There must be something romantic about hopeless endeavors – how else can you explain the popularity of movies like Titanic, where you know going in that the boat’s going to sink? Or the multitude of books set during the Scottish rebellion of 1745-6, where you know before you crack the book open that the English…
Danelle Harmon’s newest, The Defiant One, is a lot of fun. I sat down with it on a Saturday afternoon and finished it on the same day. It’s a delightful romantic comedy with compelling characters and a crazy “mad scientist” plot. Believable? It’s about as believable as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde or Frankenstein’s Monster…
Readers who are familiar with The Scarlet Pimpernel will undoubtedly recognize the main elements in The Black Knave: A seemingly foppish, ineffectual young nobleman fools everyone around him, including his wife, into thinking he could never be the man responsible for aiding in the escape of persons threatened with execution by a merciless authority. Only…
I was prepared to dislike this book. I am very anti-hype, and this book had major, major hype built right in, so it was quite a shock to me when it eventually ended on my TBR pile. It shocked me even more when I liked it enough to voluntarily do a review of it. Basically…
Maybe it was the build-up. I know all of Jo Beverley’s fans have been breathlessly waiting for Rothgar. I can’t think of another book in the last few years whose arrival has been so eagerly anticipated. But while I enjoyed many aspects of Devilish, I’ve got to confess that it left me just a little…
This month we are reading Devilish, the much-awaited Rothgar book (on sale April 10th) from Jo Beverley. This is the fifth book in the Malloren series and gives us the love story of the Marquess of Rothgar (Beowulf Malloren) and Diana, Countess of Arrandale. Rothgar was first introduced in My Lady Notorious and has played…
Practice to Deceive This is the first book in the fantastic Patricia Veryan series, the Golden Chronicles, and early on shows all the promise that make every novel in this six-book series a Desert Island Keeper for me. I read it in a matter of hours when I first bought it and now I re-read…
The moral of this story is: be careful what you wish for. In my case, I wished for a great book to read, and I found it! This book was so much fun, even with some plausibilty problems that weren’t really noticed until after the book was finished. I laughed throughout and even shed a…
Historical romances often seem to exist in a vacuum. Generally the writer seldom bothers with the social attitudes and problems of the society at large. After a reader has finished an historical novel, she does know a bit about the manners and mores of the ton, but what of the world outside that little closed-in…
Have you ever read a book and been enthralled? I mean wrapped up to the point where you are lock-yourself-in-the-room-stay-up-all-night-I’ve-got-to-find-everything-this-woman-has-ever-written enthralled? A couple of years ago I picked up Heartless, the first book I had ever read by Mary Balogh and went into the lost-in-a book zone. I went to work the next day, spaced…
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