The Wild Rose of Kilgannon is part two of a set of novels centered around the 1715 Jacobite uprising. It’s important to know that it is not just a sequel; it’s a continuation of the same story. So if you are interested in reading it, you absolutely must start with the first book for this…
Romance novels, by their very nature, are prone to repetition. There are certain conventions, like the HEA ending, the London Season, and the arranged marriage, that you see again and again. It’s a joy to find a novel that uses these conventions in a fresh and interesting way. Regrettably, Highland Spirits is not one of…
The Least Likely Bride is the third in Jane Feather’s trilogy about three seventeenth-century English friends who, as girls, make a pact that they will never marry. (The second, The Accidental Bride, is a Desert Island Keeper.) This wonderfully enjoyable romance tells the story of the youngest of the three, bookish Olivia Granville, who wants…
The Baron is an ambitious project, based on an idea that’s so good I don’t know why no one ever thought of it before. Tré Devaux is the Norman baron of Brayeton. The avaricious King John seizes his lands on a pretext because he (rightly) doubts Tré’s loyalty. The King appoints Tré to the lesser…
The Pygmalion myth gave George Bernard Shaw the idea for his play Pygmalion which was turned into the wonderful musical My Fair Lady. Judith Ivory takes this story and gives it a twist, (and a lot more romance than grumpy old GBS did). Edwina Bollash, linguistics expert and tutor of gauche young ladies in the…
I love nothing more than what people call a “hidden treasure” – a book, movie, singer, actor, what have you, that not many people know about but that I cherish. This author’s Gather the Stars, is one such book for me – one of those perfect, tortured love stories that makes me cheer at the…
I have a fascination of books with cross-dressing themes that rivals my fascination with virgin heroes. I’ve also heard many, many good things about Lynsay Sands. So I was pretty excited and looking forward to a rollicking good read with The Switch. What I got instead was a poorly written book with a bad case…
I often think that a good writer can take any plot and make a good story of it. Maybe sometimes. Margery Harkness-Casares is a good writer, meaning that her narrative voice is both professional and compelling. But no one, and I mean no one could have succeeded with this preposterous plot. In Song of Innocence…
Susan Johnson’s latest historical is the sequel to Outlaw, a book I haven’t read. On page one of To Please a Lady, I was plunged into plots, intrigues, feuds, and the relationship between two lovers, Robbie Carre and Roxane Forrester, all of which were initiated in that earlier book. This could have been a bewildering…
This is one of those uneven books that is at times quite interesting, but suffers from the proverbial sagging middle. It starts well and ends well, but in between there are some boring parts that I had to force myself to get through. The result is a very average read. Gavan St. Aldan is the…
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