A Retro Review originally published June 20, 1999 To Tempt a Rogue concludes the trilogy telling the story of the Delaney brothers. Your tolerance for this book will depend on whether you can put up with roguish and distrustful heroes, silly dialogue tags, big misunderstandings, and plots that rely on coincidences. If you used an…
During the unstable Period of the Northern and Southern Dynasties in China (484 AD by the Western calendar), Hua Mulan’s much-awaited duel with her family’s rival is called off because both Mulan and her opponent, Yuan Kai, have been called up to a different fight. The emperor anticipates an invasion by the nomadic steppe people…
History has shown time and again that women have adopted male personae to answer a deep-rooted calling to be doctors, soldiers, priests, and other such jobs strictly restricted to men. Women were meant for house and hearth and babies, not to be striding out into the world dealing with problems and strangers. The heroine of…
How about a fairy tale where the heroine is the fairy godmother and the prince needs a beautiful gown? Prince Sebastian of Belgium is hiding a secret: he loves wearing gowns, and dreams of donning something more bold and glamorous than his mother’s old castoffs. When he sees a ballgown by seamstress Frances, he immediately…
Have you ever really wanted to like something, only to have an onslaught of evidence slowly chip away at your feelings until you have to accept that you can’t like it? That’s how I felt with Governess Gone Rogue. Amanda Leighton and Jamie St. Clair, the Earl of Kenyon, are both desperate. Amanda is a…
Katharine Ashe hits only high notes in this memorable fourth book in the Devil’s Duke series. The Prince elevates two previously minor secondary characters – and my friends, the pairing is brilliant. He’s an exiled prince of a fictional Mediterranean realm, hidden away in Scotland and biding his time until he can return home; she’s…
The Historicals prompt in the TBR Challenge is my Busman’s Holiday, but it can nonetheless be quite difficult to choose a book from the many still sitting unread on my Kindle. In the end, I decided to go for something I was pretty certain would be a winner and picked up Emily Larkin’s My Lady…
Okay – let’s just keep this real. I don’t really believe the CIA is sending super hot retired, elite Special Forces soldiers to assassinate corrupt, sadistic, crazy rich bad guys or that said bad guys employ cross-dressing assassins to keep them alive. Or that these deadly assassins are so paralyzed by lust that they get…
Sally Kent’s brother Richard lets the family tradition down when instead of joining the Navy, he escapes to the clergy. So it’s Sally, who’s got the family saltwater blood, who dons midshipman’s blues and sets sail on the Audacious just before Trafalgar. She finds herself under the supervision of Lieutenant David Colyear, an outstanding officer…
Amazingly, we’ve reached the eleventh of Elizabeth Hoyt’s Maiden Lane books, and the author shows no sign of running out of steam! Duke of Pleasure is another strong addition to the series, a beautifully-written, well-paced story that achieves just the right balance between romance and action; and which is, in part, a charming Cinderella-type story…