Notable Unusual Historicals for January 2019

New Year, new you? Well, if you’ve already broken your resolutions, maybe not. But at least we can all look forward to a new year of historical romance. January brings us a long-awaited follow-up to a beloved late-1990s trilogy, a Wendy recommended reprint, an angsty new K.J. Charles (woot!), Vikings and an enemy-to-lovers story set against the backdrop of the Jacobite rebellion.

Any Old Diamonds by K.J. Charles 

Lord Alexander Pyne-ffoulkes, the younger son of the Duke of Ilvar, holds a bitter grudge against his wealthy father. The Duke intends to give his Duchess a priceless diamond parure on their wedding anniversary—so Alec hires a pair of jewel thieves to steal it.  

The Duke's remote castle is a difficult target, and Alec needs a way to get the thieves in. Soldier-turned-criminal Jerry Crozier has the answer: he'll pose as a Society gentleman and become Alec's new best friend.  

But Jerry is a dangerous man: controlling, remote, and devastating. He effortlessly teases out the lonely young nobleman's most secret desires, and soon he's got Alec in his bed—and the palm of his hand.  

Or maybe not. Because as the plot thickens, betrayals, secrets, new loves, and old evils come to light. Now the jewel thief and the aristocrat must keep up the pretence, find their way through a maze of privilege and deceit, and confront the truth of what's between them...all without getting caught. 

To be honest, reading this blurb doesn’t exactly scream “Romance!” for me, so it’s a good thing Love in Panels has already published Eva’s review. I’m a sucker for angst and this book sounds like it’s positively swimming in it. Also, I love the way Charles evokes setting, so I’m all in.

Texas Legacy by Lorraine Heath 

For as long as he can remember, Rawley Cooper has loved Faith Leigh. But the cruelty of his childhood haunts him and he knows he’s undeserving of Faith. When she comes to him on the night of her nineteenth birthday, they both give into temptation. But the searing kiss reaffirms what he’s always known: he can’t have a lifetime of her in his arms. To protect his heart, he packs his things and heads west.  

Faith has always adored the boy her parents took in and raised. But she’s not certain she can ever forgive him for riding out of her life just when she needed him the most.
When an urgent telegram forces him to return six years later, Rawley discovers Faith is now a woman to be reckoned with.  

As old feelings are stirred back to life and new passions take hold, they both must confront secrets from their past or risk losing a legacy of love. 

Rawley was first introduced in Heath’s Texas trilogy, which means fans of that series have literally been begging for this story since 1999. I vividly remember reading the trilogy back-to-back-to-back in 2001 (I was traveling) but at this point, and many books later, Rawley has faded a bit (OK, a lot) from my memory. Crushing TBR Guilt keeps me from rereading, so I’m going to go into this one like a stand-alone and hope that Heath recaptures the magic.

Sent as the Viking’s Bride by Michelle Styles 

She’s the wife he doesn’t want…  

 …and the woman he needs!  

Desperate to escape her murderous brother-in-law and protect her young sister, Ragnhild agrees to marry an unknown warrior, and arrives penniless on his remote island. Only, Gunnar Olafson’s belief in love died with his family—he does not want a bride! But as yuletide approaches, Ragnhild transforms his isolated existence. Can she melt her Viking warrior’s frozen heart? 

A villainous brother-in-law, a wounded hero, a heroine in need of a safe haven and all out of options. Styles, who has written everything from ancient Rome to Regency, returns to Vikings, which is where she’s been the past several books.

The Highland Renegade by Amy Jarecki 

She is the daughter of his sworn enemy.
Famed for his fierceness, Laird Robert Grant is above all a loyal Highland clan chief. But when redcoats capture his rival's daughter, he sets aside their feud and races to her rescue. Aye, Janet Cameron is beautiful, cunning, and so very tempting, but a Cameron lass is the last woman he should ever desire.
He is her one hope of happiness. 

Janet refuses to meekly surrender, not even when surrounded by foes. She takes every chance to escape, first from the English soldiers and then from the wickedly handsome Robert. Yet with each day they spend together, his unexpected gallantry chips away at her reserve little by little. As danger and treachery loom, can she trust him enough to choose love over vengeance? 

An enemy-to-lovers story, this fifth book in Jarecki’s Lords of the Highlands series has piqued my interest thanks to review coverage I ran across at The Day Job. Library Journal calls it “beautifully done,” and that the “adventurous romance” is “greatly enhanced by an exquisite depiction of life in the early 18th-century Scottish Highlands.” A hopeful bit of teasing for readers who prefer their historicals to, well, read like historicals.

Winter Woman by Jenna Kernan 

She survived the winter alone…
After Cordelia Channing endures the lethal winter season alone in the Rocky Mountains, she is discovered by Thomas Nash, a solitary mountain man who wants only to hunt, trap and be left alone to grieve the woman he could not save. 

Cordelia aches to go east before winter but over the days and miles, Delia finds her battered spirit yearning for this self-reliant trapper, who stirs her longing and wakes her heart.  

With only few, vital months to hunt before the snows fly, Nash has no time to look after a woman. He is surprised as Delia transforms his life and gives him the second chance he never expected. But with fall approaching, she must face her resolve to escape another deadly winter, and he must confront his oath not to open his heart to love once more. 

A digital reprint that was first published by Harlequin Historical in 2003, I really enjoyed this story a lot when I read it back in 2005. Her preacher husband goes out hunting and ends up dead, leaving the heroine to survive winter alone in an isolated cabin. She’s found by peaceful Natives whose solution to finding a half-starved white woman is to take her to the only white guy they know - the trapper hero who isn’t much of a “people person.” A well-done romance and survival story, the setting is pre-Civil War (1835) isolated frontier and I ate it up.

What Unusual Historicals are you looking forward to this month?

Top 4 Unusual Historicals for July 2018

I have a love/hate relationship with July. I love fireworks (well except when my idiot neighbors are still shooting them off on July 14th…), it’s my birthday month, and I’m generally able to attend the Romance Writers of America annual conference (this year held in Denver). However, it is also my busiest, craziest month at my day job. This entails a lot of time doing math and looking at spreadsheets (yes, it’s just as glamorous as it sounds!). I come home from work mentally exhausted and looking for anyway to unwind. Which leads us to this latest batch of unusual historicals! Who doesn’t love to unwind reading and browsing for new books?

The Gaucho’s Lady by Genevieve Turner

After a self-imposed exile in Argentina, Juan Moreno is ready to return home to California, wiser, wearier, and a widower. But the night before his departure, a wealthy landowner’s daughter appears in his simple room with a gun and demands that he kidnap her.

Eliana Suarez never wanted to leave home; the pampas are deep in her blood. But when her cruel father insists she marry a man even crueler than he is, she must flee. Luckily for her, one of her father’s gauchos is leaving Argentina—and only if she can convince him to take her along, will she be saved.

Juan never could resist a lady’s desperate appeal and soon they’re racing to Buenos Aires, barely two steps ahead of their pursuers. They’ll have to deal with outlaws, anarchists, and her father’s fury in their flight to freedom and safety. But no matter how fast they run, they can never escape their growing attraction… and their own hearts.

We (and by “we” I mean the United States) tend to think of the western as our creation. I mean, it kind of is but Canada, Mexico, and Australia (just to name a few) have their own history of ranching and cowboy culture. Argentina does as well (as does Venezuela - seriously I could keep going…), which is where Tuner takes us with her latest release. As someone who has enjoyed western historicals set outside the United States, I’m excited to try this one!

Unfit to Print by KJ Charles (novella)

When crusading lawyer Vikram Pandey sets out in search of a missing youth, his investigations take him to Holywell Street, London’s most notorious address. He expects to find a disgraceful array of sordid bookshops. He doesn’t expect one of them to be run by the long-lost friend whose disappearance and presumed death he’s been mourning for thirteen years.

Gil Lawless became a Holywell Street bookseller for his own reasons, and he’s damned if he’s going to apologise or listen to moralising from anyone. Not even Vikram; not even if the once-beloved boy has grown into a man who makes his mouth water.

Now the upright lawyer and the illicit bookseller need to work together to track down the missing youth. And on the way, they may even learn if there’s more than just memory and old affection binding them together...

My gripe with Victorian-set romances is that so often the author gives me pseudo-Regency instead. Repeat after me: Victorian and Regency are nowhere near the same thing. Ahem. Anyway, Charles writes about Victorian London with a wonderful atmospheric style and I was sunk after reading “lawyer” and “bookseller” in the description. Andrea at Love in Panels really enjoyed this story noting it was emotional, sensual, accessible and atmospheric (see, there’s that word again!). Please note, this is a novella.

Diary of a War Bride by Lauri Robinson

July 1942
Dear diary, despite the war raging around me, I find I can’t stop thinking about the American officer, Sergeant Dale Johnson. I’ve never known anyone as brave, kind and handsome! But I promised myself I wouldn’t care this much about a man again, especially when he could be transferred at any time. Yet that only makes me want to relish our time together. Now fighting my heart feels like the biggest battle…

Robinson, predominantly having published westerns, has a sizeable Harlequin Historical backlist that also includes a 1920s trilogy. This book (with a gorgeous cover, says me) gives readers a World War II romance, a setting oft-used in inspirational but rarely seen in secular romance circles. I’ve liked some of Robinson’s westerns, so I’m anxious to try to this one.

A Gentleman Never Scores by Cat Sebastian

Once beloved by London's fashionable elite, Hartley Sedgwick has become a recluse after a spate of salacious gossip exposed his most-private secrets. Rarely venturing from the house whose inheritance is a daily reminder of his downfall, he’s captivated by the exceedingly handsome man who seeks to rob him.

Since retiring from the boxing ring, Sam Fox has made his pub, The Bell, into a haven for those in his Free Black community. But when his best friend Kate implores him to find and destroy a scandalously revealing painting of her, he agrees. Sam would do anything to protect those he loves, even if it means stealing from a wealthy gentleman. But when he encounters Hartley, he soon finds himself wanting to steal more than just a painting from the lovely, lonely man—he wants to steal his heart.

Cat Sebastian returns with a new book in her Seducing the Sedgwicks series. One hero who used to move in fashionable circles but now a recluse (oh, do tell!) is certainly intriguing. However, if I’m being honest, it’s the character of Sam Fox that had me sitting up a little taller in my seat. A former boxer turned pub owner turned housebreaker to help out a friend? I am so there.

What Unusual Historicals are you looking forward to reading this month?

Review: An Unseen Attraction

An Unseen Attraction by K.J. Charles is one of those books that everyone seems to love - so when I noticed my digital acquisitions librarian ordered it for work, I was keen to check it out.  Which I did.  Twice.  Let me explain. I started reading it but didn't finish it before my check-out expired. So I put myself back on the wait list to check it out a second time.  In between the book went on sale at retailers for 99 cents.  And my reaction?  "Meh, I'll just wait for the work copy to come back around."  

So, yeah.  I couldn't be bothered to spend 99 cents on this, even after I had read the first 5 chapters.  Even I'm not typically that frugal.

Which begs the question, "Why go back and finish it?"  Well, at the time my check-out expired the mystery subplot was finally kicking in - and my interest was starting to pick up.  But, yeah - up until that point?  It was almost a DNF out of disinterest.

Clem Talleyfer is a half-Indian bastard son, so he's grateful to his brother for setting him up running a London lodging-house.  His brother's only stipulation?  That the Reverend Lugtrout has a room, free of charge, for as long as he wishes.  This is a trial for Clem since Lugtrout is a disagreeable drunk who flouts house rules.  The man is an insufferable jackass.  But Clem is dealing with him as best he can.  Besides, it's another of the residents that has him distracted - Rowley Green, a taxidermist who has a shop right next door.  Rowley is a loner, in part because people find his profession rather ghoulish, but also his traumatic past has left him a bit skittish.  However he's drawn to Clem's calm, quiet manner and his devastating good looks.  Naturally a relationship blossoms, only to have the whole thing upended when the odious Lugtrout is found murdered and Rowley's shop is burglarized.

I had a hard time sinking into this story and it's hard for me to put my finger on exactly why.  I suspect it's because there's a fair amount of set-up in the early chapters.  It's Rowley and Clem tap-dancing around each other, going to the theater, Clem fretting over Lugtrout and a lot of taxidermy talk - which frankly I could have done without.  Yes, it's an art form - but dude, some of us find stuffed animals creepy.  And while I appreciate that Charles gives one of her heroes an interesting profession and that she obviously did her research....

I. Don't. Care.

There, I said it.

Frankly I found it a slog to get through.

But once Lugtrout ends up dead, that's when things get interesting.  He was an odious man, but to have his tortured dead body left on the doorstep of the boardinghouse reeks of overkill.  And then to have Rowley's shop burglarized?  I mean, is there a connection?  And if so, what could it possibly be? Adding a touch of Victorian melodramatic intrigue, and the already excellent world-building - this was the part of the story that really cooked for me.  Charles sets up her world-building extremely well, right down to oppressive fog and characters that read too much Wilkie Collins.

There's plenty of s-e-x in this book, but the romance itself is rather sweet - thanks to Rowley's loner tendencies and Clem being somewhere on the spectrum (although the author flim-flams on this too much for my liking.  Am I being fair?  Probably not.  I mean, this was Victorian London - autism didn't "exist" it's just some people were "odd.")  It was also interesting to read Clem's growth over the course of the story.  To a fault, he's kind and patient and will bend over backwards for just about anybody.  But as the danger heightens in the story, Clem discovers his spine and shows some gumption.  Him losing his cool in the later chapters were easily some of my favorite moments in the book.

So we're left with a damning with faint praise reaction.  I liked this, but it didn't rivet me and the mystery was more engaging (again, for me) more so than the romance.  That said, readers should be warned that while this story is wrapped up somewhat tidily, there's some loose threads left dangling in the mystery that will likely carry their way through the next books in the series.  And yep, looks like my digital acquisitions librarian has the next book in the series on order.  Bloody hell, of course I have it on hold.

Final Grade = B-