Contemporary Romance Review: Anna Grace’s LESSONS FROM THE RANCHER (Teacher Project #1)

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Lessons_From_RancherI should stop bemoaning the dearth of great category romance, but I shall probably continue to bemoan the dearth of great category romance, except when one of Grace’s drops into my Kindle. I am a happy clam and was especially happy when her latest series centres on a group of teachers and her heroine is an English teacher, as is yours truly! Also because she doesn’t only get the romance right, she gets teachers right! Okay, that’s two exclamation marks in one paragraph and the punctuation enthusiasm stops here. Let’s set this baby up for you with the publisher’s description of its goings-on:

A second chance…
With his first love?

Single dad and rancher Colter Wayne has moved mountains to bring teachers to Pronghorn, Oregon. So he’s floored when one of the new arrivals is the woman he almost married. To make matters worse, it looks like Willa Marshall still hasn’t forgiven him. But the kids need Willa, and she needs his help navigating small-town life. Can Colter and Willa learn to let go of the past and embrace the future…together? (more…)

Historical Mystery Review: KJ Charles’s DEATH IN THE SPIRES

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Death_In_the_SpiresThis is my fourth Charles novel and, while Charles herself makes a point to tell her readers this is not a mystery, I’ve been thinking of commonalities. Charles tends to centre on a character who is smart, dogged, and down-and-out, either in “disgrace with fortune” or in “men’s eyes”, or both. (At least of what I’ve read of her so far.) Charles focuses on characters who are Jane-Eyre-like in one capacity or another: “poor, obscure, plain, and little.” They may have one or more of Jane’s self-descriptions. Except they’re not “poor, obscure, plain, and little,” no more than Jane. Charles places them in precarious circumstances implicating class conflict, sometimes with a love interest, in this case, not quite.

A nod to the publisher’s blurb offers details:

The newspapers called us the Seven Wonders. We were a group of friends, that’s all, and then Toby died. Was killed. Murdered.

1905. A decade after the grisly murder of Oxford student Toby Feynsham, the case remains hauntingly unsolved. For Jeremy Kite, the crime not only stole his best friend, it destroyed his whole life. When an anonymous letter lands on his desk, accusing him of having killed Toby, Jem becomes obsessed with finally uncovering the truth.

Jem begins to track down the people who were there the night Toby died – a close circle of friends once known as the ‘Seven Wonders’ for their charm and talent – only to find them as tormented and broken as himself. All of them knew and loved Toby at Oxford. Could one of them really be his killer?

As Jem grows closer to uncovering what happened that night, his pursuer grows bolder, making increasingly terrifying attempts to silence him for good. Will exposing Toby’s killer put to rest the shadows that have darkened Jem’s life for so long? Or will the gruesome truth only put him in more danger?

Some secrets are better left buried… (more…)

Historical Romance Review: Felicia Grossman’s WAKE ME MOST WICKEDLY (Once Upon the East End #2)

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Wake_Me_Most_WickedlyI enjoyed Grossman’s first Once Upon the East End romance, Marry Me By Midnight. It was original and historically rich, with Jewish Regency characters, a fairy tale retelling, and an adorably innocent, inept hero, heiress heroine, and a twisting and playing with the fairy tale’s traditional male-female roles. And yet, despite this promise, Marry Me By Midnight was a muddle, a writer not in control of her material. Not so with Wake Me Most Wickedly and its virtuoso romance writing. The Jewish history, so important to Grossman, is better integrated, making for a smoother, flowing narrative; the romance, front and centre and moving forward to the HEA. The fairy tale retelling, Snow White in this case, a thing of wit and beauty. A romance writer in full control of her material: emotionally rich, clever, and heart-wrenchingly moving. To orient us, some help from the publisher’s blurb:

…this clever reimagining of Snow White, where a handsome businessman will do anything to win the heart of the only woman he cannot have. 

Solomon Weiss has little interest in power, but to repay the half-brother who raised him, he pursues money, influence, and now—a respectable wife. That is, until outcast Hannah Moses saves his life, and Sol finds himself helplessly drawn to the beautiful pawnshop owner.

Forever tainted by her parents’ crimes, Hannah sees only a villain when she looks in the mirror—no one a prince would choose. To survive, she must care for herself, even if that means illegally hunting down whatever her clients wish. So, no matter how fair or charming she finds Sol, he belongs to a world far too distant from her own. 

Only neither can resist their desires, and each meeting weakens Hannah’s resolve to stay away. But when Hannah discovers a shocking betrayal in Sol’s inner circle, can she convince him to trust her? Or will fear and doubt poison their love for good? (more…)

Historical Fiction Review: Kate Thompson’s THE LITTLE WARTIME LIBRARY

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Little_Wartime_LibraryWhen SuperWendy recs a book, I listen; she’s yet to steer me wrong and she certainly didn’t with Thompson’s Little Wartime Library. (I link to her review.) Thompson’s historical novel is a book lover’s dream, among many many other themes and stories. Based on a “true story,” it tells of two friends, chief librarian Clara Button and her assistant, Ruby Monroe. Their library is as unusual as it is necessary to their Bethnal Green neighbourhood: situated in an abandoned tube tunnel where hundreds of people made homeless by bombing, or frightened of being bombed, live underground. There’s a theatre, bunks, a school of sorts, a medical centre, even a ballet, and at the heart of what is, most importantly, a community, a library where people meet, chat, court, grieve, and read to escape, laugh, cry, and share books amidst war, death, destruction, fear, and trauma, all of which are rendered in chapter after chapter even as children grow, babies are born, books are read, enjoyed, and discussed, loves are met and made. Everyone carries pain and everyone carries hope. For those who enjoy the publisher’s rendering, here it is:

An uplifting and inspiring novel based on the true story of a librarian who created an underground shelter during World War II… 

London, 1944: Clara Button is no ordinary librarian. While war ravages the city above her, Clara has risked everything she holds dear to turn the Bethnal Green tube station into the country’s only underground library. Down here, a secret community thrives with thousands of bunk beds, a nursery, a café, and a theater—offering shelter, solace, and escape from the bombs that fall upon their city.

Along with her glamorous best friend and assistant Ruby Munroe, Clara ensures the library is the beating heart of life underground. But as the war drags on, the women’s determination to remain strong in the face of adversity is tested to the limits when it may come at the price of keeping those closest to them alive.  (more…)

Historical Romance Review: Bliss Bennet’s NOT QUITE A SCANDAL (Audacious Ladies of Audley #2)

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Not_Quite_ScandalBennet should be congratulated on her latest romance novel for tackling a Quaker heroine. The powerful shadow of Kinsale’s Flowers From the Storm Maddy is seminal to the genre and to attempt a Quaker heroine means submitting to comparison. In Bathsheba Honeychurch, Bennet creates someone quite unlike Maddy and yet, with a perspective and approach to the world, and the hero, that has something in common with Kinsale’s heroine. Before I discuss further, I’ll set us up with the author’s blurb:

An inheritance lost. A betrothal threatened. A scandal brewing…

Outspoken Quaker Bathsheba Honeychurch knows how difficult it is for an unmarried woman to successfully champion political change. Her solution? Wed best friend Ash Griffin as soon as he comes of age and begin remaking the world. But when Ash’s urbane, aloof cousin arrives with inconceivable news, Sheba’s future dreams are suddenly at risk…

The death of the Earl of Silliman reveals an appalling lie: it is not Noel Griffin, but his long-lost cousin Ash, who is the true heir to their grandfather’s title. Raised to place family above all, Noel accepts his grandmother’s bitter charge: find Ash, disentangle him from his religious community, and train him to take on the responsibilities and privileges of a title that Noel had been raised to believe was his. Noel certainly won’t allow a presumptuous, irritating Quakeress to thwart him in doing his duty—no matter how fascinating he finds her…

When scandal threatens both their reputations, can Sheba and Noel look beyond past dreams and imagine a new world—together? (more…)

Contemporary Romance Review: Kate Clayborn’s THE OTHER SIDE OF DISAPPEARING

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Other_Side_DisappearingWhen I set out to read The Other Side of Disappearing, I dreaded its women’s fiction vibe (I mean sisters) and thought, another one bites the dust (miss you, Sarah Morgan). But I’ve loved Clayborn’s romances and was willing to give her, and every traitorous 😉 romance author I love, one chance to see what she can do (kudos to Molly O’Keefe). I’m happy to report the women’s fic vibe waxxed and waned, but, in the end, the romance dominated. On the other hand, maybe we can agree that a “romance” with requisite HEA met can be a good novel. Isn’t that what good romances are, in the end? (This is MBRR’s 800th post; given the blog’s mission, it couldn’t be a more perfect choice.)

The Other Side of Disappearing has a hell of a lot of threads and the first chapters wobbled setting them up and keeping them together. As the story leaned toward romance and characters were freed from set-up constraints, Clayborn’s novel got better and better, especially as the focus narrowed to Jess Greene and Adam Hawkins’s romance. What’s this baby about? I’m going to let the publisher’s blurb do some work here because it’s complicated:

Hairstylist Jess Greene has spent the last decade raising her younger half-sister, Tegan—and keeping a shocking secret. Ever since their reckless mother ran off with a boyfriend she’d known only a few months, Jess has been aware that he’s the same accomplished con man who was the subject of a wildly popular podcast, The Last Con of Lynton Baltimore.

Now thirty-one, Jess didn’t bargain on Tegan eventually piecing together the connection for herself. But Tegan plans to do exactly what Jess has always feared—leave their safe, stable home to search for their mother—and she’ll be accompanied by the prying podcast host and her watchful, handsome producer, Adam Hawkins. Unwilling to let the sister she’s spent so much of her life protecting go it alone, Jess reluctantly joins them.

Together, the four make their way across the country, unraveling the mystery of where the couple disappeared to and why. But soon Jess is discovering other things too. Like a renewed sense of vulnerability and curiosity, and a willingness to expand beyond the walls she’s so carefully built. And in Adam, she finds an unexpected connection she didn’t even know was missing, if only she can let go and let him in . . .

Hmm, yes, this sums it up and points to Clayborn’s strengths: characterization, dialogue, characters’ inner monologues, and her greatest strength, writing eloquently about emotional fragility, especially in stoics like Adam and vaults like Jess.  (more…)

Historical Romance-Mystery Review: Manda Collins’s A GOVERNESS’S GUIDE TO PASSION AND PERIL (Lady’s Guide #4)

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Governess_Guide_Passion_PerilIt’s lovely to be in Collins’s imagined world where characters are warm and fuzzy, society a place where good triumphs over evil and everything recounted with a light, humorous, loving touch. I wrote this about Lady’s Guide #3, A Spinster’s Guide to Danger and Dukes, and I say it again about Passion and Peril.

In Passion and Peril, we’re introduced to eponymous governess, fallen-on-hard-times Jane Halliwell and long-ago acquaintance and somewhat friend, Lord Adrian Fielding (brother to the Duke of Langham, Danger and Dukes‘s hero). When the romance opens, Jane is in her third year as governess to Margaret, Viscount and Lady’s Gilford’s daughter. Though Jane is their social equal, she is a genteel, but poor semi-servant to a man who was her father’s colleague in the Foreign Office. (Because her father committed suicide after gambling the family fortune, Jane and her mother were left homeless and seemingly friendless.)

Though friends like Poppy, now the Duke of Langham’s wife, would offer her a home, Jane wished to earn her way in the world. She lives in semi-genteel limbo without the possibility of her own home and family…except for the presence, at the Viscount’s house party of domestic and foreign diplomatic dignitaries, of Lord Adrian Fielding, a friend of long acquaintance and Jane’s teen-age crush. When Jane lost her father, fortune, and position, and her mother left for Scotland to live with a friend, she lost contact with many from her former life. In the midst of the house-party, while Jane and Adrian renew their acquaintance and give hesitant nods to a mutual attraction, Viscount Gilford is murdered in his study. (more…)

Historical Mystery Review: Deanna Raybourn’s A GRAVE ROBBERY (Veronica Speedwell #9)

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Grave_RobberyI adore this series and its latest appearance is one of the most pleasurable volumes yet. Though I saw the who and why dunnit pages ahead of the final revelations, my goodness, Veronica and Stoker are at the top of my lovability scale. Moreover, the historical context, eccentric secondary characters, animals, one dastardly golden lion tamarin (in love with Stoker, aren’t we all?) and many doggos, settings, absolutely marvellous, as is Raybourn’s witty, elegant prose.

In A Grave Robbery, Veronica and Stoker are as domestically blissful as they’re capable of. The cozy scenes they share as pleasurable as their latest adventure…and their love for each other, finally so open, fulfilled, and fulfilling, I cheered.

But to the mystery: ensconced in their employer’s, Lord Rosemorran’s, “Belvedere” doing the professional work of taxidermy and lepidoptery while cataloguing, preserving, and preparing Lord Rosemorran’s significant collections for display in his planned museum, Veronica and Stoker are confronted with his latest acquisition, an “Anatomical Venus.” These anatomically correct wax figures were used for paedagogical purposes and are now, in 1889 Victorian London, collected and displayed for public gawping (made famous by Madame Tussaud’s). Veronica and Stoker are handed a “Sleeping Beauty” of an Anatomical Venus, only to discover, upon further investigation, the wax figure hides a perfectly preserved “Jane Doe” of a servant girl. Veronica and Stoker are soon on the hunt for her identity and the circumstances of her death. (more…)

Historical Mystery Review: Jennifer Ashley’s SPECULATIONS IN SIN (Below Stairs Mystery #7)

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Speculations_In_SinI’m always content to see another Below Stairs Victorian mystery from Ashley: the main character, master-cook Kat Holloway, and her band of merry assistant cooks and butler, Mr. Davis, along with friends in high and low places, and protector and love-interest, police-agent Daniel McAdam, are a wonderful group to spend reading time with.

Speculations In Sin sees Kat and company solving a murder that hits too close to home not to have their emotions in turmoil. Grace, Kat’s daughter from a former abusive marriage, is now happily, comfortably, and safely living with her best friend Joanna and husband Sam Millburn and their happy brood. Sam makes a modest living as a bank clerk…but not all is well in the Millburns’ and Kat’s frugal paradise. Daalman’s Bank is seeing funds siphoned, a murder in one of their storerooms, and Sam arrested on both counts, an innocent man, Grace’s and Kat’s rock, as well as his family’s. With Ashley’s well-researched awareness of the precariousness of modest people’s lives in 1883 Victorian London, this spells disaster. (more…)

Interlude with BLACK NARCISSUS…

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I’m a Backlisted (“giving new life to old books”) podcast fan, though every time I read one of their recommended, “resurrected” reads, I have a “do not like” to “meh” reaction. This is what happened with Black Narcissus, though it wasn’t Godden’s novel that was recommended. Backlisted did a great talk on Michael Powell’s 1986 biography (of the writing/directing team of Powell and Pressburger who filmed Godden’s novel. I should have known better given how much I disliked The Red Shoes.) But a reader’s rabbit-hole is a reader’s rabbit-hole and it will take a reader where it will. Off I went to read Godden’s novel and watch The Archers’s film.

I’ve had a copy of Godden’s Black Narcissus (pub. 1939; film, 1947) knocking around for a few years (who can resist the beauty of a Virago cover after all?) because I enjoyed her coming-of-age novel, The Greengage Summer. (The film? Easily accessible on a streaming service.) I was ambitiously going to read and watch and compare. What I wasn’t counting on was how unpleasurable the experience would be with both texts, though the film edges out the novel in cinematography and the novel, in character development. Both fail on the Indian characters’ depiction. (more…)