When I first heard the title The Ruthless Charmer, I envisioned an amusing regency-set historical about a witty hero determined to use his charisma selfishly. To put it mildly, this is not the case for this book. Far from being a diverting, roguish Cary Grand-like hero, the title character of Julia London’s new book is…
The Passion is aptly titled. The hero and heroine of this book share a great deal of passion for each other, and get to indulge that passion in creative ways on many and various occasions. Unfortunately, the end result is more like an erotic Hallmark card than a believable romance. Lady Aurora Demming first meets…
Like Blythe and Linda (see Pandora’s Box), I enjoyed Rules of Engagement by Christina Dodd. A well-written, amusing, and sensual romance, it makes for fun reading, though its secondary suspense plot is irrelevant and extraneous. Queen Victoria has demanded that the Earl of Kerrich demonstrate that he is a respectable family man. So he hires…
Naughty scenes, bawdy dialogue, and endnotes – yes, it’s the latest Susan Johnson book. I’ve enjoyed a couple of her books before, when the characters have been engaging, and the plot has been fun. Too bad this was not one of those books. Isabella Leslie has just lost her grandfather, and her greedy uncle plots…
I don’t know how many female entrepreneurs there were in medieval England, but I bet they were smarter than Linet de Montfort, the wool merchant heroine of My Champion by Glynnis Campbell. The first thing Linet does is publicly humiliate an evil Spanish pirate. Duncan de Ware, a nobleman, sees the incident and instantly vows…
At first, all of the lead characters in The Chance are so insecure that it’s like traveling back to Regency High. Happily, the book quickly improves from its shaky beginning to become an interesting character study. Though never very dramatic, The Chance gives insight into some unusual people. Rafe Dalton is a type familiar in…
This was not the worst book I have ever read, but it’s in contention for the most exasperating. There’s a lot of promise here, including a terrific backstory and acceptable prose, but it’s consistently undercut by illogic, anachronisms, and head-scratching inconsistencies. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a decently-written book shoot itself in the foot…
Margaret Esterly is both widowed and impoverished the night her husband’s London house-cum-bookshop burns down. The only things left to her are three volumes of erotic literature called The Journals of Augustin X. When she discovers two years later that her husband had several potential buyers lined up before he died, she thinks she has…
I must admit that I began reading A Thing of Beauty with a bit of a same-old, same-old feeling. Bluestocking and amateur chemist Belinda Croft is suffering through her cousin Sissy’s society debut when a mysterious man mistakes her for the lover he’s jilting and gives her a goodbye kiss that sets her running. At…
At a glittering ton event, the paths of a man and a woman cross. They are of different classes, but they share a significant moment together in the moonlight. If this sounds familiar to you, you’ve probably read Lisa Kleypas’s Where Dreams Begin. Karen Ranney’s After the Kiss begins exactly this way too, and although…
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