Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“No one had warned her it would be like this. Love was supposed to feel good. Wasn’t it? Not terrifying. Perhaps this wasn’t love after all, but malaria.”

Do You Want to Start a Scandal by Tessa Dare

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Last month when I was reading What I Did for a Duke I kept waiting for a particular scene to happen, and it never did. That is because I had superimposed the bathtub scene from Do You Want to Start a Scandal onto that book, which was all the excuse I needed to read it as well. Like with What I Did for a Duke this one is a reread of a book I only read a couple years ago. It deliciously fits into what […]

another castle, another lord

When a Scot Ties the Knot by Tessa Dare

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Clearly I am taken with this idea of inheriting a large foreboding house far away from society that is mine without a mortgage or property taxes (and, since we’re in fantasy territory, also comes with a healthy, symbiotic relationship with the people who work the land). As noted in the prior review for Romancing the Duke, the common thread is the aforementioned inheritance of a castle, sort of unbidden, and the appearance of an Aristocrat with a Painful Secret who wants said castle…by any means necessary. […]

here starts the Tessa Dare run

Romancing the Duke by Tessa Dare

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WOOT the Tessa Dare run, here we gooo–definitely another #BlameMalin one here 😉 So the Castles Ever After series is tied together by the silliest and slimmest of plot threads: each of the main female protagonists are gifted a castle in some way or another, or are in possession of one despite being female, and there is a Duke or Lord or Laird or something or another who is either in the castle, thinks he should be in the castle, or flat out wants a castle and […]

“She unsettled him; he anchored her. Together, they could be more than they were apart.”

Do You Want to Start a Scandal by Tessa Dare

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I had a good time with Do You Want to Start a Scandal, primarily because it does one of my favorite things by putting a good deal of emotional intelligence into a character who may not be expected to have it and then let them deduce the world around them. It is deployed to good use as Charlotte Highwood goes head-to-head with Diplomat turned Spy Piers Brandon, Lord Granville after they are caught together during the Parkhurst ball but are not in fact the couple […]

“Here, tell me which scent you prefer. Lilies and whale vomit, or lemon balm and beaver’s arse.”

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I like Tessa Dare. I know her books are derisively considered by many to be HINO (Historical In Name Only) but that’s something that’s never bothered me, personally. I like that her characters have modern sensibilities, because I don’t want to read about a hero with traditional Regency-era attitudes toward women. I like that her books each tend to have a designated Element of Silliness (see: Romancing the Duke‘s cosplayers, Any Duchess Will Do‘s terrible knitting) and in this one it’s the recurring joke of […]

Was There A Kissing Book Writer Race to Use This Title?

Do You Want to Start a Scandal? by Tessa Dare

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Tessa Dare’s latest Regency romance series is The Duchess Deal and I would recommend its first book, Girl Meets Duke, over Do You Want to Start a Scandal. This crossover story between Dare’s Spindle Cove and Castles Ever After novels, features the youngest of the Highwood sisters and longtime troublemaker, Charlotte, who has both eldest sibling Diana’s desire for a loving home and intellectual Minerva‘s sense of adventure. Piers Brandon, Lord Granville is an agent of the crown performing reconnaissance at a two-week house party in the English countryside. Devoted to his duty to King […]



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