All her life, Valancy Stirling has lived on a quiet street in an ugly little house in northern Ontario, Canada and never dared to contradict her domineering mother and unforgiving aunt. The deeply squelching kind of small town life L.M. Montgomery describes for Valancy is one that I recognize as Canadian, but of course is universal. To escape her life of quiet desperation, Valancy has created a world apart for herself called “The Blue Castle”. This private realm in which things are beautiful and she […]
Was 5, Now 6 Historical Romances & More For My B List
Tired of waiting for new books from authors on my autobuy list and even more tired of trying random new authors, I waded into the back catalogue of one of the most successful writers in the historical romance genre. Eloisa James has been publishing steadily for sixteen years and my crash course on her novels moves her comfortably to my B+ List. That means I am unlikely to pay for her books, but will read them if they are available at the library, or very […]
More Historical Romances and Lovely Ones at That
Mary Balogh’s lovely and touching Survivor’s Club series has what I am beginning realise is the central theme of many of her historical romances: Shuttered and broken people finding new lives and unexpected happiness. Who better to be given these second chances than soldiers and those who have seemingly lost everything? Six friends, five military men and one women, and their host, formed a close relationship while recovering from their experiences in the Napoleonic Wars at Pendarris Hall in Cornwall. Now back out in the […]
More Historical Romance, But With Fairy Tales
Eloisa James’ Fairy Tales series includes nine historical romances based around twists on the stories we learned growing up. The two I read were The Princess and the Pea (The Duke Is Mine) and The Ugly Duckling (The Ugly Duchess). I don’t feel a burning need to read more of them, but I might depending on what else is, or more accurately is not, available at the time. The Duke Is Mine Olivia and Georgiana have spent their lives in “duchess training”. Owing to an […]
A Contemporary Romance Review Mostly About Furniture
Low Tide Bikini was free and yet somehow overpriced. I genuinely respect people who complete writing a book, and in this case a series, but the accomplishments of writing a book and writing a good book are two very different things. Lyla Dune’s writing is clichéd and facile, the plot and characters sophomoric. If it is the work of a teenaged writer, I commend the effort, if not, it’s unsuccessful escapism, a Lifetime movie of a novel. From Amazon: Sam Carlisle is the double bass […]
Psst: There Is No Secret in This Contemporary Romance
I have reviewed the rest of the Beautiful series by writing duo Christina Lauren in an ongoing post, but since the tone of this latest entry was something different, I decided to review it by itself. To get caught up, this is the series thus far (8 books, 4 couples): Beautiful Bastard Beautiful Bitch Beautiful Stranger Beautiful Bombshell Beautiful Player Beautiful Beginning Beautiful Beloved Beautiful Secret – Let’s begin shall we? Ruby is an engineering intern at a London firm. An American living abroad, she […]
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