Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“No wonder the South Sea is populated by little mosquitos wearing eye patches.”

How to Tame a Wild Rogue by Julie Anne Long

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We return to the Grand Palace on the Thames for a forced proximity romance between two people who couldn’t be more different, or more the same. Plot: Lorcan St. Leger is a successful smuggler. He’s come a long way from his lonely, painful youth in St Giles, and he’s done it through ferocious determination, intelligence, and an antagonistic relationship with authority. When he sees a woman in fine dress climbing out of a rooming house’s second floor window on a bedsheet, something urges him to […]

It was disconcerting to feel that the world, in fact, might have some dimension he’d overlooked. That she might have something to teach him.

How to Tame a Wild Rogue by Julie Anne Long

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Julie Ann Long can be hit or miss for me, but she did write one of my all time favorite romances, What I Did for a Duke. How to Tame a Wild Rogue tapped into a lot of things I loved about What I Did for a Duke. Long takes these two characters who wouldn’t normally be in close contact and gives them reasons to question their assumptions about themselves and their place in the world. Because they are out of their usual milieu, they look at each […]

The Duke and the Opera Diva

After Dark with the Duke by Julie Anne Long

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Mariana Wylde arrives at the Grand Palace at the Thames only seconds after curfew, dripping wet and terrified, since she escaped her own lodgings because a literal angry mob blocked her residence. The talented opera singer, dubbed “the Harlot of Haywood Street” by the press after two rich, young noblemen fought a duel for her favour (something she very much didn’t want them to) and one of them nearly died. Her reputation is in tatters and she’s almost broke but begs the proprietresses of the […]

Is a New Yorker in London the opposite of an Englishman in New York?

I'm Only Wicked with You by Julie Anne Long

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3.5 stars Hugh Cassidy is an ambitious man. He knows exactly what he wants from life, he’s going to run for mayor of his hometown, from thence devote his life to politics. While his parents may not have been particularly distinguished, they clearly loved one another and raised Hugh and his siblings to believe in hard work, as well being moral and upstanding people. Hugh is in England to try to track down the runaway daughter of a good friend (and as the story progresses […]

A Romance Classic

What I Did For a Duke (Pennyroal Green, #5) by Julie Anne Long

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**30 Books in 30 Days** Book 6/30 This was very, very good. There isn’t *really* a plot, but in this case, that’s a good thing. What this is, is a character piece. The movement of the story comes with the evolution of the characters’ feelings for each other. (Much in the way comedies of manners do it.) It’s got a great set-up, though. Alex Moncrieffe, the Duke of Falconbridge, finds his fiancé in bed with Ian Eversea, and chases Eversea out the window, buck-ass nude. […]

“It isn’t a weakness to accept kindness. It isn’t a weakness to allow yourself to be cared for.”

What I Did for a Duke (Pennyroyal Green #5) by Julie Anne Long

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I was inspired by last year’s reviews of What I Did for a Duke by Emmalita and Malin to move this one up my to read list. I’m still struggling in 2021 with finding my ability to sink into books and last year I was able to most easily focus on Romance novels, so I was comfortable betting the same would be true now. It had been quite awhile since I was actively seeking time to dive back into a book, and What I Did […]



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