) and which brings things up to the present day. Although the story sometimes reads like a horror novel, it is also a romance and ends with a satisfying HEA.
The plot concerns a college student named Lorrie who is a promising pianist, a distant relative of the late Barbary Clinton who was acclaimed for her piano playing. One night Lorrie meets a young violinist named Dario and the two fall in love immediately, becoming lovers with plans for marriage. When they visit her family to explain the news, her eccentric Aunt Maude sends Dario away and warns Laurie of the danger that Dario presents to her soul, that he was responsible for Barbary's death. Maude hands her Barbary's diary in order that she will understand. We then read Barbary's diary (from page 55 to 187) where she relates her strange experience at Weir Hall where she met the "undead" Jonathan Weir and his sinister mother, Magda Weir. This section of the novel was the most impressive in its spooky and atmospheric vibe, sometimes reading like an actual 19th century horror novel and sometimes like a Hammer horror movie.
This novel would be worth reading a second time to pick up on details that were missed by the reader the first time around. The novel is a bit uneven and, as noted earlier, the denied agency of the heroine(s) is a little annoying, her identity smothered by past lives or supernatural control, although occasionally her true personality can be glimpsed underneath the actions of the possessed woman, providing a subtle textual depth. While the book can be slow-going at times, overall I enjoyed it.
ROGUE'S MASQUERADE by Margaret Summerville (1981)
Rating: 4 stars
Read: April 13-15, 2020
Review: This Regency romance was published by Avon Books in Sept. 1981. I had read and enjoyed a 1980s Signet Regency by the same author last year, so I was interested in reading this one when I chanced upon it. The novel is basically a light read that revolves entirely around a misunderstanding -- which sounds like it could make for a tiresome tale, but the author keeps it interesting with fun scenes involving the characters. I found the story entertaining from start to finish. The plot concerns an attempt by Lady Georgina to demonstrate that her brother is a poor judge of status by fooling him into thinking that a common ruffian is a gentleman. But Georgina is the one that is fooled when the subject of her experiment is in fact Lord Hugh Ballanville, Marquis of Renwick, whom she mistakes for a footman. Unfortunately the two dislike each other, until Renwick's true character (if not his rank) is revealed to her when he rescues her after she has run off to escape her controlling brother. There are a lot of little nice touches in the story, such as Georgina saving and adopting an abused pony; or the minor background character Mrs. Grove, a silently-disapproving middle-aged woman who often accompanies Georgina's friend Penelope everywhere but has no lines of dialogue. The way in which Georgina's brother tries to control her life is maddening, but perhaps not unusual for the era in which it takes place. There was a puzzling hiccup in the text on pages 89-90 where two lines of text were accidentally printed out of order; hopefully that error will be corrected in any future editions of the book (for example, in an e-book version).
Rating: 4 stars
Read: April 13-15, 2020
Review: This Regency romance was published by Avon Books in Sept. 1981. I had read and enjoyed a 1980s Signet Regency by the same author last year, so I was interested in reading this one when I chanced upon it. The novel is basically a light read that revolves entirely around a misunderstanding -- which sounds like it could make for a tiresome tale, but the author keeps it interesting with fun scenes involving the characters. I found the story entertaining from start to finish. The plot concerns an attempt by Lady Georgina to demonstrate that her brother is a poor judge of status by fooling him into thinking that a common ruffian is a gentleman. But Georgina is the one that is fooled when the subject of her experiment is in fact Lord Hugh Ballanville, Marquis of Renwick, whom she mistakes for a footman. Unfortunately the two dislike each other, until Renwick's true character (if not his rank) is revealed to her when he rescues her after she has run off to escape her controlling brother. There are a lot of little nice touches in the story, such as Georgina saving and adopting an abused pony; or the minor background character Mrs. Grove, a silently-disapproving middle-aged woman who often accompanies Georgina's friend Penelope everywhere but has no lines of dialogue. The way in which Georgina's brother tries to control her life is maddening, but perhaps not unusual for the era in which it takes place. There was a puzzling hiccup in the text on pages 89-90 where two lines of text were accidentally printed out of order; hopefully that error will be corrected in any future editions of the book (for example, in an e-book version).
Rating: 3 stars
Read: June 22-29, 2020
Review: This book was published by Signet in June 1984 and was the first in a short-lived line (#1-12) aimed at teens titled Turning Points that allowed readers to choose one of two possible endings. (Of course, readers could read both endings, too, which is what I did.) It's an interesting concept, undoubtedly inspired by the popularity of the Choose Your Own Adventure books at that time. It's a thin novel, only 160 pages counting the two endings, a preview page of the next book in the series, and a 2-page survey at the back for the reader to fill out and mail in. (One of the survey questions asks readers to rate the other "young adult romance series" they have read. The options listed are: Sweet Dreams, First Love, Wildfire, Caprice, Turning Points, Two-By-Two, Follow Your Heart, Young Love and Make Your Dreams Come True -- which gives an indication of how saturated the market was in the mid-1980s and why Turning Points might not have succeeded, being lost in the pack.) The only reason that it took me so long to finish this book (8 days) is that I was reading it off and on whilst reading another book. Plus it's not much of a page-turner, although still enjoyable.
The story is about a high school freshman named Laura and her fellow classmate Katie. Laura and Katie are not interested in football, unlike the rest of their school, but Laura begins to fall for the school's star quarterback Richie. Unlike Richie, Laura and Katie are not popular in school, so there seems little chance that anything will come of it, but it turns out that Richie needs help in his French class and Laura is able to occasionally help him with his studies. Laura tries out for the cheerleading team (without telling Katie because she knows she wouldn't approve) and makes the team. Eventually it gets to the point where Laura has to choose between going to a horse show that Katie is performing in, to show her support to her friend (which Laura had previously promised to attend), or to do her duty as a cheerleader to help prepare the Homecoming dance and then go to the dance that evening with Richie. So, those are the two choices. I chose Ending #1 which was for Laura to go to the dance with Richie. Both endings offer Laura and Richie their HEA (or HFN at least, since we are talking about teenage love here), but it seems that Ending #2 (going to the horse show) actually offers the better outcome since it demonstrates her loyalty to her longtime friend and Richie is willing to wait for future dances with Laura instead. It turns out in both endings that Richie is not all that interested in being a football player and Laura is willing to stick by him anyway; unlike some of their classmates, she likes him regardless of his involvement in the popular sport.
This was a well-written novel that reminded me of being a high school student in the 1980s. (I was also a freshman in high school in 1984.) There is a bittersweet quality about Laura's friendship with the somewhat nerdy Katie because, despite the book's title, their days together are numbered regardless of the choices Laura makes. They may remain lifelong friends, but it will never again be like it was during their high school days, where they got together every Friday night to spend hours watching cable TV together on the couch, giggling at each other's jokes, just the two of them against the world. Even in the second ending, where Laura chooses to go to Katie's horse show instead of the Homecoming dance with Richie, we read: "Of course, she and Katie would still be friends. Nothing could ever change that. But it had been all too obvious lately that they were moving in different directions. Now, for the first time, Laura could face up to what that meant without feeling that either she or Katie was in the wrong." The novel taps into the pain involved with growing up and moving on from people and situations that were previously such a constant in one's life, but that eventually become more distant as time marches on.
Rating: 4.5 stars
Read: August 16-September 9, 2020
Review: This book was originally published by Avon Books in June 1985; my copy is a 1997 paperback edition (hence not the original cover). This is a historical romance novel that largely takes place in Arizona in the 1880s, with scenes in New York at the beginning and end of the book. What caught my interest from the first page was Lindsey's depiction of the Old West and the frontier loner Slade Holt who travels in both the Indian and white man's world. Slade has a twin brother named Lucas who seeks a mail-order bride as part of his plan to seek revenge on Sam Newcomb, a powerful man after whom the town is named, who murdered his father for his gold. Stephanie, our heroine Sharisse's sister, answered the ad and then convinces Sharisse to go to Arizona instead in order to avoid being forced to marry a man named Joel whom Stephanie loves and Sharisse does not. Their father Marcus is a stubborn man who insists on the marriage, so Sharisse escaping New York temporarily to Arizona seems like a good way of avoiding this outcome. Conveniently, Stephanie answered the ad using only the initial of her first name, and sent Lucas a photo that had both sisters in it, so this convinces Sharisse that the plan will work. (It's a little too convenient and makes it look like Stephanie is eager to get rid of her sister.)
Much of the novel revolves around Sharisse's life on Lucas' ranch, which involves more hard work than she is used to doing back home, since there are no servants here. Sharisse learns to grow as a person because of her experiences on the ranch. However she is alternately attracted and put off by Lucas' sexual interest in her, and even more repulsed by the sexual advances of his twin brother Slade who occasionally visits the ranch when Lucas is not around, in order to have his way with her. I found Slade's attitude so appalling that I felt that Sharisse would have been justified in shooting him dead the next time he came near, and was disturbed by Lucas' lack of concern about his brother's behavior. Because of Sharisse's hostility towards Slade, his brother Lucas seems more attractive to her in comparison and the two eventually become lovers.
In the end, all works out for the best, with a couple big surprises in the last two chapters. The novel was highly enjoyable and satisfying, although the twists and turns of the plot felt as much contrived as clever. Although a historical, there's only about as much historical detail on display as might be found in an episode of Gunsmoke. This was nearly a 5-star book for me, but I'm only giving it 4.5 stars because the plot seemed a bit too contrived and the unpleasant neanderthal attitudes exhibited by Slade and Lucas towards Sharisse which are hard to forgive and forget.
THE DESPERATE GAME by Jayne Castle (1986)
Rating: 3.5 stars
Read: April 16-19, 2020
Review: This book was published by Dell in June 1986 and was book #1 in a four-book mystery series written by Jayne A. Krentz under her Jayne Castle pen-name. Each novel is a standalone story starring Guinevere Jones ("Gwen" for short) who runs a temp agency called Camelot Services, and Zachariah Justis ("Zac" for short) who runs a security agency called Free Enterprise Security. Both operations are small-time, however, with Zac being the only employee of his business and Gwen being helped by her sister Carla. Gwen and Zac meet for the first time here and that introduction suggests that Zac is an unpleasant character, since he blackmails Gwen to go undercover for him in a computer company, StarrTech, that he is investigating. Zac becomes more likable as the story rolls along. Initially Gwen compares Zac to a frog, and the descriptions of his rough manner and large size kept causing me to envision a fat, slovenly character like Harvey Bullock in the Batman comics. But the author occasionally messes with that mental image by noting his muscular "solidly built body" which is closer to the rugged-looking guy depicted on the cover. Despite being "the ugliest man in the bar" (to quote the novel's opening sentence) Zac and Gwen develop a sexual relationship, which allows the two to speculate on whether a kissed frog turns into a prince. That is the main "romance" aspect of the novel (in addition to Carla's interest in one of StarrTech's workers), the personality conflict between two strong-willed people who are helping each other to solve a mystery. The book is marketed more as a mystery novel, however, and the mystery about who has been stealing from StarrTech forms the bulk of the story. I found the conclusion to the mystery to be satisfying. It's not a fantastic must-read, but a fun diversion like watching an episode of a TV show like "Castle" (no pun intended). I rate it 3.5 stars, just slightly better than average. The book ends with a bonus: the first chapter of the next novel in the series, "The Chilling Deception," which from this preview looks equally as enjoyable.
Rating: 3.5 stars
Read: April 16-19, 2020
Review: This book was published by Dell in June 1986 and was book #1 in a four-book mystery series written by Jayne A. Krentz under her Jayne Castle pen-name. Each novel is a standalone story starring Guinevere Jones ("Gwen" for short) who runs a temp agency called Camelot Services, and Zachariah Justis ("Zac" for short) who runs a security agency called Free Enterprise Security. Both operations are small-time, however, with Zac being the only employee of his business and Gwen being helped by her sister Carla. Gwen and Zac meet for the first time here and that introduction suggests that Zac is an unpleasant character, since he blackmails Gwen to go undercover for him in a computer company, StarrTech, that he is investigating. Zac becomes more likable as the story rolls along. Initially Gwen compares Zac to a frog, and the descriptions of his rough manner and large size kept causing me to envision a fat, slovenly character like Harvey Bullock in the Batman comics. But the author occasionally messes with that mental image by noting his muscular "solidly built body" which is closer to the rugged-looking guy depicted on the cover. Despite being "the ugliest man in the bar" (to quote the novel's opening sentence) Zac and Gwen develop a sexual relationship, which allows the two to speculate on whether a kissed frog turns into a prince. That is the main "romance" aspect of the novel (in addition to Carla's interest in one of StarrTech's workers), the personality conflict between two strong-willed people who are helping each other to solve a mystery. The book is marketed more as a mystery novel, however, and the mystery about who has been stealing from StarrTech forms the bulk of the story. I found the conclusion to the mystery to be satisfying. It's not a fantastic must-read, but a fun diversion like watching an episode of a TV show like "Castle" (no pun intended). I rate it 3.5 stars, just slightly better than average. The book ends with a bonus: the first chapter of the next novel in the series, "The Chilling Deception," which from this preview looks equally as enjoyable.
Rating: 3 stars
Read: May 1-5, 2020
Review: "Diana" was book #29 in the Sunfire Romance series, a historical romance line aimed at teens that was published by Scholastic in the 1980s. I enjoyed the novel more than I thought I would. It's very much like a regular category historical romance with the exception that it involves teenagers as the main characters instead of adults. Consequently it is a very clean romance limited to the occasional hand-holding or innocent kiss. Our heroine Diana (the titles of all the Sunfire books are named after the heroine) lives between New Orleans and St. Louis from 1803 (when she is 14) to 1806 (age 17). Her heart belongs to two boys, her society friend David and a frontiersman named John who is leaving on the Lewis & Clark expedition. The novel concerns the choice that she has to make between them. (I was surprised but satisfied with the outcome.)
Here is a nicely written paragraph from page 87 to give you an idea of the quality of the writing: "Two days seldom passed without John coming whistling through the woods to her. The tune was always the same. She always meant to ask him what song it was, but forgot to. Since she didn't know what else to call it, she thought of that certain lilt as 'John's song' and felt her heart skip when it came into her mind. Once in a while, in the privacy of her own room, she hummed the notes to herself and smiled."
When I was in school learning about history, I hated how the textbooks took all the excitement out of the subject with pages showing graphs and maps to impart their information. Part of the word "history" is "story," and telling the story is what makes it come alive. Presumably this was the purpose of the Sunfire line, to inform young readers about American history in a way that would interest them and perhaps ignite their interest in history generally. This novel succeeds in that aim, since near the end I found myself going to Wikipedia to learn more about the Lewis and Clark expedition based on its presence in the book. I hasten to add that the educational aspect was no more intrusive than in any other historical romance novel that I've read, so readers fear not getting an unwanted school lesson here. Apart from a duel scene later in the book, there's not much action or suspense in the story, therefore some readers may find it rather unexciting. However I found the book to be well-written and enjoyable despite the leisurely pace.
Rating: 3.5 stars
Read: June 7-9, 2020
Review: This book was Harlequin Romance #3064 (July 1990). It's a low-key romance about a cautious, no-nonsense financial analyst named Cindy (Cynthia) Rogers and one of her company's accounts, the famous and wealthy businessman Clay Kencade. Clay is attracted to Cindy, but she keeps avoiding his advances due to his reputation in the press as a man who frequently dates women and her own obligations in raising the three children of her deceased sister. In order to get closer to her, Clay offers to have her work for him, an offer she accepts. Clay begins spending more time with Cindy and the children since his own upbringing was difficult and they lack a father figure in their lives. You can probably see where this is going: Clay is perfect for Cindy, but she is afraid to get involved with him because she thinks he won't stay, that she is just another conquest he will soon forget and she doesn't want the children to get hurt being abandoned by him as well. Cindy and Clay have their arguments and misunderstandings, but the reasons are natural and credible -- not contrived for the sake of the story.
This is very much a 1980s novel, but instead of a "greed is good" mentality, Clay is shown to be someone who takes over struggling companies in order to rescue them, not like a vulture capitalist. Clay is happy to pay taxes on his wealth so that others might benefit, and Cindy has to convince him to declare his charitable donations on his taxes instead of keeping his generosity a secret. On page 60, Cindy thinks how different Clay is from "all the big financiers she'd ever heard of -- like Donald Trump," who "were always in a rush." Clay made time for others, including the kids she was raising. The inappropriateness of dating the boss is raised on page 103 where Cindy feels that Clay, as her boss, had tricked her into going on a date that she had thought would be a business meeting. "You're implying sexual harassment!" Clay replies. "Well, I won't be harassing you any further. Good night." Later Cindy thinks that they owe each other an apology: she for implying that he had done something wrong in expressing romantic interest in her, and he for not following her professional advice regarding his finances. (This was before she knew why he was making the business decisions he was making, not simply to get rich but to use his wealth to help others.) In the end, the two learn to understand each other. The ending wrapped up a little too quickly, I think (the novel is only 189 pages long), but I was happy to see that Cindy was able to overcome her fears and recognize that Clay was the perfect man for her.
Two of the supporting characters previously appeared in Rutland's first Harlequin Romance, "To Love Them All," but the novel can be enjoyed without having read that book (I haven't read it myself). Rutland was one of the first African-American authors to write for Harlequin, although the characters in this story are evidently white. (The hero as depicted on the cover reminds me of actor Christian Bale. Incidentally, this era of the Harlequin Romance line has probably my favorite of their cover designs, with the logo write large and no frame/border to confine the artwork. The painting on this cover is terrific.) Rutland was also blind by this time, which I never would have guessed from having read this book. The novel is well-written, pleasurable to read, and the characters are likable. All in all, a solid category romance that I enjoyed from start to finish.
Rating: 3.5 stars
Read: January 1-23, 2020
Review: I'm giving this book 3.5 stars. I wanted to love this novel, and I enjoyed reading it for the most part, but I think it could have been better. It was almost a 4 star book for me, but there were some parts that really dragged. The Prologue, which takes place at a massacre during the French Revolution, made for a gripping opening, and so I was disappointed when the next several chapters (which take place years later) involve a scheme to kidnap the (now-grown) heroine in order to influence her grandfather. So this means a lot of talking, planning, etc. Then there follow chapters where the imprisoned heroine attempts to escape from the castle in which she is being kept by the hero. It's somewhat interesting up to this point, but not a truly thrilling read. Things become more engaging around page 300 when the now-married heroine is introduced to society as the Duke of Dyson's wife. There is a bit of intrigue as she is told lies about her husband by a foreign agent who plans to take her back to France. The penultimate chapter sees the rescue of the heroine and brings the tale closer to 4-star territory, but then the final chapter brings us back to the castle and feels like a bit of a backward step as the hero and heroine resume their former combative roles until, at last, the happy ending when all secrets are finally revealed.
The novel had a lot of the ingredients of a 5-star book, the kind of lusty historical novel from this era (it was published in 1990) that I love, but I think it would have benefited from being around 100 pages shorter, a tighter story, so that there was less dragging and boredom in various spots. The story is heavily populated by actual historical characters which may contribute to a bit of that dragging. On the other hand, this is the kind of novel that I wouldn't mind giving a reread in the future, and it's possible that I may get more out of it a second time around, since characters mentioned at the beginning reappear near the end. I did wonder if the hero's sister and mother, murdered at the massacre in the Prologue, would turn up alive before the novel's end, since their deaths are not literally shown -- but that did not happen, and a good thing, too, as it would have seemed contrived and too much of a happy ending. Overall, I enjoyed the novel and appreciated all the work that the author obviously put into writing it. I just think it could have been an even better book if there had been either more action & intrigue, or else more trimming of the less-interesting parts of the story.
Rating: 4.5 stars
Read: October 8-13, 2020
Review: According to the index at FictionDB, Charlotte Louise Dolan wrote only 7 novels from 1991 to 1994, all of them for Signet's traditional Regency line, plus two novellas for anthologies also published by Signet. And then, nothing. It's always a little surprising to me when that happens, when a prolific and promising new author abruptly disappears from the scene. This book, published in February 1991, happens to be Dolan's first published novel (as she wrote about in an article in Romantic Times #91) which grabbed me from the first page and kept me reading due to its page-turning power. Dolan's prose focuses more on actions and events than dwelling on descriptions of the characters' internal feelings (at least until the end), which keeps things moving along without a lot of filler. Our heroine, Elizabeth Goldsborough, has a scarred face due to a carriage accident in which our hero, military captain Darius St. John, was involved. Elizabeth's brother Nicholas demands that St. John marry Elizabeth since he was responsible for this facial disfigurement that repulses other men. (Nicholas, as Dolan wrote about in Romantic Times #95, became the hero of Dolan's third book, The Resolute Runaway, which I don't have.)
I tend to refrain from giving thin traditional Regency novels a full 5 stars, saving that highest rating for thicker books that have more complexity, but this book was very nearly a 5-star book for me, and one that I enjoyed just as much as thicker historicals. The prose is jam-packed with things happening, with lots of memorable characters and situations. After every scene, Dolan manages to conjure a new inviting scene to follow it, maintaining and refreshing my interest with each new chapter. One unfortunate aspect of the novel is that there are several typos, which suggests a lack of editorial oversight. The name Darius is misspelled "Darious" a few times in the first chapter, and even Elizabeth's name is misspelled once. The writing itself cannot be faulted, however -- only the spelling. Perhaps another criticism that could be levelled at the book is that Darius and Elizabeth are kept apart for too much of the tale, and that Darius is too quick to believe the worst about his wife. The scheming villains of the story may seem more dramatic than realistic, although I did enjoy the fact that they were portrayed as being so inept as to be less of a threat to Darius and Elizabeth's happiness. And the presence of the sensible and intelligent Lady Letitia, as well as all the faithful servants, provided a welcome balance to the unlikable and selfish ton.
This was Dolan's first book and it is written as if it would be her last book as well, seemingly putting her all -- everything but the kitchen sink -- into its 224 pages. For that reason it's hard for me to evaluate whether this is the author at the peak of her powers or whether she got even better with the next book. So, despite my temptation to give this a 5-star rating, I'm going to say 4.5 stars for her first effort and look forward to seeing where she goes from here.
Rating: 3 stars
Read: August 10-16, 2020
Review: Last year I read a Mills & Boon/Harlequin novel by Anne Weale (1929-2007) from 1959 and enjoyed it, rating it 3 stars. This 1992 Mills & Boon novel, published in the U.S. as Harlequin Romance (Subscription Series) #155 (Oct. 1993) was also enjoyable. As an aside: I've sometimes wondered what Harlequin's criteria was for releasing some Mills & Boon books as part of the regular Harlequin Romance line, while others (like this book) were released in the Subscription-only series instead. For most of the 1960s and 1970s, Weale's novels appeared in the regular Harlequin Romance line. From 1978 to 1990, the majority of her novels appeared in the Harlequin Presents line. After 1990, many of her novels appeared in the HR Subscription series instead, beginning with this book.
This is a solid, well-written novel, although not a very exciting one. Weale was in her 60s when she wrote this, so our heroine Charlotte appears a bit more old-fashioned than one might expect of a young woman in her 20s in the early 1990s. For example, she doesn't enjoy current pop music, preferring classical music, and the hero Dean (in his mid-30s) feels the same way. They are two of the younger passengers aboard a tourist boat trip through the islands around the Maldives in the Indian Ocean. Charlotte grew up here before moving to the UK, and it turns out that the ship's captain is a longtime friend from those days named Manik who has romantic feelings for her. The dilemma is that Charlotte is falling in love with Dean (and the feeling is mutual), a man about whom she knows almost nothing.
The strength of the novel lies in the variety of memorable characters on board the ship and the details about life in the Maldives. (I say this assuming that Weale's authoritative-sounding descriptions of that area are accurate, although for all I know those details could ring wrong to a native.) Reading this novel feels like being on that boat and visiting those islands the way that those characters do. I appreciated that both Charlotte and Dean have a more enlightened and unprejudiced view of the foreign aspects they encounter than their fellow English tourists do in the story. Overall I enjoyed this novel; it was entertaining and interesting, a pleasant read, allowing the reader to visit a faraway exotic locale from the comfort of their armchair.
Rating: 5 stars
Read: April 8-11, 2020
Review: This historical romance novel was a quick read (no pun intended) despite being 338 pages long. I'd not read a novel by Amanda Quick [pen-name of Jayne Ann Krentz] before. Initially I wondered if some of the characters had appeared in one of her previous novels, since references are made early on to their past activities, such as our heroine Prudence Merryweather's recovery of the Pembroke jewels during one of her investigations of spectral phenomena. However this is a standalone novel and that background helps to make the reader think that the characters exist outside the pages of this particular story, making them seem more fully-realized. Both Prudence and the hero Sebastian are fun characters to spend time with, although occasionally Prue's independent spirit and willingness to insert herself into dangerous (no pun intended) situations can make her seem hopelessly naive, with a false sense of her own invincibility. (At times I was reminded of Scrappy-Doo in the 1980s Scooby Doo cartoons, who was too eager to confront the ghosts!) The novel is a combination of a historical romance and a murder mystery (with a hint of the paranormal) and succeeds at both genres, although perhaps not very deeply at either. While the novel presumably takes place in the Regency era due to the references to "the ton" and a mention of Lord Byron, dates are not given and historical details are light. The book is written for the modern reader (with a few somewhat detailed sex scenes) who vicariously enjoys reading about the foggy streets of London in the 19th century but wouldn't actually want to live there in reality. Dangerous is pure entertainment and makes for addictive reading.
Rating: 5 stars
Read: December 18-22, 2020
Review: This book was published by Avon Books in June 1993; my copy is the 10th printing which came out circa late 2002. This book introduces Derek Craven, the hero of the next book Kleypas wrote, Dreaming of You, in 1994. In Then Came You, Craven plays a supporting role as friend of the heroine "Lawless" Lily Lawson, a notorious and eccentric independent woman in Regency England. Her conventional younger sister Penelope is engaged to marry the wealthy but unloving Lord Alex Raiford, despite being more compatible (and in love) with young Zachary Stamford. Lily and Zach conspire to stop the impending marriage so that Zach can marry Penelope instead. This is an enemies-to-lovers tale with Lily and Alex disliking each other from the start, with several memorable scenes depicting their dislike, such as when Alex orders Lily out of his house, angrily packs her suitcase for her and throws it out the window! Lily gives as good as she gets, at one point knocking Alex out by hitting him on the head and then tying him to her bed so that he can't escape. Eventually Lily and Alex fall in love, but Lily has a dark secret that she refuses to reveal to him: she has a child who has been kidnapped by the baby's father, to whom she has been paying money based on his empty promises to return the child to her.
This is one of those books that I felt was going to be a 5-star book right from the beginning, where the inclusion of snippets of overheard dialogue by passersby made me think of a romance novel as directed by Orson Welles. I did find a few typos along the way that may have been corrected in later printings. Some examples: "His youngest brother Henry was begin [being] expelled from Westfield" (page 96). "I'm must [much] more of a danger to older men" (page 108). "...he [the?] reawakened appetite" (page 154). "Hot fears [tears] flooded from her eyes onto his shirt" (page 369). These are the kinds of errors that spellcheck will miss. However these minor (and very rare) lapses did not detract from my enjoyment of Kleypas' superior prose. The book contains one great scene after another and continually held my interest, although I do think the sex scenes (particularly pages 218-229 and 262-270) tended to slow down the story, and were generally not as well-written as the rest of the book. I also was annoyed at Lily for refusing to let Alex know about her kidnapped child, but I suppose that if she had told him earlier then it would have diminished the drama of the story. At 403 pages, the book is a little long, and probably could have lost 100 pages without missing much, but I was happy to spend time in this world with these characters so the novel's length gave me more opportunity to do so.
I generally don't talk about a book's front cover in my reviews, but this one deserves special mention. This cover was produced at the height of Fabio's popularity (although I don't think he was the model for this one) and it's easy for people to mock these kinds of covers as cheesy and garish. Understandably this cover was replaced with more respectable-looking ones in later printings, beginning in 2003, but I prefer the original. Although the depictions of the hero and heroine are accurate to the text, this flowery scene is far more dreamlike and mythological in appearance than anything inside the book. Nonetheless, it's a stunningly beautiful cover, not only for the illustrations but for its attractive purple coloring. It also imparts a sense of hopefulness to the reader that despite all of the turmoil happening in the story, love will find a way.
Rating: 5 stars
Read: January 23-February 6, 2020
Review: I'm giving this book 5 stars. I had debated whether it would rate 4, 4.5 or 5, but it never went below a 4 for me throughout its 390 pages and frequently hit that higher mark. So, what the heck, let's call it a 5-star book, since I enjoyed the heck out of reading it and easily lost myself in its pages. It's a fairly simple story overall, reminding me of a traditional Regency novel (although technically a Georgian novel, since it takes place in 1788 to 1790) although twice the normal length of a trad. The plot: Phillipe St. Sebastien leaves his decaying castle home in France to find a wealthy wife in England in the hope that he can use her money to restore his ancestral home, since his grandfather had squandered the family wealth. What he doesn't reckon on is falling in love with a penniless farm girl that is staying at the home of the rich young woman he is pursuing. Our heroine is that country lass, Victoria Larkin, raised on a farm with her father and brothers but sent to live with a well-to-do cousin in order to make her more refined. Phillipe must choose between love and money, but just as he chooses Victoria (unknown to her), he is called back to France during the turmoil of the French Revolution to rescue his sister Christianna. It's at this point that the novel takes a turn as the two lovers are separated and the pregnant Victoria is kidnapped by the villainous John Steel. It seemed inevitable that these two formidable men, John Steel and Phillipe, would come into conflict over Victoria and the ending gives us that expected showdown (although personally I would have liked to have seen Steel suffer more for what he did).
One of the things that I liked best about this novel is how enjoyable and vividly written many of the scenes were, as if I were watching a movie. For example, one scene where Phillipe and the cousin's daughter were inside the house and they see Victoria and two friends goofing around in the fountain outside. Sometimes the sex scenes in romance novels can be boring due to their sameness, but this one made me laugh out loud when after one passionate lovemaking session on the dressing table, Phillipe exclaimed, "Good God, Victoria. I could have at least taken you to the bed." She replied innocently, "The bed? Is that where this should be done?" Victoria is a refreshingly independent spirit who doesn't let others push her around if she can help it, and in fact rescues herself at one point when imprisoned by a foe.
According to information online, "Wild Summer Rose" was Amy Elizabeth Saunders' first novel, published in 1993. (The book is copyrighted to Amy Tucker, presumably her real name.) She actually wrote a sequel to this book, "Sweet Summer Storm" (1994), which concerns Phillipe's sister Christianne falling in love with Victoria's brother Gareth. (I look forward to reading that book, of course!) She only wrote two other novels, "Forever" (1994) and "Enchanted Time" (1995), both time travel romances. From 1995 to 2000, she also wrote five short stories that appeared in romance anthologies. And that's it apparently. Judging from how good her first novel was, it's a pity that she didn't write more.
UPDATE: Since writing the above review, I have learned that "Amy Elizabeth Saunders" was actually two people, sisters Amy and Elizabeth Tucker.
THE AWAKENED HEART by Betty Neels (1993)
Rating: 2.5 stars
Read: May 12-20, 2020
Review: This is the first time that I've ever read a book by Betty Neels (1909-2001). I knew going in that her books are known for having unglamorous nurses falling in love with forceful Dutch doctors. Given that Neels did not begin writing until 1969 when she was 60 years old, I expected her novels to be a bit old-fashioned. Unlike some Harlequin writers like Anne Mather whose output graduated from the regular Harlequin Romance line to the racier Harlequin Presents, Neels was firmly a fixture of the former due to the tameness of her romances. That's not a bad thing of course, although (as a result of being written by Neels) our 27 year old heroine Sophie seems to be leading the quiet life of an old lady with her pet cat Mabel, when she's not at her exhausting nursing job. (Sophie's age is indicated on page 63, but math is involved.) When the visiting Dutch doctor Rijk asks her to marry him -- not out of love, but simply because they are good friends who have no foolish romantic notions -- Sophie eventually agrees.
Annoyingly, it is assumed that she will drop her nursing career to become his wife, which she does so without a thought of keeping her job. When this novel was published in the early 1990s, young women living in London in real life might have spent their off-hours attending a rave party or listening to Radiohead. But Neels was 85 years old when this book was published as Harlequin Romance #3339 (Dec. 1994) and it's only to be expected that her heroine is naturally going to be more like a 1950s young woman than a modern one. (The reason that the novel is copyright 1993 is because it was published that year by Mills & Boon in the UK before its North American publication by Harlequin.) Some readers may feel that the old-fashionedness adds to the book's charm and gives it a kind of universal appeal (the text lacking any pop culture references to pin a date on it), like the reader is entering Neels' world and either "gets" it and finds it a comforting read or wants something more contemporary, something that it never tried to be, and doesn't. One big drawback to the old-fashioned style is that the perspective is almost continually from Sophie's POV. When Rijk smiles enigmatically, we don't know why because Neels doesn't let us get inside his head much. This can give the story a kind of claustrophobic feeling, since we are spending so much time with Sophie and her confused feelings, and none on Rijk's internal thoughts.
The slow pace and the lack of action caused me to spend a lot more time reading this 189-page novel than I should have. The gimmick of this story is that Rijk married Sophie because he is in love with her, but she doesn't know that (and neither does the reader for certain). Eventually she falls in love with him, but is afraid to reveal this love because she assumes he didn't want to marry for love. This misunderstanding on her part, and then getting jealous of a woman that he knows, makes the book read like a romance novel from the 1950s instead of the 1990s. And the last third of the book, where the couple relocate to his home in Holland, was a bit of a chore to read as I waited for the expected ending where the misunderstandings are resolved and the married couple admits their love for each other. Every writer has their own favorite words and phrases that they use over and over again, and it was during this last third of the book that I noticed the word "presently" frequently appearing, which added to my irritation. This book started out as a 3-star read for me, but by the last third of the novel, my rating descended a notch. So I'm going to give this book only 2.5 stars. Some people might love this sort of predictable old-fashioned romance novel, but I did not and will be reluctant to try another Neels book anytime soon. (Maybe next year.)
PEACHY'S PROPOSAL by Carole Buck (1996)
Rating: 3.5 stars
Read: May 27-June 4, 2020
Review: This book was Silhouette Desire #976 (Jan. 1996) and the 2nd novel in the author's Wedding Belles series. It's a romantic comedy (you can tell by the cover, since the couple is shown laughing) about an artsy young woman named "Peachy" Keene living in New Orleans who (after a scary incident aboard a plane) is afraid of dying a virgin at age 23. She enlists the help of her landlord (bestselling novelist Luc Devereaux) to deflower her, based on the understanding that there will be no romantic involvement between them -- just the sex act with no strings attached. Luc goes along with the plan out of fear that someone less honorable than himself will take advantage of her if he refuses, but their attempts to do the deed continue to be interrupted by one thing or another. This delaying of the act helps to build the sexual tension and makes it more difficult for them to keep from falling in love with each other.
This is a 1990s "modern" romance, with a heroine pursuing sex without love (or so she thinks) and interesting neighbors for supporting characters, such as a former NFL player turned drag queen. Other examples of a modern sensibility are an allusion to masturbation (page 67) and Luc's use of a condom. (A Betty Neels novel this is not!) Carole Buck was a good writer, who apparently (according to FictionDB) hasn't had a book published since 1999. The story is only 186 pages long, but the text is small and the prose sometimes seems a bit overwritten for so slight a plot. That detailed style of writing works well during the eventual sex scene, however. Occasionally this felt like a 4-star book for me, but I'm going to rate it 3.5 stars overall. I enjoyed the book a lot more than I thought I would, since I only picked it up on a whim.
CAPTIVE STAR by Nora Roberts (1997)
Rating: 4 stars
Read: April 23-26, 2020
Review: I've wanted to read a Nora Roberts novel this year, just so I could have some experience in having read a book by this popular and significant author in the romance genre. This is the only book by Roberts that I own so far, and I bought it simply because I liked the cover. (I have the original edition, which was Silhouette Intimate Moments #823, Dec. 1997.) This was the second book in "The Stars of Mithra" trilogy; the first was "Hidden Star" (SIM #811) which I've not read, but that didn't hamper my enjoyment of this one. I was unprepared for this book, which is a dynamite read. Based on the cover, one might assume that this is a romance novel with some mystery element to it, maybe like an old Alfred Hitchcock movie. Nope: think Quentin Tarantino instead (but without the swearing). Much of this book read like a "men's adventure" or hard-boiled crime novel.
Our hero is Jack Dakota, a bounty hunter whose assignment is to bring in a woman named M. J. O'Leary. The problem is that Jack has been set up, fed false info by the person who hired him, so when Jack busts M.J. at her apartment for skipping bail, she has no idea what he is talking about. She assumes he is a mugger or potential rapist, and a knock-down drag-out fight ensues between the two. Soon they are on the run from two hired goons who are trying to kill them both, in order to steal a rare diamond in M.J.'s possession: one of the three Stars of Mithra (the other two diamonds are the subject of the other two books in the trilogy).
For the first few chapters, Jack has M.J. handcuffed to prevent her from escaping until they eventually trust one another, and finally of course fall in love. One of my favorite scenes is early on in the book when they are hiding out in a motel with the TV playing in the background (just in case she decides to start screaming for help). When Jack empties M.J.'s purse, he notices a Sue Grafton paperback ("good book, by the way," he tells her, as she's handcuffed to the bed, "I won't tell you the ending") and then they watch the TV for awhile. The channel is having a monsters and heroes marathon for the July 4th weekend, so first there is a dubbed "Hercules" movie playing, followed by a Japanese monster movie -- and we actually get a short paragraph describing the movie as they watch it.
I kept picturing Brad Pitt as Jack Dakota while I read the novel, or maybe Matthew McConaughey -- someone cool and laid back who wasn't going to get pushed around. M.J. has red hair, full lips and catlike eyes, so I was thinking maybe someone like Scarlet Johansson in the role, but M.J.'s confident attitude, athletic figure and long legs made me think of someone like Angie Harmon instead (though Angie has black hair, not red). The woman depicted on the front cover seems too delicate-looking and the guy looks too well-groomed.
I've said in the past that I've never been one to swoon over the characters in a romance novel, and have never felt this burning desire to see the hero and heroine jump in the sack, whereas many romance readers do feel that way and that's a big part of the genre's appeal. Well, I take it back: I wanted to see these two get it on. Part of the reason may be because I was picturing them as these larger-than-life stars, another may be because the sexual tension between them was off the charts due to the characters' similar personalities and their aggressive physical and verbal reactions to each other. I didn't want to see the loner Jack Dakota remain alone at the end, and I didn't want M.J. to let him walk away.
I read this novel with no preconceived notions about Nora Roberts other than knowing she was popular and prolific. Now I know that her popularity is totally deserved. The writing in this book was excellent, not just the pop culture references, the great lines of dialogue, the page-turning quality of the narrative, the lyrical descriptions of the lovemaking, but also the little observations about life that would occasionally find their way onto the page. An example (page 164): "Occasionally she would see houses behind the roadside trees, glimpses only, as if they were hiding from prying eyes. She wondered about them, those tucked-away houses.... It was one way to live, she supposed. But you had to tend that garden, mow that lawn. She'd never lived in a house. Apartments had always suited her style. To some, she supposed, an apartment would seem like a box tucked with other boxes within a box." This sounds like the thoughts of a real person, not just a character in a story.
So, why am I giving this book 4 stars instead of 5? I've found that my 5-star reads tend to be thicker books (this novel only runs 248 pages) and historical romance (which tend to be more impressive to me due to the research required). Also, I doubt that this is the best book that Nora Roberts has ever written (great as it is) so I'm going to say 4 stars for now and can always revise my rating later if necessary.
LITTLE COQUETTE by Joan Smith (1998)
Rating: 3.5 stars
Read: April 30-May 2, 2020
Review: This was Joan Smith's last novel to be published by Fawcett Crest, in July 1998. Her first novel had been published by Fawcett in 1977. She wrote around 90 Regency novels for Fawcett until their parent company Ballantine closed down their traditional Regency line at the end of 1998. (Unfortunately the long-running Fawcett brand was also retired around this time. It's always a little frustrating to me whenever one company buys another, only to eliminate the identifiable brand that they now own.) "Little Coquette" was billed as "A Regency Romantic Mystery" on the cover, a hybrid subcategory that Smith had increasingly been writing -- a Regency romance that is also a mystery novel (or vice versa). There is more of a focus on mystery than romance, however, with the hero and heroine not being romantically involved for most of the novel, their first kiss occurring on page 154 (in a 198-page book).
Her final book for Fawcett is the first Joan Smith book I've read, although from sampling the opening pages of several of her other novels I already knew that I would like her writing, which features clever turns of phrases and enjoyable banter between the characters. Our heroine is Lydia Trevelyn, the 18 year old daughter of a London politician; she was recently gifted a copy of Mary Wollstonecraft's "Vindication of the Rights of Woman" and aspires to be an independent woman in a society that thinks women should get married instead. She and a former childhood friend (our hero Lord Beaumont) discover a dead body near her home that turns out to be the longtime mistress of her father. The discovery that her father had a mistress is disillusioning for Lydia, but she and Beaumont attempt to solve the mystery of who murdered the woman (while hoping that her father was not involved). There is a lot of old-fashioned mystery and adventure as they pursue the clues to the case and ultimately face danger as they discover the killer. It's a fun, quick read, and I enjoyed it a lot.
LORD OF ICE by Gaelen Foley (2002)
Rating: 4.5 stars
Read: April 19-23, 2020
Review: This book was published by Ivy/Ballantine in Feb. 2002. It's a 417-page historical romance novel that takes place in the Regency era. Our hero, Damien Knight, is the twin brother of Lucien, who was the hero in the previous novel, "Lord of Fire" (which I've not read). Damien has recently returned from fighting in the Napoleonic wars and is much admired for his heroism throughout England. The experience has taken a terrible toll on him mentally, however, as he suffers from PTSD (not named, of course). Whenever he has a nightmare, or even hears a wine bottle being uncorked at a party, his mindset goes back to the battlefield and his body goes into self-defense mode, sometimes putting those around him in danger as he sees them as a potential threat. The common romance trope of the heroine taming the savage male beast is here turned toward overcoming a psychological problem.
The heroine Miranda is Damien's newly-discovered ward. The two are in love, but Damien denies his feelings, not only because it would be improper to wed his own ward but also due to his fragile mental condition. By page 324, Miranda has gotten Damien to talk about the terrible things he saw in battle, which would appear to be helpful in minimizing their impact on his psyche. By the next page, however, she is administering sexual healing to get his mind off the New Year's fireworks exploding outside. The subsequent oral sex scene that Miranda confidently and expertly performs seems incongruous with the rest of the book in its graphic content and inconsistent with Miranda's youth and inexperience, i.e. a 19 year old virgin living in the early 1800s. Damien had hoped to get Miranda married to a more suitable mate than himself, but the reader knows that the two will get together in the end. The romance novel convention that the two leads are rarely separated in the story and will receive a happy ending works well here, reinforcing the notion that this is their story, one in which they help and save each other -- the tale of two people who belong with each other and are the better for it.
In a YouTube interview, the author noted that her stories have villains and that is certainly the case here, which helps to add dramatic tension and suspense to the narrative as well as providing a satisfying smashing of their wicked schemes. Some Goodreads reviewers had said that they thought the novel started off great but got dull after awhile. I didn't feel that way; the book held my interest throughout. You know how some songs (like The Beatles' "Hello Goodbye") have a false ending? The listener thinks the song has ended, but then it bursts back to life with a rousing coda. Something like that happens here in the book's final chapter which begins with the wedding of Damien and Lucien. Months go by and all is well, until news arrives of Napoleon's return and Damien is faced with the prospect of leaving his new wife behind and going back to war. Even the book's epilogue has one last surprise at the end for the reader.
One of my favorite moments in the novel was around the halfway point (page 234) during the Christmas Eve celebration, where Miranda's dreams have miraculously come true. "It was midnight when Miranda went to bed in a delirium of happiness." It was at that point that I felt I was reading a 5-star novel. I've knocked off a half-point for the gratuitous oral sex scene mentioned above, so it's a 4.5 star book for me.
THE LOST DUKE OF WYNDHAM by Julia Quinn (2008)
Rating: 3.5 stars
Read: December 14-18, 2020
Review: This historical romance novel was published by Avon Books in June 2008. The story is about Grace Eversleigh, the servant companion of a wealthy dowager, who one night is held up by a highwayman (Jack Audley) that turns out to be the dowager's long-lost grandson and thus the true Duke of Wyndham (taking the title away from her other grandson Thomas). Jack doesn't want to be duke, however, especially if it means that he can't marry Grace. Eventually, on page 270, our entire cast of characters depart for his boyhood home in Ireland to determine if Jack is the legitimate duke, forcing Jack to come to terms with a past that he had spent years running away from.
STAY A LITTLE LONGER by Dorothy Garlock (2010)
Rating: 4 stars
Read: May 9-11, 2020
Review: This book was a page-turner! I began reading it with no expectations whatsoever, having picked it up at a library used book sale along with a stack of other semi-recent romance novels. The story takes place in 1926 in the small town of Carlson, Minnesota (evidently a fictional place) where we find our heroine Rachel taking care of a child named Charlotte (the daughter of Rachel's deceased sister Alice) and Rachel's mother Eliza (who was traumatized by Alice's death and has confined herself to her bedroom for years). Their home is a boardinghouse where they let rooms in order to pay the bills, although times have been tough with few paying customers. Their most recent boarder is a creep who rarely pays his rent and eventually tries to rape Rachel. Meanwhile, Alice's husband Mason -- who was believed to have died during World War One -- returns home to them, having stayed away so long because of how his face was disfigured in the war. He learns that Alice died while he was away and gave birth to their daughter Charlotte. In addition to putting right his relationship with the family he had abandoned, Mason must also try to put in order his father's banking business which has been taken over by his corrupt brother.
What I've described above may make it sound like a soap opera, but despite the occasional moments of drama and the machinations of a few villains in the story, it's also a gentle tale about a family living during tough times, reminiscent in a way of the articles that I used to read in "Good Old Days" magazine in the 1980s. It's a clean romance (although with a few swear words) with hardly any sexual content (aside from the attempted rape). At first I wondered whether the author would be able to accurately portray American life in the 1920s, since I noticed that there were no references to the pop culture of that time (movies, radio, music, etc.). However, when I looked up Dorothy Garlock online, it turns out that she was born in 1919, so she was a child herself during the period in which the novel takes place. Garlock was 90 years old when this novel was published; her mind must have been very sharp right up to the end (she passed away in 2018 at the age of 98) because there is a lot going on in this novel. What's more, this is book #1 of a trilogy; an excerpt of the beginning of the next book in the series, which follows Charlotte as an adult, appears as a bonus at the end of this book.
Incidentally, reading this novel helped me clarify in my mind whether I ought to rate a book 3.5 or 4 stars, since it was either going to be one or the other. The fact that I read this 349-page novel in only 3 days indicated a high level of interest on my part, and therefore a 4 or 5 star book. The way that the plot flows along with its memorable characters makes for addictive reading. However the writing itself (descriptions, dialogue) was not particularly impressive to me (e.g., I didn't feel compelled to read sentences aloud, savoring how they sounded), perhaps meaning it merited only 3.5 stars instead. The reason that I'm giving this novel 4 stars is because it's a book that I would recommend to others, that I think they would enjoy like I did.
INNOCENT COURTESAN TO ADVENTURER'S BRIDE by Louise Allen (2011)
Rating: 4 stars
Read: February 19-March 7, 2020
Review: This book was Harlequin Historical #1060, published in Oct. 2011, and the third book in "The Transformation of the Shelley Sisters" trilogy. I've not read the previous two books in the series, but was able to follow what was happening because each book deals with a different sister's romance. This book concerns the younger sister Celina Shelley (often referred to as Lina for short) who finds herself working in her Aunt's brothel The Blue Door, though not as a sex worker. This lack of participation is ordered to change when the oppositely-named Mr. Makepeace takes over the business. When her first customer, another loathsome man named Tolhurst, drops dead before he can ravage her and his expensive sapphire ring is discovered missing, the innocent Lina must go into hiding to avoid the hangman's noose. She finds refuge living with the elderly Lord Dreycott (a friend of her aunt's), but he soon dies and his young great-nephew Quinn takes over his estate. The first part of the novel deals with the question of how much Lina can reveal to Quinn without placing herself in further danger. The second half of the novel deals with Quinn's efforts to extricate Lina from her criminal charge and to get her to marry him. It is perhaps a little absurd that the events of the novel take place within such a short period of time, between March 4 and June 1, 1815, since so much drama occurs within those three months. Unlike some reviewers who felt that the book started more strongly than it finished, I enjoyed it throughout. The first half has the advantage of dramatic tension between Lina and Quinn, as the two are strangers to one another at first, and the second half has the benefit of action, including a duel and a dramatic arrest of the true thief of the sapphire ring. The writing style in itself was not particularly impressive, but I enjoyed the dramatic tension, the characters, and the scenes as they were described. I think it also helps that the writer is British, so perhaps the details are more authentic than they would be from the pen of an American writer (as so many Regency romance authors are). Occasionally I wondered if I should rate this 3.5 stars, but by the end I felt satisfied enough to rate it 4 stars.
THE SECRET AFFAIR by Brenda Jackson (2014)
Rating: 2 stars
Read: July 27-August 3, 2020
Review: This book was Harlequin Desire #2341 (Dec. 2014) and the 28th book in the author's Westmoreland series (according to her introduction inside; book #29 according to the series list on Goodreads) which concerns the love lives of a large family based in Colorado. I wanted to like this book when I picked it up, but I had a few problems with it. First there was the difficulty I had in trying to keeping track of all the characters. The book starts out in the present, then flashes back to four years previously for the next ten chapters before going back to the present. The hero Aidan (who has a twin brother named Adrian) is connected to the heroine Jillian because her older sister Pam is married to his cousin Dillon. At one point, for some reason, I got Jillian's younger sister Paige mixed up with Aidan's younger sister Bailey, and frequently had to turn back to the beginning of the book (a family tree is provided there) to figure out who was who. There were so many relations mentioned along the way that it's easy to get lost. In fact, I read the first 40 pages of the book and then set it aside for a couple weeks and had to reread those first 40 pages before starting again in order to refresh my memory about what I'd read.
The other thing that I didn't like about the book is that there is a lot of thinking by the characters about how they feel about each other, and less of things actually happening to keep the plot moving (aside from all the sex, of which there is a lot). Aidan's love/lust for Jillian is somewhat reluctantly (at first) reciprocated by her, but he was confident that she felt the same way about him. This caused me to ponder how in a romance novel the hero or heroine never have a one-sided love towards the other, it is always reciprocated. In real life, if he kissed her "before she could respond" (page 38), it might not have been so welcome. Nor when he tricks her (with her sister's help) into joining her on a cruise trip a year after she broke off her relationship with him. The novel uses the notion that "she had definitely been a willing participant" (page 40) because her body's "response couldn't lie. She had enjoyed the kiss as much as he had." The problem with this concept is that a person's physical response is not necessarily indicative of their agreement. On page 99, we read: "'Tell me to stop, Jillian,' he said. 'Because if you don't do it now, I won't be able to stop later.'" But initial consent doesn't mean blanket permission to surrender to every stage of lovemaking. At the end of that same page, Jillian yells "Stop, Aidan!" -- only it turns out, on the next page, that she means for him to "Stop talking and do all those things you claim you're going to do." So, "stop" actually means "go" here -- but what would happen if she really did want him to stop?
This points out the problem involved when some people try to say that one can apply the lessons learned in romance novels to real life. This is a fictional fantasy story, not real life. When Aidan told Jillian on the cruise ship that he was going to win her back, I knew that he would succeed because this is a romance novel and will have the required happy ending. And I wanted Jillian to get her happy ending. But I was less eager to see Aidan get the same happy ending with her, due to his overconfidence about his control over her heart. Aidan's repeated interest in the "taste" of Jillian during sex did exhibit a centering of her pleasure (she repeats the favor near the end of the book), although I thought the applying of syrup to her body in one scene was too much and actually a little gross to think about. However, even though I didn't enjoy reading this book, there was a hint of intrigue near the end when Jillian spots a man in Rome who resembles one of the Westmorelands, but who turns out instead to be a man with the unlikely name of Garth Outlaw. The Outlaw family is related to the Westmorelands, and this plot thread is picked up in the next book of the series. Being curious about what would happen next, I began reading the next book. So, in that sense the book succeeded in keeping me interested, although on its own I felt the book was a disappointment.
BREAKING BAILEY'S RULES by Brenda Jackson (2015)
Rating: 3 stars
Read: August 3-13, 2020
SAY YES TO THE MARQUESS by Tessa Dare (2015)
NAKED THRILL by Jill Monroe (2015)
Rating: 3 stars
Read: June 5-17, 2020
Review: This book was Harlequin Blaze #865 (Oct. 2015) and part of the long-running "The Wrong Bed" series. Blaze was a steamier Harlequin line that ran for 945 books, from 2001 to 2017. The first half of the novel was pretty interesting: a man (Tony) and woman (Hayden) wake up naked in bed and have no idea how they got there, where they are, who each other is and where their clothes are. They slowly begin to piece together the clues to what happened by coincidentally retracing their steps when they try to get back home, and in the process discover their attraction for one another. The "mystery" aspect of the novel was interesting, the sex scenes less so. I don't think any of them were particularly hot, although a couple were well-written (such as page 141). My least favorite part of the story was when they have time to kill before getting the answers they need about the mystery (I won't spoil it here), so Hayden decides to buy some sexy underwear in order to give Tony a striptease in his hotel room and have him film it. (Tony is a documentary filmmaker; Hayden is an engineering student. We hear more about his movies than her studies.) Making a "sex tape" with a guy she just met two days ago is initially presented as an empowering choice instead of unwise, but then when she asks him to delete the video immediately afterwards it makes the entire incident seem pointless (unless perhaps to establish that she can "trust" him). The last third of the book was a bit of a chore to get through since the focus is more on their lust for each other's bodies rather than resolving the mystery. The novel is redeemed by the next-to-last chapter (which wraps up the mystery, although with a couple loose ends, such as the fate of the other couple they were with) and the last chapter (where the couple learns to love each other aside from their basic lust for each other). This book wasn't bad (I'm rating it 3 out of 5 stars, after all), but unfortunately the sex scenes read like filler to me, to pad out the story -- like a Harlequin Intrigue with some more sex thrown in to fit the Blaze line instead.
THE HUNTER by Kerrigan Byrne (2016)
Rating: 3.5 stars
Read: December 23-28, 2020
Review: This historical romance was published by St. Martin's Paperbacks in February 2016. This was the second book in her Victorian Rebels series (the first was The Highwayman; a short excerpt from the third book, The Highlander, appears at the end of The Hunter). Although it becomes obvious that the novel is part of a larger universe with the previous book's hero and heroine (Dorian and Farah) being supporting characters in this one, I was able to follow the story without having read the author before. The "hero" of The Hunter is Christopher Argent, an assassin in Victorian London who has accepted a contract to murder the actress Millicent ("Millie") LeCour. For the first time in his career, Argent finds himself unable to complete the task, having fallen in love with Millie despite his lack of normal emotional empathy due to a horrific upbringing in Newgate Prison where he witnessed the murder of his mother and needed to fight back in order to survive. Argent instead becomes the protector of Millie and her 9 year old son Jakub as the contract on her life has been taken up by another assassin named Dorshaw who delights in twisted brutality towards his victims.
THE YANKEE WIDOW by Linda Lael Miller (2019)
Rating: 5 stars
Read: June 8-30, 2020
Review: This book was originally released in hardcover in May 2019; my copy is the paperback edition published by Mira (Harlequin) on May 19, 2020. I have to say that I love the format, which at around 4.6" x 7" is slightly taller and much wider than a standard mass-market paperback, as well as much smaller than a regular trade paperback. Since the novel is 460 pages, that extra width allows the book to lay more flat at the middle than it would otherwise, and yet is still compact enough to be shelved with my other paperbacks. When I was done reading the book after a couple weeks, unlike with most paperbacks there was no creasing along the spine indicating that it had been read.
I'm reluctant to share much about the plot of this book because part of the joy in reading it was finding out what was going to happen at the same time as the characters did. The novel takes place during the battle of Gettsyburg, and each chapter is dated, accompanied by the name of the character whose narrative will be most prominent in that chapter. Not being a Civil War buff, I didn't know exactly what month or day(s) the battle took place, nor when Abraham Lincoln gave his Gettysburg Address, so during the course of the novel I found myself looking it up on Wikipedia in order to get a hint of what was coming.
The plot concerns Caroline Hammond, the Yankee widow of the title, whose husband Jacob was killed at the battle of Chancellorsville. Chapter One tells things from Jacob's perspective as he lay mortally wounded on the battlefield. The next chapter has Caroline going to Washington, D.C. to find Jacob among the injured Union soldiers there and bring him back home to their farm near Gettysburg. Chapter 3 is from the perspective of Enoch, an African-American man who works on the farm and who escaped slavery many years before. Enoch rescues an escaped slave named Jubie who is pregnant; in the process Enoch kills the man trying to capture Jubie and buries his body on the farm. Chapter 4 begins with Caroline bringing Jacob's dead body back to the farm where she learns that Enoch has Jubie in hiding; Caroline lets Jubie stay in her home (which has a secret room to protect escaped slaves) along with Caroline's four year old daughter Rachel.
At this point we are 90 pages into the book, so it may all seem very slow going, but it's a page-turner nonetheless. These characters felt alive to me as I was reading it and I was greatly impressed by the quality of Linda Lael Miller's prose, with the occasional turn of phrase that felt lyrical or poetic as it described some common thing. So, where's the romance in this "romance novel"? There's not a hint of it until page 133 when a Union soldier named Rogan, who Caroline met in Washington D.C. while trying to find Jacob, turns up at the farm as his troop is passing through. Caroline "lingered in his thoughts for a long time," but nothing more comes of that for several chapters because then the Battle of Gettysburg must be fought. The romance angle doesn't return again until page 210 when Rogan is trying to protect an old friend named Bridger who is fighting for the Confederate side. Bridger is wounded and so Rogan suggests that he can recover at Caroline's farm. "Sounds as if you're taken with this angel of mercy," Bridger mocks. The second half of the book concerns the rivalry between Rogan and Bridger for Caroline's affection, although for much of that time Rogan is away fighting in the war whilst Bridger is staying in her home, getting to know her and her family better.
In short, this is a terrific novel. If you know someone who is interested in the Civil War but doesn't read romance, give them this book. What about if you are a romance novel reader? I think it still satisfies as a romance novel, even though the romance aspect is late in arrival, and there are no sex scenes whatsoever. Our heroine gets her HEA and there are at least two secondary romances, although one of those characters doesn't finally appear "on screen" until the final chapter. The way the book ends makes me want to read a sequel, to pick up where it left off. However, even if there is never a sequel, I was satisfied by the somewhat abrupt ending because it left me wanting more -- in a good way. Even at 460 pages, it never wore out its welcome. And now I'm eager to read more books by Linda Lael Miller, to see if they are good as this one was. Highly recommended!
A HUSBAND SHE COULDN'T FORGET by Christine Rimmer (2019)
Rating: 3 stars
Read: October 2-11, 2020
Review: This book was Harlequin Special Edition #2720 (Oct. 2019). It's a "second chance romance" about a couple that divorced seven years earlier because our heroine Alyssa Santangelo left to pursue her career in New York when her husband Connor Bravo wanted to remain in their hometown of Valentine Bay, Oregon. (This book is part of a series called "The Bravos of Valentine Bay," but can be enjoyed as a standalone novel.) On the way back home to Oregon to care for her pregnant mother, Aly has a car accident and suffers memory loss of the past seven years, thinking she is still married to Connor. Eventually she is convinced of the truth about this, but the situation offers both of them a chance to start over. As Aly gradually recovers her memories of her former life, the problem that previously kept them apart is still present: she wants to live in Manhattan where she works and he wants to remain in Valentine Bay helping his brother with their lumber business. The problem is finally resolved in a satisfactory way, where the reader gets both the hero's "grovel" moment and the heroine is able to make a decision about her future that is not dependent on pleasing her man at the expense of her own life choices.
SECRETS OF HIS FORBIDDEN CINDERELLA by Caitlin Crews (2019)
Rating: 2.5 stars
Read: June 29-July 12, 2020
Review: This book was Harlequin Presents #3778 (Jan. 2020), published in December 2019. The story begins as if it's the sequel to an earlier novel, where our heroine Amelia goes to the mansion of her wealthy stepbrother Teo to inform him that she is pregnant with his child. You see, several months earlier Amelia attended a masquerade party with dyed hair, contact lenses and a "steam punk" mask that she didn't remove even when having sex with Teo in a private room at the party. Her mother, the frequently-divorced Marie French (mistakenly referred to as "Marie Force" in an amusing typo on page 33) had briefly married Teo's father which causes Teo to assume that Amelia is just another money-hungry or status-seeking parasite out to get her clutches on him.
I'm rating this book 2.5 stars, although occasionally it got to 3 star territory for me. The character of Teo is a classic brooding aristocrat like one might find in a historical romance, and Amelia is a modern young woman determined not to get pushed around by him. Unfortunately, the middle of the book has Teo behaving in an unforgivable manner by kidnapping Amelia and forcing her to choose between marrying him or to be his servant cleaning the dirty floors. This ties into the "Cinderella" description of the title, making the story a genuine "fairy tale for adults" (as the Harlequin Presents line has been called). Ultimately Teo sees the light and is redeemed, but the fact that Amelia fell in love with him before his grovel at the end runs the risk of sending a disturbing message to readers that his dictatorial behavior was somehow okay or "hot." In the real world, as soon as Teo allowed her to finally leave the cabin with him, she ought to have called the police!
The writing style has its good and bad points. It's written in a rapid-fire clip where sentences are often incomplete and continued from the previous one. A few times it feels like the momentum of the words is moving so fast that mistakes were made, such as on page 153 where we read "He been certain they'd be back home..." ("he been" should be "he had been") or page 161, where "His big hands of his wrapped around her waist..." ("of his" is not needed). The writing occasionally veers towards the silly. Here's another sample, also from page 161: "The look in his dark gaze slammed through her, thick like greed. Teo lifted her toward him, then took one hard, proud nipple in his mouth. And sucked. And it was as if her head... flatlined." (Those three sentences are actually broken into three paragraphs in the text.) While the writing often has clever ways of putting things, sometimes the attempted poetry of the wording fails to deliver, as with the aforementioned "proud nipple."
Another problem with the writing is that too much time is spent inside the heads of the characters, particularly Amelia, so that it seems no one can cross the room without it taking two pages of internal monologue to complete the action. The reader has to continually be told about how either Amelia or Teo (more often Amelia) feels about everything happening and how it relates to their past, present and future. After awhile it felt like filler to pad out a thin plot and became a little tiresome by the end. An example of this is page 198 where the butler clears his throat to speak to Amelia, but it's not until 9 sentences later (on page 199) that he actually speaks. I would have preferred to have been spared about 50% of the character's thoughts in favor of more action, and trust the reader to figure out what Teo and Amelia are thinking based on what they are doing. In other words, less telling and more showing.
Of course Crews is a successful and prolific author, and obviously knows how to write very well, but the above was my honest reaction to what I read. Unlike some other books that I've given only two stars to, I have to admit that I wouldn't mind reading this novel again at some point, or another book by Crews. I enjoyed parts of the book more than others, and it's not a bad book by any means, but not a perfect one either.
MUCH ADO ABOUT A WIDOW by Jenna Jaxon (2020)
Rating: 4.5 stars
Read: July 23- August 6, 2020
Review: This book was published by Zebra/Kensington in January 2020, according to the copyright page (the actual release date was on December 31, 2019 according to Goodreads). It is book #4 in The Widows' Club series, but this is the only one of them that I've read. The story concerns a young widow, Lady Georgina, who is being forced by her stubborn and strict father to marry the unworthy Lord Travers. Georgie agrees to this arrangement but before it can take place she is kidnapped by Travers' men so that he may bed her to ensure that she will not change her mind and elope with another man, as she had done before to him years earlier. Georgie escapes from her kidnappers and is rescued by a friend of her brother: Rob, Lord St. Just, the hero of the book. (I think this is the first romance novel I've read where the hero had the same first name as me, although of course that is where the resemblance ends!) Soon Georgie's brother, father and Lord Travers, as well as their agents, are each on their trail.
The thing I liked best about this book is that there was a lot of movement in the plot, not padded with a lot of internal monologue about what everyone was feeling at every moment. At first I didn't care for the heroine Lady Georgina or the hero Lord St. Just -- the latter because he seemed too bland and without any edge, and the former because she acted ungrateful to the hero for trying to rescue her, since she had abandoned hope of avoiding the unwanted marriage to Travers. It wasn't until Chapter 10 where the hero rescues her little dog when it slips off his boat into the sea that I grew to like them both, since he showed his selfless heroism and she finally showed some recognition of all that he was doing for her. There are only a couple sex scenes, near the end of the book. I thoroughly enjoyed the novel, although I found the stubbornness of Georgie's father to be maddening, showing no respect for his adult daughter's wishes regarding her own choice of husband and going to extreme lengths to thwart her wishes. I think Travers also got off a bit light in the end (although still punished in a way) considering the fact that he kidnapped Georgie and later tried to rape her. Rob has dark hair, but I kept picturing him as blond for some reason, perhaps because he seemed like such a nice guy and not the typical dark haired brooding hero that I prefer. Georgie had red hair and freckles but this was mentioned rarely, and I think if it had been played up more it would have made her character more visually memorable. This was nearly a 5-star book for me, but I'm knocking a half-star off for those little nitpicking flaws. The novel had a timeless feel for me, like it could have been published in any decade and not just in our own, and I recommend it to anyone who enjoys reading old school historical romance.
THEN, NOW, ALWAYS by Mona Shroff (2020)
Rating: 3.5 stars
Read: March 25-April 5, 2020
Review: This novel was released in January 2020, and I purchased it on Harlequin's website. This is a traditional "second chance at love" romance, with a few differences from the norm. The narrative jumps back and forward in time, with some chapters set in 1996 and others set in 2012/13. In addition each chapter is from the perspective of either Sam or Maya, our hero and heroine, with the name appearing at the top of each chapter. That jumping back and forth could have been jarring, but Shroff succeeds in doing it very well, as unfolding developments in the 1996 storyline meld perfectly into the 2012/13 narrative. The other unusual aspect of this story is that the main characters' family came from India, so there are a lot of references to Indian culture throughout, which makes the story not only entertaining but educational. This heritage also explains why a couple of college age adults (Maya was 22 in 1996), as well as later in life, would have felt restrictions on who they are allowed to date or marry, or that Maya would have remained single and declined to date other men during all this time. The downside of this is that it makes Sam and Maya's mothers seem unreasonably restrictive, although Sam's mother is eventually depicted more sympathetically when she meets Sam's daughter Samantha. By the end of the book, the positive value of family and tradition is made clear.
I also enjoyed the occasional pop culture references in the novel, especially the part when a Hootie & the Blowfish t-shirt is mentioned in 1996 near the beginning of the book and makes a reappearance in 2013 near the end. Such details help to root the book in the era in which it takes place. One cultural aspect that was somehow neglected by both Sam and Maya is social media. Surely if Sam had carried a torch for Maya all these years, then he would have searched her name on Facebook at some point, learned that she had a daughter named after him that resembles him, etc. I suspect that Shroff set the present-day events in 2012 to make that less likely, but Facebook was popular back in 2012, too. So this is an example of how changing technology can upend a longstanding trope, in this case the "second chance at love." In real life, the old ex-lovers, who are secretly still in love with each other, would likely be checking in on each other's lives via social media.
I enjoyed this novel overall and found that it was written well, although I do think it was a bit too long. The story itself runs 366 pages (not counting a couple recipe pages at the end). The reader knows going in that Sam and Maya are going to end up together by the last page, so after Sam's engagement to another woman has ended by page 268, clearing the way for Maya, we have almost another 100 pages before the HEA. A shorter, more focused book might have had more of a punch and less drag, I think -- although that may be my preference for category romances talking. I do think that this is the kind of novel that will stick in a reader's mind long after many others have faded from memory, due to the unique narrative structure and the ethnicity of the characters.
BEST FRIEND TO ROYAL BRIDE by Annie Claydon (2020)
Rating: 3 stars
Read: March 7-9, 2020
Review: This book is Harlequin Medical Romance #1083, published in February 2020. I'd read Forbidden Night with the Duke by the same author last year and enjoyed it. The Medical Romance line consists mainly of U.K. authors I think (a plus in my opinion, as an Anglophile) and the novels are in Larger Print format. I purchased the book from the Harlequin website; I've heard that this particular line is not available in stores in the U.S. I enjoyed this novel less than the previous one I'd read by the author since the story seemed a lot simpler and the hero Alex was pretty bland. Despite being wealthy and having royal blood, he comes across as just an ordinary, nice guy who is trying to set up a large clinic from scratch, with his old medical school friend Marie helping out. The two old friends had shared a very brief kiss early in the book (pgs 18-19), but they try to forget about that and spend most of the novel working on getting the clinic up and running. They don't kiss again until page 166, which is also short-lived ("They had a job to do, and it didn't involve kissing"). Some dramatic action (a medical emergency) eventually occurs by page 171, and afterwards things finally start to heat up between Alex and Marie around page 193 (the book runs 255 pages). This is followed by some on-again/off-again in their relationship until the obligatory HEA. In my opinion the novel didn't really get interesting until the last third of the book where there is some movement in the story beyond the mundane task of building the clinic. The writing style is good but not impressive; I did like the closing lines ("This was no longer his story, it was theirs, and he loved it more each day.") It's a quick read (I read it in 3 days, which is very fast for me) and mildly enjoyable despite the lack of drama for most of the book.
RAGS-TO-RICHES WIFE by Catherine Tinley (2020)
Rating: 5 stars
Read: March 9-14, 2020
Review: This book is Harlequin Historical #1486 (Feb. 2020), although the numbers no longer appear on/in the books themselves, which (like the above book) I purchased on the Harlequin website. This is a sequel to an earlier novel (The Earl's Runaway Governess) by the same author, which I've not read. I pretty much knew that this would be a 5-star book from the first few pages because of how enjoyable it was to read and the writer's attention to detail of life during the Regency era (in a non-obtrusive way). The hero of the book, Robert, is sent by his "uncle" (not related by blood) to fetch a young woman named Jane (our heroine) and bring her to his home, for reasons that the uncle refuses to explain. I liked the realistic touch of having the journey take so long by carriage to get there and back (five days each way), so that Jane doesn't even arrive with Robert at the uncle's home until page 108. In the meantime Robert and Jane (who is a maid, the daughter of a housekeeper) get to know each other during the long journey. I don't want to tell too much of the tale in order not to spoil it. I will say that I liked how the author presented the uncle's second wife as a horrible person initially, but gradually Jane was able to sympathize with her. I liked how the author was able to make this Regency era story more timeless by bringing up issues that still affect women today, such as Jane's previous experience with sexual assault from which she is still trying to recover. There was also a very sad scene near the end of the book that I found very moving and beautifully written. Even the inclusion of a robin outside the window making its nest was a nice touch. I enjoyed this book thoroughly from beginning to end and highly recommend it for anyone wanting to read a new Regency romance that is written in the classic tradition but which is still relevant for readers now. If I had one criticism to make of the writing, I found the frequent use of the phrase "in truth" to become a little repetitive after awhile, and each time it surfaced in a sentence I noticed it more than I should have. On the other hand, a few uses of "in truth" here and there does contribute to the charming old-time feel of the story. I'm happy to have found a new writer to follow!
FELICE by Kathleen Bittner Roth (2020)
Rating: 5 stars
Read: July 5-21, 2020
Review: This paperback book was published by Zebra Books (Kensington Publishing) in May 2020 (or April 28th to be precise). I bought the novel new at the store based on the cover, intrigued by the one-word title (the heroine's name) and after reading the first page or two in the store and liking what I read. Usually I can predict my level of enjoyment of a novel based on reading the first chapter, but this book exceeded my (already positive) expectations. I had never read the author before, and this is the first book in a new series "Bayou Bad Boys"; a short preview of the next book, Lily (also named after its heroine), appears at the end of this one. The author has written three other novels where the title is also the heroine's name (Celine, Alanna and Josette) but they are part of a different series and it is not necessary to read them to enjoy Felice.
The story takes place in New Orleans in 1859. Felice has just arrived off the boat with her British fiance Mayhew to ask for her father's blessing to marry him. But things don't go as planned, as her father is unavailable for awhile and she is forced to work in the office of her brother's shipping business alongside Rene, a man who had rejected her three years ago. As the story proceeds, it becomes clear that Mayhew is an unworthy mate and Rene is the man she ought to be with. Because Rene broke Felice's heart in the past, however, her brother Michel forbids Rene from seeing her. The author introduces many amusing and adorable elements such as the large amount of children and animals in Michel's household (a duck follows behind him into a room at one point) and Rene adopting a small puppy that he had helped rescue, naming it "Miz Sassy" (after Felice, without her knowledge). The novel goes along at a somewhat leisurely (albeit entertaining) pace until page 251 when Rene is sent to prison for a crime he didn't commit. This is followed (on pages 304-323) by a somewhat melodramatic courtroom scene as various characters, including Felice, testify for or against Rene. There is more of a suspenseful momentum to this last third of the novel, making it more of a page-turner as time is of the essence as the events unfold.
Although a historical, the novel is light on historical details. This is a novel written for readers today, with the occasional "mayhap" added to the dialogue to give it a charming old-fashioned quality. A few times I wondered if a line of dialogue sounded too contemporary or presented an anachronism. For example, on page 327 Felice's father tells her, "I applaud the courage it took to speak your truth." The use of "your truth" (instead of "the truth") sounds to my ears like a more modern expression than would be used in 1859, although I could be mistaken. Again, the novel is not meant to be a literal recreation of the past, but designed to appeal to readers now, and on that score it certainly succeeds (at least with this reader). The sexual content is low aside from occasional mentions of the two main characters' arousal at being near each other, and two sex scenes (pages 239-244 and 334-335). In some ways, Felice reminded me of a traditional Regency novel, although of course it takes place in America during the Victorian era. I enjoyed this novel thoroughly and will definitely be buying the next book in the series when it is published, which from the preview features some of Felice's supporting cast.
THE AWAKENED HEART by Betty Neels (1993)Rating: 2.5 stars
Read: May 12-20, 2020
Review: This is the first time that I've ever read a book by Betty Neels (1909-2001). I knew going in that her books are known for having unglamorous nurses falling in love with forceful Dutch doctors. Given that Neels did not begin writing until 1969 when she was 60 years old, I expected her novels to be a bit old-fashioned. Unlike some Harlequin writers like Anne Mather whose output graduated from the regular Harlequin Romance line to the racier Harlequin Presents, Neels was firmly a fixture of the former due to the tameness of her romances. That's not a bad thing of course, although (as a result of being written by Neels) our 27 year old heroine Sophie seems to be leading the quiet life of an old lady with her pet cat Mabel, when she's not at her exhausting nursing job. (Sophie's age is indicated on page 63, but math is involved.) When the visiting Dutch doctor Rijk asks her to marry him -- not out of love, but simply because they are good friends who have no foolish romantic notions -- Sophie eventually agrees.
Annoyingly, it is assumed that she will drop her nursing career to become his wife, which she does so without a thought of keeping her job. When this novel was published in the early 1990s, young women living in London in real life might have spent their off-hours attending a rave party or listening to Radiohead. But Neels was 85 years old when this book was published as Harlequin Romance #3339 (Dec. 1994) and it's only to be expected that her heroine is naturally going to be more like a 1950s young woman than a modern one. (The reason that the novel is copyright 1993 is because it was published that year by Mills & Boon in the UK before its North American publication by Harlequin.) Some readers may feel that the old-fashionedness adds to the book's charm and gives it a kind of universal appeal (the text lacking any pop culture references to pin a date on it), like the reader is entering Neels' world and either "gets" it and finds it a comforting read or wants something more contemporary, something that it never tried to be, and doesn't. One big drawback to the old-fashioned style is that the perspective is almost continually from Sophie's POV. When Rijk smiles enigmatically, we don't know why because Neels doesn't let us get inside his head much. This can give the story a kind of claustrophobic feeling, since we are spending so much time with Sophie and her confused feelings, and none on Rijk's internal thoughts.
The slow pace and the lack of action caused me to spend a lot more time reading this 189-page novel than I should have. The gimmick of this story is that Rijk married Sophie because he is in love with her, but she doesn't know that (and neither does the reader for certain). Eventually she falls in love with him, but is afraid to reveal this love because she assumes he didn't want to marry for love. This misunderstanding on her part, and then getting jealous of a woman that he knows, makes the book read like a romance novel from the 1950s instead of the 1990s. And the last third of the book, where the couple relocate to his home in Holland, was a bit of a chore to read as I waited for the expected ending where the misunderstandings are resolved and the married couple admits their love for each other. Every writer has their own favorite words and phrases that they use over and over again, and it was during this last third of the book that I noticed the word "presently" frequently appearing, which added to my irritation. This book started out as a 3-star read for me, but by the last third of the novel, my rating descended a notch. So I'm going to give this book only 2.5 stars. Some people might love this sort of predictable old-fashioned romance novel, but I did not and will be reluctant to try another Neels book anytime soon. (Maybe next year.)
Rating: 3.5 stars
Read: May 27-June 4, 2020
Review: This book was Silhouette Desire #976 (Jan. 1996) and the 2nd novel in the author's Wedding Belles series. It's a romantic comedy (you can tell by the cover, since the couple is shown laughing) about an artsy young woman named "Peachy" Keene living in New Orleans who (after a scary incident aboard a plane) is afraid of dying a virgin at age 23. She enlists the help of her landlord (bestselling novelist Luc Devereaux) to deflower her, based on the understanding that there will be no romantic involvement between them -- just the sex act with no strings attached. Luc goes along with the plan out of fear that someone less honorable than himself will take advantage of her if he refuses, but their attempts to do the deed continue to be interrupted by one thing or another. This delaying of the act helps to build the sexual tension and makes it more difficult for them to keep from falling in love with each other.
This is a 1990s "modern" romance, with a heroine pursuing sex without love (or so she thinks) and interesting neighbors for supporting characters, such as a former NFL player turned drag queen. Other examples of a modern sensibility are an allusion to masturbation (page 67) and Luc's use of a condom. (A Betty Neels novel this is not!) Carole Buck was a good writer, who apparently (according to FictionDB) hasn't had a book published since 1999. The story is only 186 pages long, but the text is small and the prose sometimes seems a bit overwritten for so slight a plot. That detailed style of writing works well during the eventual sex scene, however. Occasionally this felt like a 4-star book for me, but I'm going to rate it 3.5 stars overall. I enjoyed the book a lot more than I thought I would, since I only picked it up on a whim.
Rating: 4 stars
Read: April 23-26, 2020
Review: I've wanted to read a Nora Roberts novel this year, just so I could have some experience in having read a book by this popular and significant author in the romance genre. This is the only book by Roberts that I own so far, and I bought it simply because I liked the cover. (I have the original edition, which was Silhouette Intimate Moments #823, Dec. 1997.) This was the second book in "The Stars of Mithra" trilogy; the first was "Hidden Star" (SIM #811) which I've not read, but that didn't hamper my enjoyment of this one. I was unprepared for this book, which is a dynamite read. Based on the cover, one might assume that this is a romance novel with some mystery element to it, maybe like an old Alfred Hitchcock movie. Nope: think Quentin Tarantino instead (but without the swearing). Much of this book read like a "men's adventure" or hard-boiled crime novel.
Our hero is Jack Dakota, a bounty hunter whose assignment is to bring in a woman named M. J. O'Leary. The problem is that Jack has been set up, fed false info by the person who hired him, so when Jack busts M.J. at her apartment for skipping bail, she has no idea what he is talking about. She assumes he is a mugger or potential rapist, and a knock-down drag-out fight ensues between the two. Soon they are on the run from two hired goons who are trying to kill them both, in order to steal a rare diamond in M.J.'s possession: one of the three Stars of Mithra (the other two diamonds are the subject of the other two books in the trilogy).
For the first few chapters, Jack has M.J. handcuffed to prevent her from escaping until they eventually trust one another, and finally of course fall in love. One of my favorite scenes is early on in the book when they are hiding out in a motel with the TV playing in the background (just in case she decides to start screaming for help). When Jack empties M.J.'s purse, he notices a Sue Grafton paperback ("good book, by the way," he tells her, as she's handcuffed to the bed, "I won't tell you the ending") and then they watch the TV for awhile. The channel is having a monsters and heroes marathon for the July 4th weekend, so first there is a dubbed "Hercules" movie playing, followed by a Japanese monster movie -- and we actually get a short paragraph describing the movie as they watch it.
I kept picturing Brad Pitt as Jack Dakota while I read the novel, or maybe Matthew McConaughey -- someone cool and laid back who wasn't going to get pushed around. M.J. has red hair, full lips and catlike eyes, so I was thinking maybe someone like Scarlet Johansson in the role, but M.J.'s confident attitude, athletic figure and long legs made me think of someone like Angie Harmon instead (though Angie has black hair, not red). The woman depicted on the front cover seems too delicate-looking and the guy looks too well-groomed.
I've said in the past that I've never been one to swoon over the characters in a romance novel, and have never felt this burning desire to see the hero and heroine jump in the sack, whereas many romance readers do feel that way and that's a big part of the genre's appeal. Well, I take it back: I wanted to see these two get it on. Part of the reason may be because I was picturing them as these larger-than-life stars, another may be because the sexual tension between them was off the charts due to the characters' similar personalities and their aggressive physical and verbal reactions to each other. I didn't want to see the loner Jack Dakota remain alone at the end, and I didn't want M.J. to let him walk away.
I read this novel with no preconceived notions about Nora Roberts other than knowing she was popular and prolific. Now I know that her popularity is totally deserved. The writing in this book was excellent, not just the pop culture references, the great lines of dialogue, the page-turning quality of the narrative, the lyrical descriptions of the lovemaking, but also the little observations about life that would occasionally find their way onto the page. An example (page 164): "Occasionally she would see houses behind the roadside trees, glimpses only, as if they were hiding from prying eyes. She wondered about them, those tucked-away houses.... It was one way to live, she supposed. But you had to tend that garden, mow that lawn. She'd never lived in a house. Apartments had always suited her style. To some, she supposed, an apartment would seem like a box tucked with other boxes within a box." This sounds like the thoughts of a real person, not just a character in a story.
So, why am I giving this book 4 stars instead of 5? I've found that my 5-star reads tend to be thicker books (this novel only runs 248 pages) and historical romance (which tend to be more impressive to me due to the research required). Also, I doubt that this is the best book that Nora Roberts has ever written (great as it is) so I'm going to say 4 stars for now and can always revise my rating later if necessary.
Rating: 3.5 stars
Read: April 30-May 2, 2020
Review: This was Joan Smith's last novel to be published by Fawcett Crest, in July 1998. Her first novel had been published by Fawcett in 1977. She wrote around 90 Regency novels for Fawcett until their parent company Ballantine closed down their traditional Regency line at the end of 1998. (Unfortunately the long-running Fawcett brand was also retired around this time. It's always a little frustrating to me whenever one company buys another, only to eliminate the identifiable brand that they now own.) "Little Coquette" was billed as "A Regency Romantic Mystery" on the cover, a hybrid subcategory that Smith had increasingly been writing -- a Regency romance that is also a mystery novel (or vice versa). There is more of a focus on mystery than romance, however, with the hero and heroine not being romantically involved for most of the novel, their first kiss occurring on page 154 (in a 198-page book).
Her final book for Fawcett is the first Joan Smith book I've read, although from sampling the opening pages of several of her other novels I already knew that I would like her writing, which features clever turns of phrases and enjoyable banter between the characters. Our heroine is Lydia Trevelyn, the 18 year old daughter of a London politician; she was recently gifted a copy of Mary Wollstonecraft's "Vindication of the Rights of Woman" and aspires to be an independent woman in a society that thinks women should get married instead. She and a former childhood friend (our hero Lord Beaumont) discover a dead body near her home that turns out to be the longtime mistress of her father. The discovery that her father had a mistress is disillusioning for Lydia, but she and Beaumont attempt to solve the mystery of who murdered the woman (while hoping that her father was not involved). There is a lot of old-fashioned mystery and adventure as they pursue the clues to the case and ultimately face danger as they discover the killer. It's a fun, quick read, and I enjoyed it a lot.
Rating: 4.5 stars
Read: April 19-23, 2020
Review: This book was published by Ivy/Ballantine in Feb. 2002. It's a 417-page historical romance novel that takes place in the Regency era. Our hero, Damien Knight, is the twin brother of Lucien, who was the hero in the previous novel, "Lord of Fire" (which I've not read). Damien has recently returned from fighting in the Napoleonic wars and is much admired for his heroism throughout England. The experience has taken a terrible toll on him mentally, however, as he suffers from PTSD (not named, of course). Whenever he has a nightmare, or even hears a wine bottle being uncorked at a party, his mindset goes back to the battlefield and his body goes into self-defense mode, sometimes putting those around him in danger as he sees them as a potential threat. The common romance trope of the heroine taming the savage male beast is here turned toward overcoming a psychological problem.
The heroine Miranda is Damien's newly-discovered ward. The two are in love, but Damien denies his feelings, not only because it would be improper to wed his own ward but also due to his fragile mental condition. By page 324, Miranda has gotten Damien to talk about the terrible things he saw in battle, which would appear to be helpful in minimizing their impact on his psyche. By the next page, however, she is administering sexual healing to get his mind off the New Year's fireworks exploding outside. The subsequent oral sex scene that Miranda confidently and expertly performs seems incongruous with the rest of the book in its graphic content and inconsistent with Miranda's youth and inexperience, i.e. a 19 year old virgin living in the early 1800s. Damien had hoped to get Miranda married to a more suitable mate than himself, but the reader knows that the two will get together in the end. The romance novel convention that the two leads are rarely separated in the story and will receive a happy ending works well here, reinforcing the notion that this is their story, one in which they help and save each other -- the tale of two people who belong with each other and are the better for it.
In a YouTube interview, the author noted that her stories have villains and that is certainly the case here, which helps to add dramatic tension and suspense to the narrative as well as providing a satisfying smashing of their wicked schemes. Some Goodreads reviewers had said that they thought the novel started off great but got dull after awhile. I didn't feel that way; the book held my interest throughout. You know how some songs (like The Beatles' "Hello Goodbye") have a false ending? The listener thinks the song has ended, but then it bursts back to life with a rousing coda. Something like that happens here in the book's final chapter which begins with the wedding of Damien and Lucien. Months go by and all is well, until news arrives of Napoleon's return and Damien is faced with the prospect of leaving his new wife behind and going back to war. Even the book's epilogue has one last surprise at the end for the reader.
One of my favorite moments in the novel was around the halfway point (page 234) during the Christmas Eve celebration, where Miranda's dreams have miraculously come true. "It was midnight when Miranda went to bed in a delirium of happiness." It was at that point that I felt I was reading a 5-star novel. I've knocked off a half-point for the gratuitous oral sex scene mentioned above, so it's a 4.5 star book for me.
Rating: 3.5 stars
Read: December 14-18, 2020
Review: This historical romance novel was published by Avon Books in June 2008. The story is about Grace Eversleigh, the servant companion of a wealthy dowager, who one night is held up by a highwayman (Jack Audley) that turns out to be the dowager's long-lost grandson and thus the true Duke of Wyndham (taking the title away from her other grandson Thomas). Jack doesn't want to be duke, however, especially if it means that he can't marry Grace. Eventually, on page 270, our entire cast of characters depart for his boyhood home in Ireland to determine if Jack is the legitimate duke, forcing Jack to come to terms with a past that he had spent years running away from.
It's interesting to note that although many women will cite "a sense of humor" as one of the traits of an ideal mate, many heroes in romantic fiction are more angry and brooding than amusing. Jack is an exception since he is often depicted as a man with a ready smile and clever rejoinder upon his lips. Unfortunately I don't think the text itself is as witty or clever as it is supposed to be, minimizing the intended effect. (Tessa Dare does witty better methinks.) This lack of a dangerous edge in Jack's personality (despite his unlikely career as a highway robber) made him seem a bit bullied and helpless for a romantic hero, and Grace was a surprisingly meek and submissive heroine. Had the two leads been more feisty, they might have engaged my interest more. Apart from the story's focus on social hierarchy and parental lineage, as well as mentioning of Jack's past life as a soldier, there isn't much history in this Regency romance -- which is a good or bad thing depending on one's level of interest in historical details. (Personally I would have liked a little bit more history, since I find it entertaining as well as educational.) There also isn't much action to drive the narrative, with the focus being on characters' banter and their internal feelings, which after awhile seems like filler to pad out the novel's page count when not much is happening. It's not until the final 100 pages or so that things start to get moving again, and the scene where Jack returns to his family home and sees the aunt who raised him was a highlight of the book for its emotional pull. The book is generally enjoyable, but could have been even better if it had been trimmed by a hundred pages or so, to remove the unnecessary filler about what everyone was thinking and feeling all the time, which slowed down the story.
STAY A LITTLE LONGER by Dorothy Garlock (2010)Rating: 4 stars
Read: May 9-11, 2020
Review: This book was a page-turner! I began reading it with no expectations whatsoever, having picked it up at a library used book sale along with a stack of other semi-recent romance novels. The story takes place in 1926 in the small town of Carlson, Minnesota (evidently a fictional place) where we find our heroine Rachel taking care of a child named Charlotte (the daughter of Rachel's deceased sister Alice) and Rachel's mother Eliza (who was traumatized by Alice's death and has confined herself to her bedroom for years). Their home is a boardinghouse where they let rooms in order to pay the bills, although times have been tough with few paying customers. Their most recent boarder is a creep who rarely pays his rent and eventually tries to rape Rachel. Meanwhile, Alice's husband Mason -- who was believed to have died during World War One -- returns home to them, having stayed away so long because of how his face was disfigured in the war. He learns that Alice died while he was away and gave birth to their daughter Charlotte. In addition to putting right his relationship with the family he had abandoned, Mason must also try to put in order his father's banking business which has been taken over by his corrupt brother.
What I've described above may make it sound like a soap opera, but despite the occasional moments of drama and the machinations of a few villains in the story, it's also a gentle tale about a family living during tough times, reminiscent in a way of the articles that I used to read in "Good Old Days" magazine in the 1980s. It's a clean romance (although with a few swear words) with hardly any sexual content (aside from the attempted rape). At first I wondered whether the author would be able to accurately portray American life in the 1920s, since I noticed that there were no references to the pop culture of that time (movies, radio, music, etc.). However, when I looked up Dorothy Garlock online, it turns out that she was born in 1919, so she was a child herself during the period in which the novel takes place. Garlock was 90 years old when this novel was published; her mind must have been very sharp right up to the end (she passed away in 2018 at the age of 98) because there is a lot going on in this novel. What's more, this is book #1 of a trilogy; an excerpt of the beginning of the next book in the series, which follows Charlotte as an adult, appears as a bonus at the end of this book.
Incidentally, reading this novel helped me clarify in my mind whether I ought to rate a book 3.5 or 4 stars, since it was either going to be one or the other. The fact that I read this 349-page novel in only 3 days indicated a high level of interest on my part, and therefore a 4 or 5 star book. The way that the plot flows along with its memorable characters makes for addictive reading. However the writing itself (descriptions, dialogue) was not particularly impressive to me (e.g., I didn't feel compelled to read sentences aloud, savoring how they sounded), perhaps meaning it merited only 3.5 stars instead. The reason that I'm giving this novel 4 stars is because it's a book that I would recommend to others, that I think they would enjoy like I did.
Rating: 4 stars
Read: February 19-March 7, 2020
Review: This book was Harlequin Historical #1060, published in Oct. 2011, and the third book in "The Transformation of the Shelley Sisters" trilogy. I've not read the previous two books in the series, but was able to follow what was happening because each book deals with a different sister's romance. This book concerns the younger sister Celina Shelley (often referred to as Lina for short) who finds herself working in her Aunt's brothel The Blue Door, though not as a sex worker. This lack of participation is ordered to change when the oppositely-named Mr. Makepeace takes over the business. When her first customer, another loathsome man named Tolhurst, drops dead before he can ravage her and his expensive sapphire ring is discovered missing, the innocent Lina must go into hiding to avoid the hangman's noose. She finds refuge living with the elderly Lord Dreycott (a friend of her aunt's), but he soon dies and his young great-nephew Quinn takes over his estate. The first part of the novel deals with the question of how much Lina can reveal to Quinn without placing herself in further danger. The second half of the novel deals with Quinn's efforts to extricate Lina from her criminal charge and to get her to marry him. It is perhaps a little absurd that the events of the novel take place within such a short period of time, between March 4 and June 1, 1815, since so much drama occurs within those three months. Unlike some reviewers who felt that the book started more strongly than it finished, I enjoyed it throughout. The first half has the advantage of dramatic tension between Lina and Quinn, as the two are strangers to one another at first, and the second half has the benefit of action, including a duel and a dramatic arrest of the true thief of the sapphire ring. The writing style in itself was not particularly impressive, but I enjoyed the dramatic tension, the characters, and the scenes as they were described. I think it also helps that the writer is British, so perhaps the details are more authentic than they would be from the pen of an American writer (as so many Regency romance authors are). Occasionally I wondered if I should rate this 3.5 stars, but by the end I felt satisfied enough to rate it 4 stars.
Rating: 2 stars
Read: July 27-August 3, 2020
Review: This book was Harlequin Desire #2341 (Dec. 2014) and the 28th book in the author's Westmoreland series (according to her introduction inside; book #29 according to the series list on Goodreads) which concerns the love lives of a large family based in Colorado. I wanted to like this book when I picked it up, but I had a few problems with it. First there was the difficulty I had in trying to keeping track of all the characters. The book starts out in the present, then flashes back to four years previously for the next ten chapters before going back to the present. The hero Aidan (who has a twin brother named Adrian) is connected to the heroine Jillian because her older sister Pam is married to his cousin Dillon. At one point, for some reason, I got Jillian's younger sister Paige mixed up with Aidan's younger sister Bailey, and frequently had to turn back to the beginning of the book (a family tree is provided there) to figure out who was who. There were so many relations mentioned along the way that it's easy to get lost. In fact, I read the first 40 pages of the book and then set it aside for a couple weeks and had to reread those first 40 pages before starting again in order to refresh my memory about what I'd read.
The other thing that I didn't like about the book is that there is a lot of thinking by the characters about how they feel about each other, and less of things actually happening to keep the plot moving (aside from all the sex, of which there is a lot). Aidan's love/lust for Jillian is somewhat reluctantly (at first) reciprocated by her, but he was confident that she felt the same way about him. This caused me to ponder how in a romance novel the hero or heroine never have a one-sided love towards the other, it is always reciprocated. In real life, if he kissed her "before she could respond" (page 38), it might not have been so welcome. Nor when he tricks her (with her sister's help) into joining her on a cruise trip a year after she broke off her relationship with him. The novel uses the notion that "she had definitely been a willing participant" (page 40) because her body's "response couldn't lie. She had enjoyed the kiss as much as he had." The problem with this concept is that a person's physical response is not necessarily indicative of their agreement. On page 99, we read: "'Tell me to stop, Jillian,' he said. 'Because if you don't do it now, I won't be able to stop later.'" But initial consent doesn't mean blanket permission to surrender to every stage of lovemaking. At the end of that same page, Jillian yells "Stop, Aidan!" -- only it turns out, on the next page, that she means for him to "Stop talking and do all those things you claim you're going to do." So, "stop" actually means "go" here -- but what would happen if she really did want him to stop?
This points out the problem involved when some people try to say that one can apply the lessons learned in romance novels to real life. This is a fictional fantasy story, not real life. When Aidan told Jillian on the cruise ship that he was going to win her back, I knew that he would succeed because this is a romance novel and will have the required happy ending. And I wanted Jillian to get her happy ending. But I was less eager to see Aidan get the same happy ending with her, due to his overconfidence about his control over her heart. Aidan's repeated interest in the "taste" of Jillian during sex did exhibit a centering of her pleasure (she repeats the favor near the end of the book), although I thought the applying of syrup to her body in one scene was too much and actually a little gross to think about. However, even though I didn't enjoy reading this book, there was a hint of intrigue near the end when Jillian spots a man in Rome who resembles one of the Westmorelands, but who turns out instead to be a man with the unlikely name of Garth Outlaw. The Outlaw family is related to the Westmorelands, and this plot thread is picked up in the next book of the series. Being curious about what would happen next, I began reading the next book. So, in that sense the book succeeded in keeping me interested, although on its own I felt the book was a disappointment.
Rating: 3 stars
Read: August 3-13, 2020
Review: This book was book #29 in the Westmorelands series, published as Harlequin Desire #2407 (Nov. 2015) and I enjoyed it much more than the previous installment. The reason I liked it more may be due to the likability of the main characters. Unlike Aidan in The Secret Affair, the hero Walker Rafferty is a confident but quiet man, not arrogantly manipulating the heroine in order to get his way. Bailey Westmoreland is a feisty and blunt heroine who is able to stick up for herself, at one point saving Walker with her rifle when he is attacked by a bear. As with Aidan, Walker has an interest in the "taste" of the heroine, so the initial sex scenes involve him satisfying her pleasure before his own. This enables the author to prolong the characters' sexual involvement, allowing them to be intimate to keep things "hot" for the reader earlier in the book while saving the actual sex scene for later on.
Another reason I liked this book more than the previous one in the series is that there was less bombardment of family history to distract me, or perhaps I had become more familiar with it now, so that it was less confusing. Walker has been sent by his friend Garth Outlaw to investigate the claim that the Outlaw family is related to the Westmorelands, which leads to Walker falling for Bailey and then Bailey subsequently going to visit Walker at his home in Alaska. There is a typical misunderstanding between the two where each one thinks the other doesn't truly love them, despite the frequent sex they are having together. The story ends by setting up the plot of the next book in the series, concerning the Westmoreland brother named Bane, whose adventurous military lifestyle sounds intriguing. Anyway, either this series grows on the reader the more that they read it, or else I just happened to like this one better than the previous one. The back of the book also contain a short story titled "Reclaimed by the Rancher" by Janice Maynard which involves a misunderstanding between two former lovers that eventually gets straightened out. The short story is a quick read (running 20 chapters, but each chapter is only 2 to 3 pages long) that is fairly forgettable. (If I were rating that on its own, I'd only give it 2 stars.)
Rating: 4 stars
Read: October 3-27, 2020
Review: This historical romance was published by Avon Books in January 2015. It was the second book in the Castles Ever After series (I've not read the others). The novel has a simple plot for a 374-page book: Clio Whitmore has been engaged for eight years to a man who has been away all this time but who is finally returning home to marry her. Before he returns (and he doesn't return until page 329), Clio seeks out his estranged brother, the notorious prizefighter Rafe Brandon, to sign paperwork that will end the engagement due to breach of promise. Rafe is reluctant to sign because if the marriage is called off, his brother may leave England again which may prevent Rafe from pursuing the boxing championship. Rafe has a week to try and convince Clio not to stop the impending marriage, but eventually the two fall in love.
Read: October 3-27, 2020
Review: This historical romance was published by Avon Books in January 2015. It was the second book in the Castles Ever After series (I've not read the others). The novel has a simple plot for a 374-page book: Clio Whitmore has been engaged for eight years to a man who has been away all this time but who is finally returning home to marry her. Before he returns (and he doesn't return until page 329), Clio seeks out his estranged brother, the notorious prizefighter Rafe Brandon, to sign paperwork that will end the engagement due to breach of promise. Rafe is reluctant to sign because if the marriage is called off, his brother may leave England again which may prevent Rafe from pursuing the boxing championship. Rafe has a week to try and convince Clio not to stop the impending marriage, but eventually the two fall in love.
The thin plot is enhanced by the addition of some memorable characters (mainly Clio's bookish sister Phoebe and Rafe's trainer Bruiser) and entertaining scenes (such as Clio and Rafe's cake fight). All historical romance novels are written for readers today regardless of the time period in which they are set, but this one felt especially so, by ignoring dry history and focusing on all the fun and funny parts of the story instead. Sometimes the characters sound more modern than they ought (e.g., "What happens in India doesn't stay in India," pg. 315) which reinforces the idea that all of this isn't meant to be taken too seriously. And when the comic-relief characters are not around, leaving Clio and Rafe alone together, the story highlights the sensuality and sexual attraction between them which sometimes seems excessive (depending on one's interest in reading sex scenes) and tends to slow down the momentum of the narrative.
While I was reading the novel, it often felt like a 5-star book since the writing style was so amusing and clever. But I'm only giving it 4 stars because I think that the story was more slight than it should have been; I liked it more until I stopped to think about what I had just read, and whether it was a book worth keeping and re-reading or not. It's a delightful read that has a lot of surface appeal but not much depth. The ways in which women were expected to conform to societal rules of the time, such as not eating in order to remain thin or expressions of female desire being frowned upon, are mentioned but the seriousness of those issues takes a backseat to a more crowd-pleasing focus on the fun stuff. The novel is like eating cake, as it happens -- a tasty and delicious treat, though not the main course.
Rating: 3 stars
Read: June 5-17, 2020
Review: This book was Harlequin Blaze #865 (Oct. 2015) and part of the long-running "The Wrong Bed" series. Blaze was a steamier Harlequin line that ran for 945 books, from 2001 to 2017. The first half of the novel was pretty interesting: a man (Tony) and woman (Hayden) wake up naked in bed and have no idea how they got there, where they are, who each other is and where their clothes are. They slowly begin to piece together the clues to what happened by coincidentally retracing their steps when they try to get back home, and in the process discover their attraction for one another. The "mystery" aspect of the novel was interesting, the sex scenes less so. I don't think any of them were particularly hot, although a couple were well-written (such as page 141). My least favorite part of the story was when they have time to kill before getting the answers they need about the mystery (I won't spoil it here), so Hayden decides to buy some sexy underwear in order to give Tony a striptease in his hotel room and have him film it. (Tony is a documentary filmmaker; Hayden is an engineering student. We hear more about his movies than her studies.) Making a "sex tape" with a guy she just met two days ago is initially presented as an empowering choice instead of unwise, but then when she asks him to delete the video immediately afterwards it makes the entire incident seem pointless (unless perhaps to establish that she can "trust" him). The last third of the book was a bit of a chore to get through since the focus is more on their lust for each other's bodies rather than resolving the mystery. The novel is redeemed by the next-to-last chapter (which wraps up the mystery, although with a couple loose ends, such as the fate of the other couple they were with) and the last chapter (where the couple learns to love each other aside from their basic lust for each other). This book wasn't bad (I'm rating it 3 out of 5 stars, after all), but unfortunately the sex scenes read like filler to me, to pad out the story -- like a Harlequin Intrigue with some more sex thrown in to fit the Blaze line instead.
Rating: 3.5 stars
Read: December 23-28, 2020
Review: This historical romance was published by St. Martin's Paperbacks in February 2016. This was the second book in her Victorian Rebels series (the first was The Highwayman; a short excerpt from the third book, The Highlander, appears at the end of The Hunter). Although it becomes obvious that the novel is part of a larger universe with the previous book's hero and heroine (Dorian and Farah) being supporting characters in this one, I was able to follow the story without having read the author before. The "hero" of The Hunter is Christopher Argent, an assassin in Victorian London who has accepted a contract to murder the actress Millicent ("Millie") LeCour. For the first time in his career, Argent finds himself unable to complete the task, having fallen in love with Millie despite his lack of normal emotional empathy due to a horrific upbringing in Newgate Prison where he witnessed the murder of his mother and needed to fight back in order to survive. Argent instead becomes the protector of Millie and her 9 year old son Jakub as the contract on her life has been taken up by another assassin named Dorshaw who delights in twisted brutality towards his victims.
The thing that I liked best about this book is that there was a lot of action and suspense. I appreciated that the author was bringing something new to the enemies-to-lovers trope by taking it to the extreme: an assassin falling in love with his intended victim. On the other hand, I found it disturbing as well, and wondered if Argent could really be redeemed given his cold-blooded and murderous nature. The fact that Dorian is shown near the book's end to still be involved in criminal enterprises (although to a lesser degree) after his marriage to Farah raises the ethical question of whether he or Argent ought to be considered heroes at all. These are characters who inhabit a depressingly violent world, which is not the kind of pleasant escape that I expect or want to read in a romance novel. Byrne's writing style contains more italics and f-bombs than I have encountered in a historical romance before, giving it a modern edge. I prefer action over character analysis in fiction, so thankfully there was a lot of action to keep me turning the pages, but there were also numerous pages of Argent or Millie thinking about how they feel about each other that slowed down the story. Overall I think it was a good book, but the unpleasantness of the subject matter kept it from being a 4-star book.
Rating: 5 stars
Read: June 8-30, 2020
Review: This book was originally released in hardcover in May 2019; my copy is the paperback edition published by Mira (Harlequin) on May 19, 2020. I have to say that I love the format, which at around 4.6" x 7" is slightly taller and much wider than a standard mass-market paperback, as well as much smaller than a regular trade paperback. Since the novel is 460 pages, that extra width allows the book to lay more flat at the middle than it would otherwise, and yet is still compact enough to be shelved with my other paperbacks. When I was done reading the book after a couple weeks, unlike with most paperbacks there was no creasing along the spine indicating that it had been read.
I'm reluctant to share much about the plot of this book because part of the joy in reading it was finding out what was going to happen at the same time as the characters did. The novel takes place during the battle of Gettsyburg, and each chapter is dated, accompanied by the name of the character whose narrative will be most prominent in that chapter. Not being a Civil War buff, I didn't know exactly what month or day(s) the battle took place, nor when Abraham Lincoln gave his Gettysburg Address, so during the course of the novel I found myself looking it up on Wikipedia in order to get a hint of what was coming.
The plot concerns Caroline Hammond, the Yankee widow of the title, whose husband Jacob was killed at the battle of Chancellorsville. Chapter One tells things from Jacob's perspective as he lay mortally wounded on the battlefield. The next chapter has Caroline going to Washington, D.C. to find Jacob among the injured Union soldiers there and bring him back home to their farm near Gettysburg. Chapter 3 is from the perspective of Enoch, an African-American man who works on the farm and who escaped slavery many years before. Enoch rescues an escaped slave named Jubie who is pregnant; in the process Enoch kills the man trying to capture Jubie and buries his body on the farm. Chapter 4 begins with Caroline bringing Jacob's dead body back to the farm where she learns that Enoch has Jubie in hiding; Caroline lets Jubie stay in her home (which has a secret room to protect escaped slaves) along with Caroline's four year old daughter Rachel.
At this point we are 90 pages into the book, so it may all seem very slow going, but it's a page-turner nonetheless. These characters felt alive to me as I was reading it and I was greatly impressed by the quality of Linda Lael Miller's prose, with the occasional turn of phrase that felt lyrical or poetic as it described some common thing. So, where's the romance in this "romance novel"? There's not a hint of it until page 133 when a Union soldier named Rogan, who Caroline met in Washington D.C. while trying to find Jacob, turns up at the farm as his troop is passing through. Caroline "lingered in his thoughts for a long time," but nothing more comes of that for several chapters because then the Battle of Gettysburg must be fought. The romance angle doesn't return again until page 210 when Rogan is trying to protect an old friend named Bridger who is fighting for the Confederate side. Bridger is wounded and so Rogan suggests that he can recover at Caroline's farm. "Sounds as if you're taken with this angel of mercy," Bridger mocks. The second half of the book concerns the rivalry between Rogan and Bridger for Caroline's affection, although for much of that time Rogan is away fighting in the war whilst Bridger is staying in her home, getting to know her and her family better.
In short, this is a terrific novel. If you know someone who is interested in the Civil War but doesn't read romance, give them this book. What about if you are a romance novel reader? I think it still satisfies as a romance novel, even though the romance aspect is late in arrival, and there are no sex scenes whatsoever. Our heroine gets her HEA and there are at least two secondary romances, although one of those characters doesn't finally appear "on screen" until the final chapter. The way the book ends makes me want to read a sequel, to pick up where it left off. However, even if there is never a sequel, I was satisfied by the somewhat abrupt ending because it left me wanting more -- in a good way. Even at 460 pages, it never wore out its welcome. And now I'm eager to read more books by Linda Lael Miller, to see if they are good as this one was. Highly recommended!
Rating: 3 stars
Read: October 2-11, 2020
Review: This book was Harlequin Special Edition #2720 (Oct. 2019). It's a "second chance romance" about a couple that divorced seven years earlier because our heroine Alyssa Santangelo left to pursue her career in New York when her husband Connor Bravo wanted to remain in their hometown of Valentine Bay, Oregon. (This book is part of a series called "The Bravos of Valentine Bay," but can be enjoyed as a standalone novel.) On the way back home to Oregon to care for her pregnant mother, Aly has a car accident and suffers memory loss of the past seven years, thinking she is still married to Connor. Eventually she is convinced of the truth about this, but the situation offers both of them a chance to start over. As Aly gradually recovers her memories of her former life, the problem that previously kept them apart is still present: she wants to live in Manhattan where she works and he wants to remain in Valentine Bay helping his brother with their lumber business. The problem is finally resolved in a satisfactory way, where the reader gets both the hero's "grovel" moment and the heroine is able to make a decision about her future that is not dependent on pleasing her man at the expense of her own life choices.
I'd not read a Harlequin Special Edition before, but I assumed the sensuality content was low due to the covers usually showing sweet scenes, often populated by ranchers and babies. But there are a few sex scenes here, including one that takes place in the shower which climaxes on page 114 with our hero "shooting his finish against her soft belly, the water from the showerhead pouring down over them, washing it all away." This doesn't prevent them from then going to the bedroom and doing it all over again for the next few pages, this time using a condom. Afterwards they fall asleep, where she "still held him inside her, her leg hitched over his hip, keeping him in place." When they wake up later, on page 118, she moves her body away from him and he sees that the condom was "halfway off and leaking." So, that's two mentions of semen (without calling it that) within five pages. But those five pages probably have the most sexual content in the novel; there are a couple more sex scenes, but I don't recall them being as graphic (if one considers non-explicit phrases like "shooting his finish" graphic). In a way, it's like a Hallmark movie, but one where the characters are occasionally shown having orgasms and talking about birth control. That may sound weird, but it's effective in offering a pleasant and relatable story for many adult readers. Amnesia as depicted here, of course, seems to happen more often in fiction than in real life (there is an excerpt from another romance that also involves "temporary amnesia" at the back of the book), but it's the only fanciful aspect of a plot that otherwise seems to depict down-to-earth events. Overall it's a pleasant read about likable people -- and I haven't even mentioned the neighbor's cat (also likable). What's not to like?
Rating: 2.5 stars
Read: June 29-July 12, 2020
Review: This book was Harlequin Presents #3778 (Jan. 2020), published in December 2019. The story begins as if it's the sequel to an earlier novel, where our heroine Amelia goes to the mansion of her wealthy stepbrother Teo to inform him that she is pregnant with his child. You see, several months earlier Amelia attended a masquerade party with dyed hair, contact lenses and a "steam punk" mask that she didn't remove even when having sex with Teo in a private room at the party. Her mother, the frequently-divorced Marie French (mistakenly referred to as "Marie Force" in an amusing typo on page 33) had briefly married Teo's father which causes Teo to assume that Amelia is just another money-hungry or status-seeking parasite out to get her clutches on him.
I'm rating this book 2.5 stars, although occasionally it got to 3 star territory for me. The character of Teo is a classic brooding aristocrat like one might find in a historical romance, and Amelia is a modern young woman determined not to get pushed around by him. Unfortunately, the middle of the book has Teo behaving in an unforgivable manner by kidnapping Amelia and forcing her to choose between marrying him or to be his servant cleaning the dirty floors. This ties into the "Cinderella" description of the title, making the story a genuine "fairy tale for adults" (as the Harlequin Presents line has been called). Ultimately Teo sees the light and is redeemed, but the fact that Amelia fell in love with him before his grovel at the end runs the risk of sending a disturbing message to readers that his dictatorial behavior was somehow okay or "hot." In the real world, as soon as Teo allowed her to finally leave the cabin with him, she ought to have called the police!
The writing style has its good and bad points. It's written in a rapid-fire clip where sentences are often incomplete and continued from the previous one. A few times it feels like the momentum of the words is moving so fast that mistakes were made, such as on page 153 where we read "He been certain they'd be back home..." ("he been" should be "he had been") or page 161, where "His big hands of his wrapped around her waist..." ("of his" is not needed). The writing occasionally veers towards the silly. Here's another sample, also from page 161: "The look in his dark gaze slammed through her, thick like greed. Teo lifted her toward him, then took one hard, proud nipple in his mouth. And sucked. And it was as if her head... flatlined." (Those three sentences are actually broken into three paragraphs in the text.) While the writing often has clever ways of putting things, sometimes the attempted poetry of the wording fails to deliver, as with the aforementioned "proud nipple."
Another problem with the writing is that too much time is spent inside the heads of the characters, particularly Amelia, so that it seems no one can cross the room without it taking two pages of internal monologue to complete the action. The reader has to continually be told about how either Amelia or Teo (more often Amelia) feels about everything happening and how it relates to their past, present and future. After awhile it felt like filler to pad out a thin plot and became a little tiresome by the end. An example of this is page 198 where the butler clears his throat to speak to Amelia, but it's not until 9 sentences later (on page 199) that he actually speaks. I would have preferred to have been spared about 50% of the character's thoughts in favor of more action, and trust the reader to figure out what Teo and Amelia are thinking based on what they are doing. In other words, less telling and more showing.
Of course Crews is a successful and prolific author, and obviously knows how to write very well, but the above was my honest reaction to what I read. Unlike some other books that I've given only two stars to, I have to admit that I wouldn't mind reading this novel again at some point, or another book by Crews. I enjoyed parts of the book more than others, and it's not a bad book by any means, but not a perfect one either.
Rating: 4.5 stars
Read: July 23- August 6, 2020
Review: This book was published by Zebra/Kensington in January 2020, according to the copyright page (the actual release date was on December 31, 2019 according to Goodreads). It is book #4 in The Widows' Club series, but this is the only one of them that I've read. The story concerns a young widow, Lady Georgina, who is being forced by her stubborn and strict father to marry the unworthy Lord Travers. Georgie agrees to this arrangement but before it can take place she is kidnapped by Travers' men so that he may bed her to ensure that she will not change her mind and elope with another man, as she had done before to him years earlier. Georgie escapes from her kidnappers and is rescued by a friend of her brother: Rob, Lord St. Just, the hero of the book. (I think this is the first romance novel I've read where the hero had the same first name as me, although of course that is where the resemblance ends!) Soon Georgie's brother, father and Lord Travers, as well as their agents, are each on their trail.
The thing I liked best about this book is that there was a lot of movement in the plot, not padded with a lot of internal monologue about what everyone was feeling at every moment. At first I didn't care for the heroine Lady Georgina or the hero Lord St. Just -- the latter because he seemed too bland and without any edge, and the former because she acted ungrateful to the hero for trying to rescue her, since she had abandoned hope of avoiding the unwanted marriage to Travers. It wasn't until Chapter 10 where the hero rescues her little dog when it slips off his boat into the sea that I grew to like them both, since he showed his selfless heroism and she finally showed some recognition of all that he was doing for her. There are only a couple sex scenes, near the end of the book. I thoroughly enjoyed the novel, although I found the stubbornness of Georgie's father to be maddening, showing no respect for his adult daughter's wishes regarding her own choice of husband and going to extreme lengths to thwart her wishes. I think Travers also got off a bit light in the end (although still punished in a way) considering the fact that he kidnapped Georgie and later tried to rape her. Rob has dark hair, but I kept picturing him as blond for some reason, perhaps because he seemed like such a nice guy and not the typical dark haired brooding hero that I prefer. Georgie had red hair and freckles but this was mentioned rarely, and I think if it had been played up more it would have made her character more visually memorable. This was nearly a 5-star book for me, but I'm knocking a half-star off for those little nitpicking flaws. The novel had a timeless feel for me, like it could have been published in any decade and not just in our own, and I recommend it to anyone who enjoys reading old school historical romance.
Rating: 3.5 stars
Read: March 25-April 5, 2020
Review: This novel was released in January 2020, and I purchased it on Harlequin's website. This is a traditional "second chance at love" romance, with a few differences from the norm. The narrative jumps back and forward in time, with some chapters set in 1996 and others set in 2012/13. In addition each chapter is from the perspective of either Sam or Maya, our hero and heroine, with the name appearing at the top of each chapter. That jumping back and forth could have been jarring, but Shroff succeeds in doing it very well, as unfolding developments in the 1996 storyline meld perfectly into the 2012/13 narrative. The other unusual aspect of this story is that the main characters' family came from India, so there are a lot of references to Indian culture throughout, which makes the story not only entertaining but educational. This heritage also explains why a couple of college age adults (Maya was 22 in 1996), as well as later in life, would have felt restrictions on who they are allowed to date or marry, or that Maya would have remained single and declined to date other men during all this time. The downside of this is that it makes Sam and Maya's mothers seem unreasonably restrictive, although Sam's mother is eventually depicted more sympathetically when she meets Sam's daughter Samantha. By the end of the book, the positive value of family and tradition is made clear.
I also enjoyed the occasional pop culture references in the novel, especially the part when a Hootie & the Blowfish t-shirt is mentioned in 1996 near the beginning of the book and makes a reappearance in 2013 near the end. Such details help to root the book in the era in which it takes place. One cultural aspect that was somehow neglected by both Sam and Maya is social media. Surely if Sam had carried a torch for Maya all these years, then he would have searched her name on Facebook at some point, learned that she had a daughter named after him that resembles him, etc. I suspect that Shroff set the present-day events in 2012 to make that less likely, but Facebook was popular back in 2012, too. So this is an example of how changing technology can upend a longstanding trope, in this case the "second chance at love." In real life, the old ex-lovers, who are secretly still in love with each other, would likely be checking in on each other's lives via social media.
I enjoyed this novel overall and found that it was written well, although I do think it was a bit too long. The story itself runs 366 pages (not counting a couple recipe pages at the end). The reader knows going in that Sam and Maya are going to end up together by the last page, so after Sam's engagement to another woman has ended by page 268, clearing the way for Maya, we have almost another 100 pages before the HEA. A shorter, more focused book might have had more of a punch and less drag, I think -- although that may be my preference for category romances talking. I do think that this is the kind of novel that will stick in a reader's mind long after many others have faded from memory, due to the unique narrative structure and the ethnicity of the characters.
BEST FRIEND TO ROYAL BRIDE by Annie Claydon (2020)Rating: 3 stars
Read: March 7-9, 2020
Review: This book is Harlequin Medical Romance #1083, published in February 2020. I'd read Forbidden Night with the Duke by the same author last year and enjoyed it. The Medical Romance line consists mainly of U.K. authors I think (a plus in my opinion, as an Anglophile) and the novels are in Larger Print format. I purchased the book from the Harlequin website; I've heard that this particular line is not available in stores in the U.S. I enjoyed this novel less than the previous one I'd read by the author since the story seemed a lot simpler and the hero Alex was pretty bland. Despite being wealthy and having royal blood, he comes across as just an ordinary, nice guy who is trying to set up a large clinic from scratch, with his old medical school friend Marie helping out. The two old friends had shared a very brief kiss early in the book (pgs 18-19), but they try to forget about that and spend most of the novel working on getting the clinic up and running. They don't kiss again until page 166, which is also short-lived ("They had a job to do, and it didn't involve kissing"). Some dramatic action (a medical emergency) eventually occurs by page 171, and afterwards things finally start to heat up between Alex and Marie around page 193 (the book runs 255 pages). This is followed by some on-again/off-again in their relationship until the obligatory HEA. In my opinion the novel didn't really get interesting until the last third of the book where there is some movement in the story beyond the mundane task of building the clinic. The writing style is good but not impressive; I did like the closing lines ("This was no longer his story, it was theirs, and he loved it more each day.") It's a quick read (I read it in 3 days, which is very fast for me) and mildly enjoyable despite the lack of drama for most of the book.
Rating: 5 stars
Read: March 9-14, 2020
Review: This book is Harlequin Historical #1486 (Feb. 2020), although the numbers no longer appear on/in the books themselves, which (like the above book) I purchased on the Harlequin website. This is a sequel to an earlier novel (The Earl's Runaway Governess) by the same author, which I've not read. I pretty much knew that this would be a 5-star book from the first few pages because of how enjoyable it was to read and the writer's attention to detail of life during the Regency era (in a non-obtrusive way). The hero of the book, Robert, is sent by his "uncle" (not related by blood) to fetch a young woman named Jane (our heroine) and bring her to his home, for reasons that the uncle refuses to explain. I liked the realistic touch of having the journey take so long by carriage to get there and back (five days each way), so that Jane doesn't even arrive with Robert at the uncle's home until page 108. In the meantime Robert and Jane (who is a maid, the daughter of a housekeeper) get to know each other during the long journey. I don't want to tell too much of the tale in order not to spoil it. I will say that I liked how the author presented the uncle's second wife as a horrible person initially, but gradually Jane was able to sympathize with her. I liked how the author was able to make this Regency era story more timeless by bringing up issues that still affect women today, such as Jane's previous experience with sexual assault from which she is still trying to recover. There was also a very sad scene near the end of the book that I found very moving and beautifully written. Even the inclusion of a robin outside the window making its nest was a nice touch. I enjoyed this book thoroughly from beginning to end and highly recommend it for anyone wanting to read a new Regency romance that is written in the classic tradition but which is still relevant for readers now. If I had one criticism to make of the writing, I found the frequent use of the phrase "in truth" to become a little repetitive after awhile, and each time it surfaced in a sentence I noticed it more than I should have. On the other hand, a few uses of "in truth" here and there does contribute to the charming old-time feel of the story. I'm happy to have found a new writer to follow!
Rating: 5 stars
Read: July 5-21, 2020
Review: This paperback book was published by Zebra Books (Kensington Publishing) in May 2020 (or April 28th to be precise). I bought the novel new at the store based on the cover, intrigued by the one-word title (the heroine's name) and after reading the first page or two in the store and liking what I read. Usually I can predict my level of enjoyment of a novel based on reading the first chapter, but this book exceeded my (already positive) expectations. I had never read the author before, and this is the first book in a new series "Bayou Bad Boys"; a short preview of the next book, Lily (also named after its heroine), appears at the end of this one. The author has written three other novels where the title is also the heroine's name (Celine, Alanna and Josette) but they are part of a different series and it is not necessary to read them to enjoy Felice.
The story takes place in New Orleans in 1859. Felice has just arrived off the boat with her British fiance Mayhew to ask for her father's blessing to marry him. But things don't go as planned, as her father is unavailable for awhile and she is forced to work in the office of her brother's shipping business alongside Rene, a man who had rejected her three years ago. As the story proceeds, it becomes clear that Mayhew is an unworthy mate and Rene is the man she ought to be with. Because Rene broke Felice's heart in the past, however, her brother Michel forbids Rene from seeing her. The author introduces many amusing and adorable elements such as the large amount of children and animals in Michel's household (a duck follows behind him into a room at one point) and Rene adopting a small puppy that he had helped rescue, naming it "Miz Sassy" (after Felice, without her knowledge). The novel goes along at a somewhat leisurely (albeit entertaining) pace until page 251 when Rene is sent to prison for a crime he didn't commit. This is followed (on pages 304-323) by a somewhat melodramatic courtroom scene as various characters, including Felice, testify for or against Rene. There is more of a suspenseful momentum to this last third of the novel, making it more of a page-turner as time is of the essence as the events unfold.
Although a historical, the novel is light on historical details. This is a novel written for readers today, with the occasional "mayhap" added to the dialogue to give it a charming old-fashioned quality. A few times I wondered if a line of dialogue sounded too contemporary or presented an anachronism. For example, on page 327 Felice's father tells her, "I applaud the courage it took to speak your truth." The use of "your truth" (instead of "the truth") sounds to my ears like a more modern expression than would be used in 1859, although I could be mistaken. Again, the novel is not meant to be a literal recreation of the past, but designed to appeal to readers now, and on that score it certainly succeeds (at least with this reader). The sexual content is low aside from occasional mentions of the two main characters' arousal at being near each other, and two sex scenes (pages 239-244 and 334-335). In some ways, Felice reminded me of a traditional Regency novel, although of course it takes place in America during the Victorian era. I enjoyed this novel thoroughly and will definitely be buying the next book in the series when it is published, which from the preview features some of Felice's supporting cast.
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