With art by Nikki Smith & Sarah Winifred Serle It’s not every day that I get to review a romance-related manga at AAR, so I was delighted to read the spicy Ruined, the story of a woman whose social status has been ruined by rumors – and a man who needs someone with cash enough…
Lauri Robinson’s An Unlikely Match for the Governess is a standalone title featuring Aislinn Blaydon, the eponymous governess, and Luke Carlisle, brother to Aislinn’s former employer. Having been dismissed from her post as governess to the daughters of the recently deceased Duke and Duchess of Havenbrook, Aislinn has nowhere to go and no one to turn…
Courtney Milan is such a good storyteller and The Marquis Who Mustn’t is another winner from this author. I was immediately caught up in this story which features a mystery, a con scheme, and a fake engagement along with a delightful cast of family and friends. Naomi Kwan grew up in Wedgeford (the series is set in…
Narrated by Martyn Swain This second installment of The Doomsday Books takes place thirteen years after the events in the excellent predecessor, The Secret Lives of Country Gentleman. It can be read as a standalone, but it’s very helpful to know Luke Doomsday’s backstory, plus it’s a great book. Rufus D’Aumesty has finally been named…
Virginia Heath concludes her series about the Meriwell Sisters – all three destitute thanks to their gambling father, all three looking for husbands – with a bit of a thud in Never Wager with a Wallflower. While I liked the other sister-heroines, Venus is a bit of a trial, and she never fully redeems herself…
Narrated by Robin Miles I have a confession. Shanna is on my keeper shelf. First published in 1977, it was one of those novels I cut my romance-reading teeth on, before I knew much of anything about anything. It’s, obviously, “old skool” romance. But, as these books go, it has much less of the more…
Middle books in trilogies can often be disappointing, seeming to tread water between the set up in book one, and the finale in book three, but thankfully, Twisted Tome (Devastating Magic book two) is not one of those books! Vanora Lawless has followed up their fantastic début, Imperfect Illusions, with another fast-paced, compelling and high-stakes…
Catherine Tinley’s Miss Rose and the Vexing Viscount is the first in her Triplet Orphans series It’s a fun opposites-attract, bookworm heroine story with a little bit of a mystery mixed in. The story opens with a prologue telling the tale of the Lennox sisters’ mother as she flees someone before she realizes she’s going into labor and…
Narrated by Mary Jane Wells I enjoyed last year’s Knockout, the third book in the Hell’s Belles series (and I have Bombshell, book one on my TBL). That they are all narrated by Mary Jane Wells, a favourite narrator of historical romance, only made me more keen. Knockout was even better than Heartbreaker and I…
The first in a brand-new series from Sara Bennett, Dreaming of a Duke like You is heavy on the showing instead of the telling, which turns the story into a mediocre slog. There’s lots of background infodumping in the first few chapters that feel overdone and laborious, together with an emotionally constipated hero and a…
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