Reading Fanatic Reviews
Historical RomanceHeart of the Storm by Jane Thornley
Available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, iBooks, Kobo, 24 Symbols, Mondadori, Angus & Robertson, and Indigo (Chapters)
Heart of the Storm*
Feisty Heroine Refuses to Be Victim
Emma, daughter of a wealthy man who runs a merchant ship trade, is not pleased with her father’s choice for her betrothed. She is sailing to Nova Scotia with the ultimate goal being Williamsburg in the colonies, where her betrothed will be taking on a new post. All of her plans are upended when she discovers her affianced dead.
Soon, Emma finds out that she is part of a much greater scheme against both her late betrothed and her father. Lord Jack Winston is set on revenge because something of value was taken by the dead man. He has commandeered one of Emma’s father ships and plans to seek treasure if only he can find the map that was taken from him.
Will Jack find the treasure map, and ultimately the treasure? What will he do with Emma? How will Emma react to now being held hostage? What will her future without her betrothed hold?
The book is written in a style that is different from most 18th- and 19th-century historical romance novels. There are parts that are a little tongue-in-cheek or with wry humor or even a little slapstick. Some of the writing had phrasing that felt a little awkward, hampering complete enjoyment of this sometimes zany and steamy story. Emma is a fierce heroine; she will not willingly play the role of victim that the men would like her to. Yet, this intrigues Lord Winston, and he soon finds himself in an internal battle between what he has planned and his growing feelings for the lady. At times, I found Lord Winston to be the gentleman he was brought up to be, but other times he succumbed to his baser instincts, both in word and action.
I like it that the author made the secondary characters three dimensional. Dottie is portrayed as a lady’s maid who is still rough around the edges as she struggles to speak and act properly and whom Emma is still trying to train properly. The captain tries to keep Lord Winston on track with the original mission in a very colorful and fun-to-watch way.
One Night for Seduction by Erica Ridley
Available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, iBooks, Google Play, Kobo, Scribd, Mondadori, Angus & Robertson, and Indigo (Chapters)
One Night for Seduction*
How to Win a Wager and a Wife
The Duke of Colehaven is not one to pass up a wager, and he hasn’t lost one in 10 years. For this wager, he has to find a husband for the ward of one of his good friends. She has been called unmarriageable. Diana is a contented bluestocking spinster who wants nothing to do with marriage, as she doesn’t want to be controlled by any man. She has a great appreciation of numbers and lives a double life acting as if she were a government inspector. She goes to businesses and makes sure that they are using proper weights and measures so they don’t cheat the customers…or themselves!
Will the Duke be able to find a man willing to marry this woman? Will he be able to convince Diana that she should marry?
I found this to be a delightfully written book. There is a lot of humor, a lot of intelligence (and some interesting chess games!), and a lot of witty or telling banter between characters. The characters in this book are three dimensional–both the leads and the secondary characters. Diana is a fantastic heroine. She’s very smart, surprisingly funny, and knows her own mind. To hear her go on about mathematics and weights and measures was more amusing than it sounds. She’s very independent and believes in reciprocity between men and women in all things. Cole’s a great character as well. He, too, is not interested in marrying; he has very specific ideas about what his proper duchess should be like, and he hasn’t met her yet. He never expected to be the duke, so he treats people better than most others of his station. As Diana says, he is nice. I loved watching his relationship with his sister, Felicity. She is an excellent character in her own right, and brother and sister interacted well in a way that seemed natural between loving siblings.
If you enjoy well-written Regency with a little bit of humor and a bluestocking heroine, you might enjoy this book.
The Going Back Portal by Connie Lacy
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The Going Back Portal*
Time Portal to Dark Time in American History
Kathryn, an investigative TV journalist, loves her grandmother, but thinks she is not quite in her right mind when she starts talking about seeing a Cherokee woman at a farm nearby. The problem is, there is no farm close to them. After investigating with Grandma, Kathryn changes her mind when she is transported back to the 1840s. Forest Water is a woman from that time who was left behind on the trail of tears and trapped on what used to be her family’s farmstead by a brutal white man. Kathryn keeps going back in time, wanting to help the young woman. Soon, she finds that more is at stake than the woman’s freedom and her life.
Will Kathryn be able to help the Cherokee woman? Can she keep the dangers at bay? Will Forest Water be free of the man harming her?
This book was well written. There’s a good mix of dialogue and narrative prose; she doesn’t hit you over the head with a lot of backstory all at once. The story unfolds naturally, as we learn along with Kathryn. It’s clear that Kathryn and her grandmother have a good relationship, even when Kathryn doesn’t believe her. It’s always lovely to see warm, intergenerational relationships. Oh, my goodness, poor Forest Water! What she had to go through! Even though this is fiction, it brings home the atrocities that happened at that time.
This book is a real page-turner. The author made the time travel aspect seem plausible. You can’t help but feel for these two women as they struggle against forces that are so strong. Yet, the fight is important. I loved how the author interwove romance relationships for both of the women into the plot. Something for them both to have hope for.
If you enjoy time travel and romance steeped in one of the dark times in America’s past, you might enjoy this very different take on time travel romance.
Her Midnight Sin by Sofie Darling
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Audiobook available at Kobo
Her Midnight Sin*
The Devalued Dowager Viscountess and the Captain
The book opens as Captain Jake is supervising the unloading of his ship in London. He is to meet with his good friend, Viscount St. Albans. The nobleman intends to give the captain one of his properties. Unfortunately, that property is currently under the care of the Dowager Viscountess St. Albans. During her marriage and since the death of her husband, the Grange has been her project. She’s brought it back into the black, and it is her life. She asked the current viscount to give her a month to gather the funds to purchase the Grange outright. While she is visiting, Jake shows up and has a malarial relapse. The viscount convinces her to take him back to the Grange to convalesce in the country.
Will the viscountess be successful in gaining the land she’s worked so hard for? Or will it become Jake’s? What will she have to do to get the kind of money needed to purchase such a large estate?
I was very nearly put off this book at the very beginning as I found the part about Jake at the docks to be uninteresting. I’m glad I stuck with it, though, as it has turned out to be a much better read than I first thought. Callie, the viscountess, can be very humorous— intentionally and not—and it’s amusing to watch her try to make her way in a world that seems set against her. The story is also sometimes poignant, like when Jake believe that Callie is prejudiced against him because she can sense that he doesn’t belong in their world—not that she sees herself in competition with him to get the place that she believes he deserves.
This book takes place in the post-Regency, pre-Victorian era, and I found it to be a surprisingly good read with lots of twists and turns to the plot, some of which you won’t see coming but will enjoy.
The Eastbourne Earls by Elaine Hart
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The Eastbourne Earls*
A Slightly Improved Collection of Regency Tales
This collection contains four books written by one author. I had read the first book before getting the collection. I thought the first book was problematic, but I always like to give authors a couple of chances to impress me. I know that writing is a skill that develops, and I wouldn’t want to miss an excellent author because of a not-so-good first or second book.
The four books included in this set are An Everlasting Love, A Healing Love, An Unexpected Love, and An Unconventional Love.
I can say that I see a little improvement in the second book, A Healing Love; the language is not as stiff and unnatural as it was in the first book, And Everlasting Love. Still, however, the book had a bit of a data dump at the beginning to set up the story, and other long narrative passages existed throughout the book probably which made it a little tedious at times. The rest of the books were similar in structure and issues. An Unexpected Love was very short and didn’t have much development.
Unfortunately, this volume–like the first book that I read by this author–is plagued with errors of grammar, punctuation, spelling, and usage. Commas are particularly problematic. One word had a letter left off it. Other words and phrases weren’t quite right. For instance, the author used a phrase *civil whiskers*; I believe she might have meant civil whispers. I even looked up the phrase to make sure I wasn’t missing some arcane Regency terminology, but I did not see reference to the phrase. At times, the language was still too stilted, yet at other times, it was too modern, like using the words *stressed* or *bother* to describe emotions or emotional states.
I am a nurse, so I do have to quibble with some of the things that were assumed or stated in A Healing Love. Nursing during the time of Regency was not the profession that is today. So nurse Lydia would not have seen herself in that light nor would she have acted in certain, professional ways. Even back in World War I (100 years after the Regency era), nurses were seen as little more than women who helped ill patients with bodily functions, assist with tasks like feeding or writing letters, and other low-level duties. Even today, a nurse doesn’t diagnose a patient’s condition; that’s what doctors do. So it seems strange when Lord Walcott asks her to do so, and with some hedging, she does it.
Anyone But the Earl by Irene Davis
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Anyone But the Earl*
New York Heiress and Rowing
Octavia Sewell, known as Tavi, is a New York heiress whose parents are eager to marry her off to an English earl. Something strikes Tavi as off about him, and she does not want to marry him. In fact, she is not interested in marrying at all and starts to consider having an assignation with one of her brother’s friends so that she could have a child to love and make herself unmarriageable. She even goes to one of the young men’s place of business to make the proposition but chickens out before she does so.
Will Tavi marry the earl? Will she gather her courage and approach Clif again?
This book is an odd combination of a variety of things. I’m not quite sure what to make of it. First, you will learn a lot about rowing! Tavi is headstrong, spoiled, and seems to think only about herself. The earl is despicable, so the reader can understand why she wouldn’t want him. However, it is harder to figure out why she doesn’t want to marry at all, especially when she has a friend who has a good marriage and a sweet baby. Clif, her brother’s friend that she initially targets, plays it pretty close to the vest emotionally. He reminds me of Mr. Darcy; still waters run deep. Outwardly, he doesn’t show much, but as we see in the parts that he narrates, he is a man of deep thought and emotion. He is attracted to Tavi and can’t get her out of his mind. For quite a while in the book, there’s not much romance going on at all for any of the parties, and then it heats up rather quickly in a way that was surprising to me despite Tavi’s original plans for Clif. I ended up feeling sorry for Clif because of the way Tavi treats him; he’s a good man who deserves better than her! The book briefly touches on the Victorian language of flowers. This is a fascinating subject, and I would have loved to see it used more fully throughout the entire book.
In all, I found this to be a kind of scattered book that didn’t really manage to pull it all together to make a satisfying romance.
Dealing with the Viscount by Clair Brett
Available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, 24 Symbols, Mondadori, Angus & Robertson, and Indigo (Chapters)
Dealing with the Viscount*
Weak Premise and Characterization
Some years ago, Ella and Devon made a business agreement. They agreed to marry. Her dowry would pay off her father’s gambling debts to Devon and get out from under her father, and Devon would marry before the age of 25 as was required before he could come into his fortune. They planted that she would leave for Scotland soon after their marriage, and she would fake her death. Instead, when she went away, it appears that she died for real. Some years later now, Devon is surprised to find her actually alive running a small bakery in a remote part of Scotland with a small child who resembles him.
How did all this come about? Is the child his? Do the two have any feelings for each other? What will become of this family unit?
While I expect a certain unreality in my romance fiction and am willing to suspend disbelief to a point, this book struck me wrong on several levels. The entire premise for their fake marriage—a trope often seen in historical romance fiction—just didn’t seem right. Since this book takes place wholly after the heroine’s supposed death, we don’t see the original stage of the marriage itself; we know of it from characters talking and thinking about it. In this setup, why would Ella need to fake her death in the first place? If they had enough feeling for each other to consummate their marriage, why wouldn’t they stay together? Or he could have chosen to set her up in another house somewhere in the country while he lived whatever life he wanted to live that didn’t include a female. Why would a woman go along with selling herself to pay off her family’s debts and choose to live a life cut off from all she knew as they would think she was dead? That’s just all kinds of wrong. Also, what woman of her station would know much about baking and especially enough for it to be a passion of hers?
Some of the “growth” of the characters seemed unrealistic as well. It is clear that Devon didn’t want a wife and a family before, but when he sees Ella again and their child, he suddenly wants to be a family man.
There are also more than the average amount of errors with grammar, punctuation, and usage that is typical of self-published books these days. Comma errors were rife, including ones lacking between independent clauses in compound sentences. The word discourse was mistaken for discord.
In all, the setup and characterization strained my credulity further than I find acceptable.
The Beast’s Bride by Jayne Castel
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The Beast's Bride*
A Kind Man Amongst Brutes & Lechers
Rhona—daughter of the chief of Clan MacLeod—does not wish to marry at all ever, but her father insists that it is her turn. After embarrassing her father in front of another clan leader, who was hoping to make her his next wife, her father decides to hold a competition, and the winner will become her husband. Her father’s strongest warrior and protector, Taran, has held a tendre for her for a long time, but because of his facial scarring, he believes that she would never consent to be his wife. Though Taran doesn’t want to compete at first, he decides to enter the games as he doesn’t want to see her with another man.
Rhona is a delightfully headstrong heroine to watch; I so wanted her to be able to get away from it all! You can understand why she doesn’t want to marry with the examples of men she has around her. She definitely has her own mind about things, and her father does not like that at all. Taran has long been her friend, teaching her swordplay when she was younger, and in fact, the reader first meets him when he is rescuing Rhona from a lascivious, dangerous suitor. I like that Taran is tough, but he is still vulnerable in his feelings for Rhona. I don’t want to give too much away, but he handled their forced marriage in true, swoonworthy hero fashion.
The only thing I didn’t like about the book was how awful the men were (except for Taran) and how meek the women were. The men were all brutes and lechers. Rhona’s father is ghastly, unwilling to protect his maiden daughter from a son-in-law who seemed to want to ruin her, preferring to believe that his actions were the girl’s fault. The married women had no backbone and just accepted the harsh treatment by their husbands as the norm.
Devilishly Sinful Rogues Collection
Available at Amazon, Google Play, Kobo, Mondadori, Angus & Robertson, and Indigo (Chapters)
Devilishly Sinful Rogues*
A Rogues’ Gallery of Tales
This delightful collection of six Regency romances explores some of the familiar tropes we all know and love in the genre: a fake betrothal, a widow not wishing to remarry, second chance at love, a bluestocking finding love, an impoverished nobleman seeking an heiress, and people who have no desire to marry.
Book 1: The Rake Takes a Wife by Aileen Fish: Jonas’s grandfather wants to know he’ll settle down before he will allow Jonas to inherit his estate. Jonas asks his friend’s sister—whom some would consider to be on the shelf—to play the role in exchange for a season in town.
Book 2: Scandalous Redemption by Amanda Mariel: Widowed Claudia only desires a lover after the death of her brutal husband, not another man to rule over her. Will that be enough for Lord Shillington, or is he only more interested in the honorable choice of marriage?
Book 3: Dealing with the Viscount by Clair Brett: Ella and Renwick had a deal that appeared to take a tragic turn. When that turns out to be not true, will they have a second chance at love?
Book 4: When an Earl Turns Wicked by Dawn Brower: The Earl of Harrington is quite content in his life that includes running a club; his grandfather wishes he would give up his licentious ways. Lady Marian wants nothing more than to be a physician—and has even been training—but she is not being taken seriously because of her gender. She devises a foolproof plan, she believes, and charms the earl to make him take part, against his better judgment.
Book 5: A Marriage Made in Mayfair by Tamara Gill: After a bad first season caused in part by Lord Danning, Susan returns to London wanting revenge. Lord Danning requires an heiress to shore up his crumbling financial circumstances and wants nothing more to charm and seduce Susan to achieve that end.
Book 6: My Duke’s Seduction by Tammy Andresen: Lady Tricia wants nothing more than to devote herself to charity work; no husband or family for this daughter of a duke. Family ailments bring her to a seedier part of London, where the Duke of Landon protects her. The duke knows he must marry one day but hasn’t had a desire to until he meets the impulsive woman who risks her own safety to help her family.
Despite the title, not all the men here are rogues. In fact, several of them are quite honorable from the outset! Sometimes, the women are more roguish than the men.
As is typical in collections like these, the writing quality varies by writer, but the stories are a good read if you like Regency Romance. Four of the books are first in series, and the other two take place in the middle of a series, so if you like a book, you have more rogues to read about! I’m familiar with some of these authors, but some of them were new to me, which is always the fun part of a collection. I’ve definitely found more authors that I will follow.
Mina by Emberly Hart
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Free with Kindle Unlimited
Mina*
An Odd Mail-Order Bride for a Railroad Man
Mina is living a busy but fulfilling life with her parents in Virginia when she is told that she is being sent to Kansas on the bridal train to be a mail-order bride. Not one to disobey her parents, though she’d much prefer to stay in Virginia, she does this. In quick order, she is married to George Lawrence who works for the railroad there. She is quite surprised at the relative wealth of this railroad man compared to her farmer parents. George decided he needed a wife when one of the men he worked with told him that the board wouldn’t take him seriously until he was wed. He has a good idea for a spur that he believes the railroad should build so that ranchers move their cattle easier for transport.
How is Mina going to find her new life in Kansas? What will she think of her new, never-before-seen husband? How will he find her? Can each be the spouse that the other needs? Will George get his spur?
I found this to be an odd book. Mina is a very strange female. She almost comes across as a little slow and dim-witted. She is undoubtedly naïve and peculiar. Her love of animals seems to trump everything else, much to her husband chagrin. The language of this book, too, is stilted and unnatural, both in narrative sections and in dialogue.
If you enjoy romances about Old West mail-order brides and don’t mind an odd heroine, you might enjoy this book.
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