This first book in Mary Balogh’s new Regency romance Westcott series got off to a good start with a great heroine, a play on a familiar romance plot, and a somewhat inscrutable hero. About halfway through, the story lost steam and fell prey to a trope whose day has past. Once again, a toad of an aristocrat has had the temerity to die and leave his estate in disarray as he failed to disclose a rightful heir to his fortune and rendered his own children […]
One of my favorite romances this year.
When I reviewed Cecilia Grant previously, I mentioned how she seems to delight in turning tropes on their ears. A Woman Entangled is the last book in her Blackshear Family series, and Grant’s target here is perfect. With overt nods to both Pride and Prejudice and Emma, Grant uses the romance of Kate Westbrook and Nick Blackshear to make larger points about vanity, respectability, and expectations. What I find particularly interesting about her romances is that, while her books are in company with other top-quality […]
Corset doffer
This erotic romance set in the Regency period caught my attention as one of the suggestions in the sex-positive romances post comments. While to the uninitiated, “sex-positive” may seem like a given in romance and particularly in erotica, these books were suggested by the more feminist, “rigorous” standards that these books not only contain sex between the leads, but that they don’t slut-shame other women who also have the audacity to have sex. Again, for the uninitiated, this doesn’t seem like a high bar to […]
“It’s horrid to be someone else’s vision of yourself.”
4.5 stars I am very sorry, Sarah MacLean. This is probably my favorite book of yours that I have read so far, but I waited way too long to review it, and now I’m going to have precious little to say about it. Here’s the Goodreads summary, which is as much for my benefit as yours: “A lady does not smoke cheroot. She does not ride astride. She does not fence or attend duels. She does not fire a pistol, and she never gambles at […]
We interrupt this Star Wars binge to bring you some Regency romance
Hoyden: (n) a boisterous, bold, and carefree girl; a tomboy. Emma Harlow has built quite a reputation in London. She broke Sir Leopold’s record for racing a curricle from London to Newmarket (and she thinks she could have been even faster had propriety not required the presence of her brother in the carriage). She’s smart, she’s unconventional, and she’s funny, and no one wants that in a wife. She also really doesn’t like her twin sister’s fiance, Sir Waldo Windbourne (Emma calls him Windbag, for […]
An utterly ridiculous cover for a book that’s more about probability than rippling abs
I really like the cut of Cecilia Grant’s jib. Her romances read as refreshingly simple, high on practicality and low on histrionics. The leads each have set out to accomplish something, and they find that the other has complementary skills and therefore can help each other achieve their goals. Along the way, their respect for each others’ talents becomes admiration and love. It’s not romantic, in the traditional sense of the genre, with wind-swept hair and rain-soaked gowns and proclamations of love on cliff-tops. But […]
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