As a big fan of May McGoldrick’s historical romances, I’m sad to say that Highland Jewel was a bit of a disappointment. While the first book in the Royal Highlander series, Highland Crown, balanced romance and action perfectly, Highland Jewel loses its way, leaning heavily upon action sequences, and giving us a hero who moralizes for…
While this final book in Renee Ann Miller’s Infamous Lords series starts out with a strong concept, poor plot work and a childish heroine quickly ruined it. The relationship between the hero and his siblings provide the story’s sole spot of charm in Never Kiss a Notorious Marquess. Posing as a widow, budding journalist Caroline…
Death, passion and good sleuthing combine in Death of a New American, the second instalment in Mariah Fredericks’ Jane Prescott series. It’s 1912, just after the sinking of the Titanic, and the New York-based Benchley family is trying to move on with life as best they can. Mild, plain, older daughter Louise is set to…
I don’t usually gravitate toward historical mysteries, not because that I dislike them exactly, but the few I’ve read have left me feeling vaguely unsatisfied. Still, when I first heard about Victoria Thompson’s Counterfeit Lady series with its con artist heroine, I decided to give it a try. Fortunately, book one (City of Lies) lived…
An AAR Top 100 Romance originally published on March 4, 2003 Connie Brockway is a goddess. Talk about your buried treasures; while many people are familiar with her more recent historicals – The Bridal Season and Bridal Favors – her unique skill and imagination most shine through for me in some of her earlier stories….
Connie Brockway’s My Dearest Enemy combines two of my favourite things – an enemies-to-lovers romance and a story in which letters play an important part (I do love an epistolary novel!). It’s a gloriously romantic, character-driven story set at the end of the 19th century, in which our hero – a famous explorer – and heroine…
I truly enjoy historical novels where I’m not only entertained by a well-written story, but I also learn about a part of history of which I had no prior knowledge. So I really appreciated seeing a bibliography at the end of three of the stories in this anthology – a welcome first, because I’m interested…
Not by Sight by Kate Breslin is the story of WWI suffragette Grace Mabry and agent for the crown Jack Benningham. Grace crashes a high society masquerade ball as Pandora and from her box she withdraws white feathers to give to the rich young men who are dancing while her brother fights in the trenches….
I fully admit – I’m not the biggest fan of mystery novels. When I saw that Murder on the Last Frontier was set in Alaska, I was curious. When I saw the amateur detective was a woman in 1919, I decided to give it a shot. When I finally read the blurb for the book,…
If Courtney Milan’s last book – The Countess Conspiracy – was a love letter to the forgotten women of science, those women who were ridiculed and derided because they dared to encroach upon the male preserve of scientific investigation and discovery, then The Suffragette Scandal is by way of being her panegyric to those women…