Shelley Bradley’s His Rebel Bride has one of my least favorite plotlines: the hero uses his position of power to to force the unwilling heroine to marry him. Despite some anachronisms, the book was mostly a pretty good read, which enabled me to overcome my prejudices; and at one point my grade rose to a…
My Lord Savage wasn’t quite what I expected when I picked up the book. The cover touts it as a “Native American Romance,” which suggests either a book set in the 1880s west with a stoic, proud, chief hero – or a book set in Regency England featuring the half-breed offspring of a duke. My…
Ana Seymour is a new author for me. I’d seen her name on the spine of numerous Harlequin Historicals, but I’d never read anything she’d written so I was glad to have the opportunity to try her out. Unfortunately, I was not overly impressed by The Black Swan, her debut book for Jove. This was…
The cover blurb for The Border Hostage by Virginia Henley calls it “exuberantly written.” Exuberant is almost an understatement. Henley flings you right into the story with a torrid sex scene between two horses, told from the stallion’s point of view. Heath Kennedy is the half-Gypsy bastard of a powerful Scottish laird and the brother…
Treachery and secrets abound in this story about an English spinster and the man who really doesn’t want her in his life because he already has enough on his plate. Fate, however, has something else in mind for these two in Border Lord. Duncan Maxwell’s life is turned upside down by two events: his salt…
This book had a myriad of problems. Would you want to spend your life with someone who lied to you from the moment you met? This is the heroine with whom the reader is asked to identify. Combine her with a ghost, a curse/prophecy, an orphan child, a mysterious warrior, two brothers who wanna be…
His Stolen Bride is the second in Zebra/Ballad’s Brothers In Arms mini-series. Drake Thornton, who was introduced in the first book, and Averyl Campbell, daughter of the Chieftain of the Clan Campbell, are the protagonists. The book’s prologue backtracks enough that it will stand independently from the other books in the series. Drake has been…
The story of Forever, My Lady opens with a border raid in Scotland’s East March and the murder of the warden while his wife is giving birth upstairs. Jump ahead a few years: a new warden, Sir Bryan Hepburn, has come to the East March to look into the mysterious disappearance of yet another warden,…
What do you do when a romance has almost every element you need, but one? You gnash your teeth and hope for more in the next one. Border Storm takes up the story of the Scottish Borders at the end of the 1500’s. It follows the author’s earlier Border Fire. Laurie Halliott is the daughter…
This is one of the most intense romances I’ve read in a while. From the opening scene to the final pages I was glued to this book. I had one of those nights where you keep reading no matter how late it’s getting. You keep looking at the clock thinking, “If I turn off the…