Tag: Widowed Hero

Audiobook-Mini-Review: Helena Hunting’s MAKE A WISH (Spark House #3)

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Make_A_WishOnce again I’m enjoying romance more via ears than eyes. Impatience is my middle-name when it comes to romance-reading and while I am sometimes impatient at the  length of a romance audiobook, it doesn’t compare to how finger-drummingly ho-hum I feel when I’m eyeballing it.

I certainly both enjoyed and grew impatient with Helena Hunting’s contemporary romance, Make A Wish. It has a cutesy cartoon cover (not a fan) moments of rom-com-ish humour (weak ones), a touch of women’s fic psychologizing (better than I thought it would be), and a fairly standard romance, not too passionate, or compelling, but in the context of its two other qualities, solid. There’s a handsome single dad, aspiring child-care expert, soupçon of May-to-December, and saccharine plot poppet; the publisher’s blurb offers further details:

Ever have a defining life moment you wish you could do over? Harley Spark has one. The time she almost kissed the widowed father of the toddler she nannied for. It was so bad they moved across the state and she never saw them again.

Fast forward seven years and she’s totally over it. At least she thinks she is. Until Gavin Rhodes and his adorable now nine-year-old daughter, Peyton, reappear at a princess-themed birthday party hosted by Spark House, Harley’s family’s event hotel. Despite trying to avoid the awkwardness of the situation, she can’t help but notice how unbearably sexy he looks in a tutu. Add to that a spontaneous hives breakout, and it’s clear she’s not even remotely over the mortification of her egregious error all those years ago.

Except Gavin seems oblivious to her inner turmoil. So much so that he suggests they get together for lunch. For Peyton’s sake, of course. It’s the perfect opportunity to heal old wounds. Or it could just reopen them. This is one of those times Harley wishes she could see the future…

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I Read Mary Balogh’s SILENT MELODY

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Silent_MelodyI had mixed reactions to Balogh’s Silent Melody: puzzled, enthralled at what she could do with the genre, dismayed at what she did with the genre, and always aware there was something fearless about what she did in Silent Melody. If we consider the romance from the perspective of today’s romance cognoscenti, it would be in its “representation” of its deaf heroine. On this level, I’m sure Balogh’s representation invites the damning “problematic”. I didn’t find it “problematic”, but I did dislike it for reasons having nothing to do with the heroine’s sensory challenge.

I think Balogh’s purpose was, not realism, but an exploration of a sensory deprivation and how, from it, she could build a character of strength, will, determination, and independence. There are, I believe, two things that stymied her: Balogh equated Emily’s deafness with an ability to commune with nature and she could not avoid, in the telling, that most pernicious romance pitfall, the lapse into plot-centred melodrama.

To start, a little background, since I haven’t said a thing about the hero. Lady Emily Marlowe lives with her sister’s family, Anna and Luke, the Duke of Harndon, and brother to the hero, Lord Ashley Kendrick. She is beloved, privileged, wealthy, and roams the vast estate, dishevelled and barefoot, at her will. She is beautiful, kind, highly intelligent, and a talented artist. The love her of life, Ashley, left seven years ago, to make his fortune with the East India Company. He returns a wealthy, broken man, guilt-ridden and tormented because he was away the night of a fire that killed his wife and infant son. Reunited with his family and Emily, merely fifteen when he left and his then-companion of forest and dell, he feels unworthy of forgiveness and love. Nevertheless, his family loves him and Emily was and is still in love with him. (more…)

Cara Bastone’s JUST A HEARTBEAT AWAY

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Just_Heartbeat_AwayI didn’t think a romance writer could pull off a romance narrative without a betrayal. I’ve thought, until now, the romance narrative needed a tearing-asunder moment to work (executed with varied degrees of success depending on the author’s control of craft). Cara Bastone proved me wrong and her début romance, Just A Heartbeat Away, tossed my assumptions about the romance narrative out the window and bade me reevaluate its elements. Oh, there’s plenty of conflict (without a betrayal, or tearing-apart moment). Bastone replaces betrayal with doubt and misunderstanding with insecurity. She has her hero and heroine indulge much inner-lusting, my preferred form of lusting, and smooshes several love scenes, usually peppered throughout the narrative, into one extended scene as close to the end without making it The End. As a result, a fresh, engaging romance narrative, as original as true to the genre and a new auto-buy author for yours truly. It’s a romance novel like Just a Heartbeat Away that renews my faith in the genre and reminds me why I fell in love with it to begin with.
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REVIEW: Mary Balogh’s SOMEONE TO HONOR

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Someone_to_HonorIt is good to be in Mary-Balogh-world again (and apropos to reading-pair her with Betty Neels; see my previous review on The Moon For Lavinia): a world of grace, depth, and beauty, brought like a well-sprung carriage to a believable HEA-conclusion. I haven’t read the Westcott series before, but was over the moon, Lavinia’s, to read and review Someone To Honor (Wescott #6); it tropishly-ideal marriage-of-convenience narrative was mere icing on the Balogh-wedding-fruitcake.

No one can write deeply-felt, quiet characters, somewhat melancholic, like Balogh can and Someone To Honor‘s Abigail Westcott and Lieutenant-Colonel Gilbert Bennington, “Gil,” are so. Someone To Honor is more Gil’s story than Abigail, but Abigail is the key to Gil’s changes. Gil experiences the greatest inner changes; yet Abigail too finds closure in all that she has realized in the past six years. They’re ideal for each other, but marry for pragmatic purposes with a dose of strong physical attraction, typical to Balogh. (more…)

MINI-REVIEW: Michelle Smart’s THE GREEK’S PREGNANT CINDERELLA

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Greek's_Pregnant_CinderellaMichelle Smart beautifully parallels the Cinderella fairy tale in the second volume of the Cinderella Seductions series, The Greek’s Pregnant Cinderella. Tabitha Brigstock toils in Vienna’s Basinas Palace Hotel as a cleaner after her evil stepmother and beloved father’s widow, seizes control of her wealth and property and kicks her out of the Oxfordshire family home. Tabitha’s fairy godmother comes in the form of a wealthy elderly Basinas Palace Hotel denizen, Amelia Coulter. In appreciation of Tabitha’s care and company when Amelia was ill, she gifts Tabitha with a Basinas-hosted 40 000-euro Viennese ball ticket, and a dress and shoes fit for a princess. Widower and billionaire Giannis Basinas takes one look at Tabitha (he insists on describing her as “exquisite,” which annoyed me to no end; I have a feral spinster antipathy for the word) and is enchanted. They dance, drink champagne, and share a passionate night. In the morning, while Giannis makes coffee to share with Tabitha, she sneaks away. Giannis is angry and hurt, but in the weeks ahead, can’t get Tabitha out of his mind. (more…)

REVIEW: Elizabeth Hoyt’s NOT THE DUKE’S DARLING (Greycourt #1)

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not_the_duke's_darlingAh, Hoyt, who’s written some of my favourite historical romances, The Leopard Prince and Duke Of Sin. Therefore, a new Hoyt series is always welcome and I happily plunged into Not the Duke’s Darling as my first 2019 romance-read. Though it didn’t reach the heights of my favourites, difficult to do given how much I love them, it was satisfying. In particular, the storylines and premise it sets up make me eager for the books-to-come.

Not the Duke’s Darling is Georgian-set, Hoyt’s time setting of choice, and centres around reunited childhood friends and former-best-friend’s-younger-sister hero and heroine, Christopher Renshaw, Duke of Harlowe and Freya Stewart de Moray. The opening scene was thrilling, funny, and compelling. Freya is a member of a ancient, secret society, the “Wise Women”, a group of proto-feminists sworn to help and protect women, persecuted as witches and now living in seclusion in an isolated part of Scotland. Freya, however, is one of their agents, living pseudonymously in society, aiding women, and keeping her ears and eyes alert to threats to the group. In the opening scene, Freya is helping a baby-lordling and his widowed mother escape the clutches of an evil uncle, intent on using the infant-lord to control his estates. (more…)

MINI-REVIEW: Susan Cliff’s WITNESS ON THE RUN

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Witness_On_the_RunI’d been looking forward to the next Susan Cliff romantic suspense thanks to enjoying her previous one, Navy SEAL Rescue. The locales were fascinating; characters, complex; and the politics, respectful of time and place. I expected and found no less in Witness On the Run. (And who can resist that marvelous cover? Which, BTW, reflects the characters exactly as they should be, a rarity in romance, sadly.) Witness opened with the same acute danger and desperate circumstances as Rescue, with Alaskan cold and ice in place of Afghani heat and dust; a grief-stricken widower and First Nations spousal abuse survivor heroine in place of a disillusioned SEAL and determined Assyrian-Christian heroine. In both cases, the heroines have reasons to run and the heroes are entangled in their brave flights from danger and evil. Cliff renders the settings with sensitivity to their politics and captures the climate and conditions with realistic, compelling detail. 
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MINI-REVIEW: Maisey Yates’s A TALL, DARK COWBOY CHRISTMAS

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Tall_Dark_Cowboy_XmasMaisey Yates opens Gold Valley romance #4 with the line “Grant Dodge was alone. And that was how he liked it”, ensuring the reader that Grant Dodge is about to NOT be alone and that his hold on his solitude is to be shaken by the heroine. Said heroine, McKenna Tate, is blithely slumbering in an abandoned cabin on the ranch Grant shares with his brother Wyatt, sister-in-law Lindy, and sometimes-around veterinarian brother Bennett and sister-in-law, Kaylee. A “full house” of family and connections, but Grant prefers his solitude: what’s up with that and how will it be “shook up”? My tone may be flippant as I introduce Yates’s romance, but the romance is anything but: it’s angsty, heart-wrenching stuff with two very broken, very vulnerable, pain-filled protagonists. One is broken by his first marriage and the other broken by a life as a foster child, unloved, unwanted, uncared for. Reading their story, I thought Yates penned her most painful story yet, unredeemed by humour, or playful sex, banter (okay, there are soupçons of banter, but hardly) tenderness or joy. Grant and McKenna are two suffering characters, with burdens making Aeneas’s look like fluff, and the romance suffers under their weight as much as they do.
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MINI-REVIEW: Cathy Maxwell’s A MATCH MADE IN BED

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A_Match_Made_in_BedI’d never read a Maxwell romance and embarked on A Match Made In Bed with curiosity and enthusiasm. Because I’m a naïve, gullible reader who’s too easily pleased, I lauded Maxwell to a Twitter friend and smiled smugly to myself on having “discovered” a great, new-to-me historical romance author. Unfortunately, I didn’t end up where I began. A Match Made In Bed showed initial promise. The hero and heroine intrigued me and the narrative promised compelling themes about money, women’s place in society, class, and family dynamics.

Soren York, Lord Dewsberry, and Miss Cassandra Holwell meet at a house party held outside of London. It’s not their first encounter. They share an interesting history: their Cornish-origined families have long feuded over past deception. Soren, aware of Cassandra’s dislike, yet woos her … because he needs an heiress’s money to bolster his soon-to-be-lost estate, Pentreath Castle. The novel opens with great banter and a wonderful antagonistic attraction between Cassandra and Soren. Even though Soren is mercenary, Maxwell manages to show us how he’s also kind and honourable. Cassandra is bookish and intelligent and has a lot of our sympathy, nursing a childhood hurt inflicted, unknowingly mind you, by Soren.  
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MINI-REVIEW: Donna Alward’s THE CROWN PRINCE’S BRIDE

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Crown_Prince's_BrideDonna Alward’s The Crown Prince’s Bride seemed a romance palate-cleanser after Willig’s intense English Wife. Certainly that’s what it felt like – initially. But Alward is a writer who transcends what I call the trappings of trite, with emotional wisdom and psychological acumen. While I settled comfortably into a mild romance read – not too much drama, not too intense a plot, decent protagonists – Alward managed to surprise and delight me.

First, the trappings. In the fictional kingdom of Marazur, heroine Stephanie Savalas is the supremely competent right-hand woman of Crown Prince Raoul Navarro, grieving widower, single dad, and his homeland’s hope (now that King Alexander, his father, has handed kingly responsibilities over to him). The novel opens as Stephani plans Raoul’s brother’s wedding to Raoul’s children’s former nanny, all the while juggling the country’s well-being and the big-ole torch she carries for her boss. Raoul is deep in mourning for his beloved wife, Stephani’s cousin Cecilia, who died in a car accident. And yet, dear reader, stirrings! Raoul always cared for Stephani and their platonic relationship is warm, friendly, affectionate, and caring until one night, these vague “stirrings” lead to a passionate kiss.  (more…)