KJ Charles revisits Regency England in The Gentle Art of Fortune Hunting, a frothy, wonderfully trope-y, Heyer-esque romp that, while light-hearted, is underpinned by the author’s customary insight into the workings of the society of the day and a very sharp-eyed look at the importance of security and happiness and what people do to obtain…
I loved everything about Mimi Matthew’s Gentleman Jim – the set-up, the principal characters, the pacing and tension, the swoony, second chance romance (le sigh) – and I was prepared to give it a DIK. But then I read the epilogue. Oh dear. Ms. Matthews makes casual reference to the happy ever after of a…
The Same Place is book two in Gregory Ashe’s The Lamb and the Lion series about a Utah-based wildlife vet and a con man – an odd couple if ever there was one – who, in The Same Breath, teamed up to solve a murder. Like its predecessor, this book is a perfectly balanced combination of…
Mimi Matthews’ Gentleman Jim reminds one of a mid-Regency The Count of Monte Cristo, featuring as it does a poor sailor’s son who assumes a fresh identity and seeks romance with the woman he’s always loved after being unjustly accused of a crime. It’s a fairly engrossing ripper of a tale, and Matthews, as always,…
I brought up Marion Chesney on a recent blog post about some of authors of the classic ‘traditional regency’ romances, and I was surprised that we only had reviews of two of her books in our database (one under Chesney, and one under M.C. Beaton, which is the name her estate seems to be using…
In her biography, Julia Bennet says she writes historical romance with passion, intrigue, dark humor and the occasional animal sidekick. She does! The Ruin of Evangeline Jones has passion and intrigue in spades. Not so much the humor, but we do get a memorable cat. I like all of these things, and I hoped to…
Since romances set with cults as backgrounds are among my least favorite books to read (that and serial killer stories rank in my top two of Nope!), there are few authors whose books I would even consider with that type of plotline. Lucky for Ainslie Paton, she’s delivered enough compelling and unique romances that when…
There’s a captivating sense of gothic tension filling Finding Lady Enderly, a romance that mixes suspense, a rags-to-riches Cinderella story, elements of faith and class division all in one fascinating wrapper. Raina Bretton is miserably poor working as a rag picker in London’s East End. She’s on her nightly rounds when a man approaches her…
Motion is part one of Penny Reid’s new series Laws of Physics and it is classic Penny Reid – smart, funny, and romantic with a little bit of mystery thrown in. Mona Da Vinci is a nineteen-year-old physics genius enjoying her structured life – meditation, yoga, journaling, dental checkups – all while interviewing to attend…
Penny Reid’s ongoing series about sexy physicists and the love they make continues apace with this very charming but also frustrating (hey, the author warned us it would be!) story about a physicist who never gets to have fun and the musician friend who tries to unwind her. Mona is a totally rational, completely well-ordered…