An uneven tone makes The Duke’s Guide to Fake Courtship slow going. Heavy subject matter – including abuse between servants, social snobbery, racism, attempted sexual assault, child murder and mental illness – clashes with light scenes of family, banter and flirtation. It’s much darker than the premise on its back cover suggests, but lacks the…
This is–in some ways–an odd book. The mood is light and humorous and yet the hero struggles with alcoholism, the heroine is on the run from her father who has been molesting her, a woman in the book has been raped and viciously murdered, and the villain responsible for that crime tries several times to…
Laura Frantz has a solid grasp of history, and her inspirational historical romances are always enjoyable, even when they’re not perfect. The Indigo Heiress is at the high end of her oeuvre even with a few minor stumbles along the way. Juliet Catesby is a Virginia heiress whose life ought to be all satin and…
A Carla Kelly heroine pledging to steer clear of the Navy is as doomed to failure as a couple planning to hook up just once to ‘get it out of our systems’, and Jerusha Langley, of A Naval Surgeon to Fight For, is no exception. After her spendthrift parents appropriate her meager dowry to buy…
Lucy Morris’ latest, Wedding Night with Her Viking Enemy, features Viking Grimr Eriksson and Sigrid Sigurdsson. Their families are sworn enemies, but the king has ordered a marriage alliance take place to unite them and end their fighting. Forced together, Grimr and Sigrid slowly come to realize the other is not what they seem. The…
Of all the dukes in all the world, why does it have to be him? Lady Alice Ancaster needs a husband, and fast, because her reckless brother is going to get himself killed, leaving the dukedom—and her future—in their repellent cousin’s clutches. The Duke of Blackwood has known Alice since childhood, and they’ve always had…
Terri Brisbin’s His Enemy’s Daughter is the third book in her Knights of Brittany trilogy, but it reads just fine on its own. Set in the time of William the Conqueror, this is a powerful love story with two people navigating the wreckage of their lives, bound by circumstances neither of them chose. Soren Fitzrobert…
This review originally appeared at Romantic Historical Reviews in 2012 I thoroughly enjoyed The Emperor’s Conspiracy – although it eventually missed out on getting a DIK rating, of which more later. The heroine, Charlotte Raven is an unusual one in that she was once a street urchin and has retained her links to London’s underworld,…
The prompt New Year, Who Dis? kicks off the 2025 TBR Challenge, so I chose to read a book by a new-to-me author. The Oak and the Ash is the third book in Annick Trent’s The Old Bridge Inn series, but there are no overarching plotlines so each of the books in the series stands…
Remember When is my favorite book in the Ravenswood series so far! It’s Clarissa’s story, Devlin’s mother (the Dowager Countess of Stratton from Remember Love) and it’s a sweet, second chance romance. It has an older couple who enjoy a summer romance at the beautiful Ravenswood Estate and I found it heartwarming and refreshing. Clarissa…
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