Our reviewer Em gave an A- to Lucy Morris’s previous Viking book, The Viking Chief’s Marriage Alliance. I found it closer to a B, but it was still an enjoyable book. I hoped I’d find something here that was at least as good, but I emphatically didn’t. Aimée Évreux, heiress to the Évreux estate, is…
Julia Justiss concludes her Heirs in Waiting trilogy with The Explorer Baroness, a sweet tale about an independent importer and the travel-hungry baron-to-be who comes to love her. The way Justiss intermarries two different cultures here is lovely, but I did groan at some very hoary old clichés that reared their ugly heads. Gregory Lattimar,…
The Duchess Hunt is the second in Lorraine Heath’s Once Upon a Dukedom series, and it features Hugh Brinsley-Norton, the Duke of Kingsland, and Penelope Pettypeace, his secretary. Penelope has worked for King for eight years and has been in love with him for most of it. He, however, is just beginning to realize his…
My love of Carla Kelly Christmas novellas means of course I was going to give this anthology a try. While her novella is solid, it isn’t her best, and the other stories are so lackluster that A Victorian Family Christmas is simply a disappointment. A Father for Christmas by Carla Kelly Grade: B …
A Yuletide Kiss features three interwoven stories about a group of travelers who find themselves stranded at a rural inn at Christmastime by an unexpected winter storm, and the romances that follow their forced proximity. When We Finally Kiss Good Night by Sabrina Jeffries Grade: B+ …
The Earl Who Sees Her Beauty is a well-researched but sometimes groan-worthy book. It’s not bad at all, and the relationship between the hero and heroine is well done, but some plot details and pacing issues kept this at a B level for me. Prudence Carstairs was scarred in an accident as a child and…
The Matchmaker’s Lonely Heart has a charming hero and good historical research on its side, but a flibbertigibbet heroine makes it a difficult book to fully enjoy. In fact, she’s so childish that she becomes something of a distraction, with only her eleventh hour bravery making her tolerable. Amelie Hampton walks in a cloud of…
Virginia Heath has done it again. I could end my review of the delightful How Not to Chaperon a Lady there, but I won’t. Just know that it absolutely suffices for me to say that much and let you read the whole book by yourself. Go read it, you’ll be doing yourself quite the favor,…
Set in nineteenth-century Wales, Kate Bateman’s A Reckless Match is an entertaining frenemies-to-lovers romance between scions of two noble families who have been enemies for so many hundreds of years that no-one now alive can remember the reason for that enmity. The humour and effortless banter between her leads are things I’ve always appreciated about…
Not Even For a Duke is a story about a widow determined not to be taken in by love again, only to unexpectedly meet her match. Aurora Sherborne has everything she needs, and as the Dowager Countess of Radcliff, she is in control of her destiny. Her first marriage was a living hell, and Aurora…