A Woman Scorned by Liz Carlyle
Despite its intriguing premise, this book is let down by a dull romance and a convoluted plot.
Liz Carlyle is one of my auto-buy authors, and I’m still in the process of reading her backlist. The blurb for A Woman Scorned intrigued me—the heroine, Jonet Rowland, Lady Mercer, sounds like one of those independent widows who have turned their backs on society’s rules, and the hero, Captain Cole Amherst, is the straightlaced gentleman who is undone by lust and love.
Sadly, the characters aren’t nearly so interesting.
Rumour has it that Jonet poisoned her husband, and her eccentric ways haven’t dispelled the rumours. Cole is sent by his uncle—Jonet’s brother-in-law and co-guardian of her children—to tutor Jonet’s two sons and determine if Jonet is an unfit mother. Cole isn’t so easily manipulated, but he senses something amiss in the Mercer household and, despite his misgivings, decides to do it. Jonet fears that her sons’ lives are in danger from the same person who murdered her husband, and she’s unwilling to trust a stranger, especially one sent by a brother-in-law who’d like nothing better than to get his hands on the children’s trust.
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Desperate Duchesses by Eloisa James
Like the games of chess that run through this series, the romances are filled with strategy, intrigue and surprise moves.
This series begins with Jemma, the Duchess of Beaumont, who returns to England from France in the late 1700s (during the Georgian period) to be with her husband, Elijah, from whom she has been estranged for several years. Elijah had what seems like a heart attack while at parliament, and he has asked Jemma to return so they can begin the process of begetting an heir, while he still can. Jemma was a well known social butterfly in Paris and had somewhat a scandalous reputation. Her return to England allows her to renew her friendships with her contemporaries—most of the other duchesses in this series—and due to her love of chess, begin a friendship with the Duke of Villiers, her husband’s ex-best friend.
The series is interspersed with several chess matches as, like chess itself, a game of intrigue, coquettishness and desire is played out between the characters of each novel. Everyone gets their happy ending, of course, but not without several machinations of their own or of others’—just like a chess game.
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What Happens In London by Julia Quinn
Julia Quinn bounces back to form with this witty romantic comedy. Squees all around.
I discovered Julia Quinn after reading The Duke and I many, many years ago. I loved the Bridgerton series but honestly found the books after that to be sadly lacking. I didn’t like The Secret Diaries of Miranda Cheever and I found The Lost Duke of Wyndham and Mr. Cavendish, I Presume to be repetitive and disappointing. So I waited a while before buying this one and was pleasantly surprised to find Quinn back to her old form.
What Happens in London was lovely and delightful. I haven’t been able to say that about a book (much less one of Quinn’s) in a while. It made me smile at the most inopportune moments. I had to put it down and wait until I got home so people wouldn’t think it was silly that I was laughing to myself.
Olivia Bevelstoke is the daughter of an earl. She’s a bit bored this season since her best friend married her brother (see The Secret Diaries of Miranda Cheever) and moved away. She’s got a new neighbour, and the gossipy friends that she has now have told her that he killed his fiancée. So she decides to check him out.
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I managed to read 7 books for the challenge (total of 8 for the month), when for the past 5 months I’d only managed 2-5 a month, so I think I achieved what I set out to do and that was to get over this slump and read more.
The Outlaw Demon Wails by Kim Harrison
This was a book I had in my TBR box for a while, mainly because someone had spoilt something in the previous book, For a Few Demons More, so I was a bit put off reading that one and not about to jump ahead. I finally read For a Few Demons More before the challenge and decided to forge ahead with The Outlaw Demon Wails while the details of the last book were still fresh in my mind.
Rachel Morgan is determined to squash her inner adrenaline junkie and make wiser decisions that won’t land her and her friends in so much trouble. But a request for her help in obtaining an elf DNA sample from the ever-after leads to a revelation of Rachel’s true origins and changes her perspective on family and risk-taking.
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The Madness of Lord Ian Mackenzie by Jennifer Ashley (Highland Pleasures, Book 1)
Beth Ackerley is a widow who has suddenly, unexpectedly, become an heiress. All she wants to do is sit back and relax with her money, possibly with a new husband. In the process of trying to get a husband, she comes into contact with Lord Ian Mackenzie, the youngest of the Mackenzie brothers, a family notorious for the drama worthy of a modern soap opera. Lord Ian, in particular, is infamous for being “mad” and eccentric, having been previously locked up in a mental asylum for a perceived illness that in modern times would be a disability that can be dealt with. Lord Ian decides that she must be his and sets about it in his own way, and there the story unfolds.
I loved the drama of this story. At first glance, Lord Ian could be any suitor trying to woo a woman—if not for his unconventional bluntness and his trying to prove himself suitable without even knowing that is what he is doing. Both characters have angst-filled backgrounds that Jennifer Ashley uses to show us how their characters have come to be
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Tempted All Night by Liz Carlyle
BOOK GIVEAWAY: Read on for a chance to win a free copy of Tempted All Night. The contest ends midnight on Friday, June 5 AEST.
I think I read a Liz Carlyle book once, and I mustn’t have liked it because I’ve avoided her books for some reason. So when I got a free copy of Tempted All Night at ARRC 09, it was a chance to reacquaint myself with Carlyle’s writing and see if I should start paying her more attention.
Tempted All Night didn’t immediately grab my attention, and I didn’t care much for the suspense plot, but some exquisitely written, finely balanced scenes between lovers Tristan and Phae had me alternately thrilled and in tears.
Tristan Talbot: hero in rogue’s clothing
Tristan Talbot, Lord Avoncliffe, is your typical historical romance rogue. He’s popular with the ladies—and not of the virginal kind—who generally see him as a frivolous, somewhat dim-witted, yet vastly entertaining companion. In truth, he’s a former mercenary whose past has jaded him to the point where he doesn’t care
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Mr Impossible by Loretta Chase (Carsington Quartet, Book 2)
To start off, I will say this will be an incredibly biased review because this is one of my favourite books of all time, and Loretta Chase is one of my favourite authors ever.
The Characters
Rupert Carsington is a bit of a loveable disaster. Wherever he goes, trouble follows. He’s a bit of a bumbling idiot, but he is smarter than he appears to be, it’s just that he seems to find himself in one scrape or another no matter what he does. He’s the kind of man that would have anyone in the family throw their hands up in despair and look up at the heavens wondering why they were forced to have such a child, even if he’s so earnest, and by God, he really tries, so they love him anyway. However, as the fourth son of an earl who is pretty much tired of dealing with him, he’s been sent to Egypt to “assist the consul” in diplomatic matters so that he can prove himself useful. Somehow.
Daphne Pembroke is the widow of a rich (presumably fat) old man whom she married at 19 because he was a scholar and she wanted to explore her scholarly passions.
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The Switch by Lynsay Sands
One of the things I love about historical romances is that there are so many of them that I haven’t run out of new bestselling authors to try. The Switch by Lynsay Sands was an impulse choice. I don’t know why I’ve never tried a Sands book before, but this one was so thoroughly enjoyable that I ended up reading excerpts aloud to my husband who, of course, thought I was utterly mad. But he married me that way, so he can’t complain.
Charlie and twin sister Beth Westerly are in the process of escaping from their uncle—who plans to marry Elizabeth off to a widower who was generally believed to have mistreated his 3 former wives—when they’re discovered by the Earl of Radcliffe. Radcliffe offers to help them travel to London so they can give Beth a Season. If she can make a suitable match before their uncle finds out, then she will finally be free of his control.
At least, that’s the plan Charlie gives Radcliffe. It’s not exactly what they’d originally planned because, well, they didn’t exactly tell him the whole truth. In fact, Charlie is Charlotte Westerly, she’s disguised as a boy partly so their uncle won’t quickly find them, and she’s the one slated to marry the thrice widowed suitor.
Poor Radcliffe starts feeling a little … disturbed.
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Untouched by Anna Campbell
You see, it’s like this: remember how horrible the hero of Claiming the Courtesan was and how much he lacked any sense of gallantry or consideration in the first half of the novel? Well, that’s because Anna Campbell saved it all up for Matthew, the hero of Untouched. Matthew embodies pretty much every trait I typically love about Regency heroes—sometimes perhaps too much—and it’s no wonder that Untouched won the ARRC award for Favourite historical romance for 2008.
On her way to meet her cousin, Grace Paget is abducted and wakes up to find that she’s been mistaken for a prostitute and is expected to be a sex slave to Matthew, the Marquess of Sheene. Although Matthew seems like a kind man, he can’t help Grace because he himself has been held captive for 11 years by a greedy uncle who doesn’t wish to relinquish control of Matthew’s fortune. At first, Matthew suspects that Grace has been sent by his uncle, but as he realises that she’s truly an innocent victim in his uncle’s machinations, Matthew struggles to resist their growing attraction.
Grace begins to understand the horrors that Matthew endured at his uncle’s hands.
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The Taste of Innocence by Stephanie Laurens (Cynster Series, Book 14)
My first romance was a historical that I read about a decade ago and I blame Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility and Jane Eyre for piquing my interest. Whatever the reason, I got into historical romance well before I picked up a contemporary, and one of my early favourites was Stephanie Laurens. Her Cynsters were strong, confident, even arrogant in a hot way, but when they fell in love, they fell hard and it takes a strong woman to handle their passion and overbearing protectiveness. Now that she’s exhausted an entire generation of Cynster men, she’s moved onto the younger male relatives of the Cynster wives, who have been moulded into the Cynster image through years of exposure to their powerful in-laws.
The Taste of Innocence is Charlie Morwellan’s story (his half-sister Alathea married her childhood friend Gabriel Cynster in the fifth book, A Secret Love). After watching love ensnare his closest friends Gerrard Debbington and Dillon Caxton, Charlie decides to take the bull by the horns and choose a comfortable wife whom he can admire but not love. Like the Cynsters, the Morwellans have a history of marrying for love, and Charlie’s father allowed the emotion to control him to the point where the family estate and fortune was almost lost, and Charlie has learned from this mistake.
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