I love category romance and I yearn to read it with the same enthusiasm I used to. But category romance has been a desert, at least to this reader, these past few years and I’ve DNF-ed, disappointed, more often than make my desultory way through one “meh” after another. Fact is some of the best romances I’ve read have been category romances: Jessica Hart’s Promoted: to Wife and Mother, Kathleen Creigton’s One Christmas Knight, Karina Bliss’s A Prior Engagement, Molly O’Keefe’s Unexpected Family, and my beloved Betty’s Tulips for Augusta, to name a few. And let’s not forget the great HPs: classic Lynne Graham’s The Greek’s Chosen Wife; more recent, Dani Collins’s Cinderella’s Royal Seduction. For the most part, though, many of my favourite category authors have moved on from category, from romance itself (sobs). These days, my expectations, therefore, are low: at best, I hope for a passably written, pleasant read…but what I got from Teri Wilson’s Her Man of Honor is a GREAT one, hearkening back to the wonderful writing, pacing, characterization, sheer fun and yet depth of great category romance. The chef’s kiss of the perfect length to the genre. Truth be told, I wasn’t keen on Wilson’s premise: I’d surfeited with the weakness of Chin’s friends-to-lovers trope-handling and dislike any wedding-industry-set novel, Hallmark movie, etc. If tulle is involved, I won’t read it (though I’d rec Mia Sosa’s Worst Best Man). But from the first page, Wilson’s romance captured me. To set us up, the publisher’s blurbish details:
When did her longtime best friend become the perfect groom?
Everly England is a bridal-advice columnist. A guru. And unfortunately, a jilted bride! Her ruined reputation and wedding only get more disastrous when her bestie Henry Aston’s sympathetic kiss ignites a desire she never knew possible. Henry knows the glamorous city girl is terrified romance will ruin their friendship. But this stand-in groom plans to win her “I do” after all!
(more…)
I always enjoyed Thomas’s romances, back when she was writing them, but I think she found her “true” genre with the Lady Sherlock mystery series. The latest, A Tempest At Sea, maintains what the previous six proved: Thomas can write clever, complex mystery plots while keeping her ethically-minded, sympathetic protagonists front and centre. Lady Charlotte features, but A Tempest At Sea is an ensemble cast (to the series’s betterment) one in which we get to be with Charlotte’s lover, Lord Ingram, on a greater page count than Charlotte. Given how adorable “Ash,” Lord Ingram, is, the loss is bearable, though I would have liked to see more of Charlotte and even more of Charlotte and Ash together. On the other hand, A Tempest At Sea is a closed-“room”, rather closed-“ship” mystery and, as a Christie-fan, cause for celebration and enjoyment, as Ash notes, ” ‘The isolation of shipboard society heightens the sense of danger.’ “ To orient us, the publisher’s blurb:
“Murder and mayhem,” many reviewers note about Cosimano’s Finlay Donovan series… And I certainly got gobs of it listening to book #3. There are readers who love a plot-driven narrative and readers who don’t and what I again learned was I’m not the lover of the plot-driven narrative…BUT I absolutely loved this narrator and would listen to her read a grocery list. More of why later. For now, here’s the convoluted Finlay Donovan plot from the, thank the reading gods, publisher, because I certainly couldn’t unravel it:
My sole regret in listening to Exiles‘ twelve hours is that I neglected to read The Dry and Force Of Nature, both still nestled in my TBR. Gah, this was good, though I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why for the first oh ten or so hours. As I listened to the final two, it hit me: I had experienced one of the most elaborate, meandering premises I’d ever read, taken in, bamboozled, yet the whole time I was smugly making assumptions about who, what, where, and why. Having come to the end, I have to decide: did I just read something I can throw the “contrived” criticism at, or something utterly clever, brilliant, and compelling? For starters, let’s offer the publisher’s blurb to get some narrative details out of the way: 
Meh, I wish I could have loved this. Lennox writes good banter, employs light, wry humour, usually has a wonderfully atmospheric setting and characters who are fundamentally good, but not flat. Certainly Misty has those elements, but there was a problem in the execution that, sadly, coming in the second half, left yours truly with reader-disappointment. First, to the back-cover blurb:
Reading my umpteenth Kearsley novel, I noticed something in her narrative I hadn’t beforehand: a common emotional trajectory that may be characterized as melancholy mood to joyful conclusion. Because they are the most historical of historical romances, their melancholy comes from Kearsley’s initial presentation of her characters as trapped by history. But she builds their strength, intelligence, and virtue and proves to us how these qualities can sometimes defeat history’s choke-hold. She writes about ordinary people (when considered through the lens of big-name, big-battle, big-power sweep) but extraordinary in how they wrest happiness out of what appear to be insurmountable obstacles determined by history and its cruel, expedient masters, men of power over honour. At their centre are women and child characters who are victimized but not victims, exercise agency within constricting circumstances and yet are often trapped by forces beyond their capacity to fight back. In the end, characters escape to a happy life by circumventing evil using wiles without losing their essential goodness. The Vanished Days‘ Lily Aitcheson and her helpers are such. Her story is told in a dual-timeline alternating between childhood/youth and the novel’s “present-day”, the early 1700’s. Her story is narrated by one Adam Williamson, who is tasked to investigate Lily’s claim for compensation as the widow of a man who perished in Scotland’s 1698-Darien-colony-bound fleet. The blurb fills in historical detail further: 
I wanted to read, not necessarily Awakening His Shy Cinderella, but Sophie Pembroke because 
Caro Carson is a new-to-me romance author and her For This Christmas Only, though flawed, is engaging, well-written, and may have given me that category kick I’ve sought this summer. She reminded me of the gentle, funny, emotionally-savvy Marion Lennox, who also tells about the road to love of two people who are sad when the story opens. In Carson’s case, in For This Christmas Only‘s case, sad are E. L. Taylor (Erasmus Leonardo!) and Mallory Ames; he, a venture capitalist who made millions and recently wrote a bestselling how-to-entrepreneur book, the reading of which gave Mallory the impetus to take a stand against her exploiting family and return to Masterson University, at 29, to finish her business degree. The blurb offers us a few more details
I am nearing the finish-line to the Ruth Galloway series, with only the most recent left 
Miss Bates Reads Romance 