Make It Rain: Unusual Historicals Landing May 2022

Every month I buckle in to ride the wave of Amazon's terrible algorithm (so much Daddy Kink, so much public domain literature with half-assed covers), cross my fingers and hope for the best as I go on the Great Hunt for Unusual Historicals. And then I get months like May 2022 where they seem to rain from the sky.  Seriously, enjoy this now Bat Cave Followers, because I guarantee that if we manage to survive our slog to December you're going to get maybe 3 titles that month.  So grab yourself something to drink, crack your knuckles, and get ready for a dive into the deep end of the Historical Romancelandia swimming pool.

Rose and Wicked by Rebel Carter (Kindle Unlimited)

Rose Wickes-Barnes has a plan to establish herself as an independent woman of good standing. 

Move away from Gold Sky. 

Join one of New York City’s most prestigious theater companies. 

Establish herself in society as an up-and-coming costumer with said theater company. 

Thusly, she aims to enjoy the fruits of her labor just as any woman should. What she never anticipates is the scandal, paparazzi storm, and subsequent whirlwind marriage she finds herself in. 

Rose and her new husband, the gentle, soft spoken and earnest Samuel Walker, who selflessly put himself in harm's way to keep her safe one fateful, rainy, day, are forced to flee the city and marry to keep their reputations in tact. All the while Rose suspects there is far more to her new husband than the man she’s coming dangerously close to falling in love with. 

People on the streets of New York give him a wide berth, and they call him ‘Wicked Walker’. Rose has never known him to be anything but a gentleman and her protector, but she can’t help but admit she is curious to see just what’s so wicked about ‘Wicked Walker.’

An independent heroine determined to establish herself a theater costume designer finds herself married in order to avoid scandal - which, isn't that always the way?  But what's this? There's more to her new husband than meets the eye? Do tell! This appears to be the last book in Carter's Gold Sky series.

The Iron Warrior Returns by Michelle Willingham 

A fight to save his people 

A kiss to save his heart… 

To regain his stolen lands and save his people from suffering, Robert of Penrith has returned to marry his enemy’s daughter. To Robert’s surprise, his dearest friend, Morwenna, helps him win the heiress’s hand—despite the danger to them both. The fierce, beautiful miller’s daughter has stood by him throughout his exile. But a single kiss ignites a passion that threatens to upend all Robert’s plans…

To reclaim his land and save his people our hero decides a match with his enemy's daughter is the way to go, but he needs help, and for that he turns to his best friend, our heroine. What we have here is a fairly rare unicorn - a friends-to-lovers trope in a medieval!  Willingham is one of my autobuys in Harlequin Historical and this is the start of a new series.

A Caribbean Heiress in Paris by Adriana Herrera

Paris, 1889 

The Exposition Universelle is underway, drawing merchants from every corner of the globe…including Luz Alana Heith-Benzan, heiress to the Caña Brava rum empire. 

Luz Alana set sail from Santo Domingo armed with three hundred casks of rum, her two best friends and one simple rule: under no circumstances is she to fall in love. In the City of Lights, she intends to expand the rum business her family built over three generations, but buyers and shippers alike can’t imagine doing business with a woman…never mind a woman of color. This, paired with being denied access to her inheritance unless she marries, leaves the heiress in a very precarious position. 

Enter James Evanston Sinclair, Earl of Darnick, who has spent a decade looking for purpose outside of his father’s dirty money and dirtier dealings. Ignoring his title, he’s built a whisky brand that’s his biggest—and only—passion. That is, until he’s confronted with a Spanish-speaking force of nature who turns his life upside down. 

From their first tempestuous meeting, Luz Alana is conflicted. Why is this titled—and infuriatingly charming—Scottish man so determined to help her? 

For Evan, every day with Luz Alana makes him yearn for more than her ardent kisses or the marriage of convenience that might save them both. But Luz Alana sailed for Paris prepared to build her business and her future; what she wasn’t prepared for was love finding her.

A Caribbean rum heiress takes to Paris hoping to expand her family's business, only to get doors slammed in her face because she's a female (sigh). Enter our hero, with plenty of Daddy Issues, and his own whisky empire, smitten from the jump.  Another Unusual Historical this month from our friends at Harelquin, this time with the HQN line, and also the start of a new series.

Miss Peverett's Secret Scandal by Bronwyn Scott

Working in close quarters…With an employer she can’t resist! 

Thomasia Peverett is dreading her return to society, but when she’s offered a secretarial role by Member of Parliament Shaw Rawdon, he tempts her to leave the safety of her home. Shaw’s unlike anyone she’s ever met, and their attraction is undeniable. Even the revelation of her scandalous secret draws him closer! Thomasia knows it’s foolish to trust the wrong man, but will Shaw prove he’s worth it?

If loving the boss/secretary romance is wrong (OK, yes - it's problematic as hell...) then I don't wanna be right. And this is, OMG wait for it, a boss/secretary romance in Victoria England!  Oh, and of course our heroine is hiding a Big Secret, because why wouldn't she be?!  This is the third book in Scott's The Peveretts of Haberstock Hall series.

The Earl on the Train by Kerrigan Byrne (novella)

Sebastian Moncrieff is a villain, a traitor, and a pirate, who has recently inherited an Earldom he never wanted. As a man who’s committed every sin imaginable, he knows his only chance at redemption is the one woman who ever reached through to his soul of ice. He’s kidnapped Veronica Latimer once before, and was enchanted by everything about her... This time, when he takes her, he’ll have to admit that she’s kept his heart captive since the moment they met. But can he convince her to forgive his past in order to claim a future?

Villain, traitor, pirate and a kidnapper? Wow, this hero sounds like a prince! But he also sounds like just the kind of Alpha throwback that I sometimes can't say no to.  This novella from Byrne ties into her Victorian Rebels series.

Escaping Her Saxon Enemy by Sarah Rodi 

Her tempting enemy...

Is a chink in her armor! 

Viking shield maiden Svea Ivarsson would far rather face Saxon warriors than be on the run with the fiercely captivating Lord Ashford Stanton, protector to the Saxon king. Reaching Ash’s family castle, Svea must swap her chain mail for life as a lady. She can wield a sword like an expert, but no training has prepared her for craving the touch of her greatest enemy…

A shield maiden heroine who finds herself having to play the part of a lady and falling under the spell of our hero.  This seems to tie into the author's previous release and a content warning that reading in between the lines of the teaser description on the author's website, the heroine may be a rape survivor.

The Servant and the Gentleman by Annabelle Greene

William Hartley’s wealth and social standing often make up for his short temper, but they can’t cure his claustrophobia. He’d lost hope of finding help for it, until meeting Josiah Balfour. In a moment of panic, Josiah’s presence is a balm to his senses, leaving Hartley calm for the first time in months. 

Josiah Balfour knows his place—and it’s not in the bed of a gentleman. As the administrator for the Society of Beasts, he’s responsible for the club’s well-being. When a threat to the Society emerges from an unexpected quarter, it falls to Josiah to deal with it. But Hartley is willing to help, even if it involves posing as a couple to infiltrate a rival club. 

Josiah needs Hartley’s prestige to help him save the Society, while Hartley simply needs Josiah. Their relationship might be a sham, but the desire between them is all too real. Stuck in close quarters with everything they love on the line, they discover that everything might just include each other.

The third book in Greene's Society of Beasts series features Unusual Historical catnip - a cross-class romance and a claustrophobic gentleman. OK, so maybe not the claustrophobia, but it certainly ADDS to the unusual!

A Daring Pursuit by Kate Bateman 

TWO ENEMIES 

Carys Davies is doing everything in her power to avoid marriage. Staying single is the only way to hide the secret that could ruin her―and her family―if it was revealed. For the past two seasons she’s scandalized the ton with her outrageous outfits and brazen ways in a futile bid to deter potential suitors. Outwardly confident and carefree, inside she’s disillusioned with both men and love. There’s only one person who’s never bought her act―the only man who makes her heart race: Tristan Montgomery, one of her family’s greatest rivals. 

ONE SCANDALOUS BARGAIN 

Wickedly proper architect Tristan needs a respectable woman to wed, but he’s never stopped wanting bold, red-headed Carys. When she mockingly challenges him to show her what she’s missing by not getting married, Tristan shocks them both by accepting her indecent proposal: one week of clandestine meetings, after which they’ll go their separate ways. But kissing each other is almost as much fun as arguing, and their affair burns hotter than either of them expects. When they find themselves embroiled in a treasonous plot, can they trust each other with their hearts, their secrets…and their lives?

Well, bless their hearts. A heroine determined to make herself as "unmarriageable" as possible and an architect hero who needs to "marry up." Oh, and their families have been feuding for generations. I mean, what could possibly go wrong here?! This is the second book in Bateman's Ruthless Rivals series.

I don't know about you all, but I just feel like I ran a marathon!  What unusual historicals are you looking forward to?

RIP Gwendolyn "Gwen" Osborne

I met Gwen Osborne when I was an infant. It was 1999, I was fresh out of Library School and greener than grass. My first job was to select adult fiction for a small, rural, library system in Michigan - which sounds like a dream job (it is) for someone who grew up spending every waking moment of her summers checking out mystery novels from her hometown library.  One small problem - two college degrees in 5.5 years, who the hell had time to read for pleasure? I was mainlining soap operas.  My romance knowledge had stopped with Jude Deveraux and I didn't know who Nora Roberts was (I'm dead serious).  I needed help and through a series of happenstance I found The Romance Reader online. 

You young whippersnappers gotta understand, prior to the Interwebs taking off we had Romantic Times (who loved everything) and that was it.  The Romance Reader sprang to life in 1996 because the founder was enraged by a Julie Garwood book and had to word vomit her feelings somewhere - and decided the Internet was the place to do it.  A couple years later All About Romance launched and romance readers now had two places to read critical reviews of romance novels.  The good, the bad, and the Dear Lord Why?!?!

Gwen was already an established reviewer at TRR when I joined in 1999 (I would review for TRR until 2007...) and she immediately told me we were long lost sisters - Wendy being a derivative of Gwendolyn.  And like me, Gwen was a Michigander, although from the other side of the state. She was a Detroit girl, a Michigan State Spartan, and a law librarian. Gwen was based out of Chicago but Motown ran through her veins - the city, the music, the cars, the aesthetic.  

Words like "trailblazer" and "pioneer" get thrown around a lot, but Gwen truly was both. She sprang from the womb a reader, but had an awakening in the 1990s when she discovered Arabesque Books. A light bulb went off for her when she discovered romance novels written by Black authors featuring Black men and women falling in love...she was hooked.  And from that moment on Gwen was an evangelist for Black Romance.

You have to understand the time in which Gwen was beating this drum. Black Romance was relegated to segregated "African American Interest" areas of bookstores and distribution was the pits on top of that. The romance genre as a whole got next to zero mainstream attention other than sneering, but Black Romance? You could hear a pin drop. Gwen was the first reader I met, the first reviewer I met, who truly championed Black Authors and pushed their names into, at the very least, my consciousness.  And no way was I the only one. Would I have heard of Beverly Jenkins, Francis Ray, Rochelle Alers, Brenda Jackson, and so many others if I hadn't met Gwen?  I don't think so. And I was A. LIBRARIAN.   

Gwen was also kind. In 2000 I was randomly assigned to review the mystery Killing Kin by Chassie West - not knowing at the time of West's romance roots (she wrote under the name Joyce McGill). I loved that book, but was having no luck tracking down the first in the series, Sunrise, or West's stand-alone novel Loss of Innocence. Gwen, loving Black Mystery as much as Black Romance, loaned me copies from her personal collection. A lending library through the US Mail. This is what we resorted to back in the day before eBooks.

Gwen also loved audiobooks and was one of the few lovers of the format I knew back in the days before they were "cool" (we listened to books on cassette y'all. CASSETTE!).  A few years ago she reached out to me about judging The Audies, which I did for a couple of years until the time commitment got to be too much (OMG, it's intense y'all).  We became Facebook friends and I could always count on my Baby Boomer friend Gwen posting great video clips of Prince, Stevie Wonder, and countless Motown musicians.

I met Gwen exactly once in person, at an RWA conference - and no I cannot remember what city or what year. It was one of those things - neither one of us knew the other was going to be there.  She was walking down the hall with a group of women, one of them being Beverly Jenkins. As they walked past she caught sight of my name badge and the mother of all hugs ensued. I'm not sure which one of us squealed loudest.

Gwen passed away earlier this week, in an absolutely preventable tragedy (two other women in her apartment complex also died). I am sad and enraged that this vibrant woman was taken from this Earth and Romancelandia too soon - but we are all richer for the work she did while she was with us.  Rest easy Gwen and know we love you.

To learn more about Gwen's Romancelandia contributions to academia, see this Teach Me Tonight post.

 

ETA 5/23/22: Obituary via Chicago Sun-Times

#TBRChallenge 2022: The Soldier's Rebel Lover

The Book: The Soldier's Rebel Lover by Marguerite Kaye

The Particulars: Historical Regency romance, 2015, Harlequin Historical #1253, Book 2 in duet, Out of print, Available in digital

Why Was It In Wendy's TBR?: Besides the fact that this is an ARC I've had languishing for years?  Kaye's one of my autobuys in the HH line.

The Review: In hindsight I probably should have saved this one for next month's "After the War" theme, but I was up past my bedtime, having just finished a book, and went tripping back into the depths of my Kindle to find a languishing Harlequin Historical for "Tales of Old."  Having (finally) read the first book in the duet last summer, I thought why not finally read book two nearly a year later?

If you have mad love for the Regency era but are looking for something a little outside the usual Ingenue Bangs a Duke, run, don't walk, to find a copy of this one.  Major Finlay Urquhart is the rarest of unicorns - an officer in the British Army whose blood is nowhere near blue and - wait for it - he's Scottish. He's gotten as far as he has because he's very good at his job and has proven himself useful to the big man himself (yes, Wellington).  During the war he was in the Spanish countryside ferreting out a French munitions dump when he meets Isabella Romero.  Isabella is a member of the partisan Spanish resistance and is working with the elusive El Fantasma, a leader among the partisans who has been a useful ally to the British forces. They end up spending the night together (not like that - yet, anyway) and go their separate ways at dawn's early light.

Fast forward two years and Napoleon has been dispatched to Elba, Wellington's political ambitions are rising and he's concerned about El Fantasma coming back to haunt him. The man "knows" things that might not be political expedient for Wellington should they come out. On top of that, El Fantasma is not pleased with the Spanish government backsliding on personal liberties/rights post-war and is still printing pamphlets espousing "undesirable" rhetoric.  The Spanish government is looking for him and Wellington wants him before the Spanish can find him.  So he enlists the help of the hero from the fist book, Jack Trestain, to find The Ghost and bring him back to England.

Jack is in love (hello, first book) and he's not all that keen on Wellington's orders. So he goes to his most trusted friend, Finlay, to carry out the mission.  They're not disobeying Wellington's orders exactly - more like getting creative with the interpretation.  Anyway, Jack doesn't have much information to go on, but Finlay decides that tracking down the beguiling Isabella is a good place to start since she claimed to be in contact with El Fantasma when they met.  He suspects he'll find her family working in the vineyards of the wealthy Romero family, so he poses as a wine merchant.  What he didn't expect is that Isabella IS a Romero - her father having passed just after the war and her conservative brother now running the family business.

Of course they're both surprised to see each other again and their first meeting has to be kept a secret because Isabella's activities during the war cannot get out. I mean, her brother would die of a fit of apoplexy, never mind it would ruin her forever and ever (sure, it was war - but good Lord SHE'S A GIRL!).  But Isabella, she's a smart girl - and Jack's story about being a wine merchant just doesn't add up.  Besides that, it's pretty much lust at first sight.  These two crazy kids can't stop kissing each other, which gets exceedingly more complicated as the El Fantasma problem hits full boil.

Look, none of us are new romance readers here - you can probably guess where this is going.  What may surprise is that this is a fairly quiet story.  It's not action-packed, but more internal angst with the characters struggling with what they know has to be done versus what their hearts want.  I loved that while Isabella is passionate and her passions for her country ran high - once Jack really spells things out for her, the danger, the chickens coming home to roost, she doesn't dismiss him. What he says sinks in. She realizes, dear Lord, that he's right.  These are two characters who have lived through a war and those experiences have shaped them - it's made them very practical, smart and bright.  

Finlay is charming, intelligent, honorable and smitten from the jump.  He's a great hero and well-matched for the unconventional and passionate Isabella.  These two crazy kids, even with the seemingly insurmountable odds against them, you can't help rooting for them to get their happy ending.

A couple of quibbles, the story being quiet as it is with limited action sequences, the pacing did bog down for me at times (internal angst can do that) and the ending of the book was a little too mysterious for my liking.  Yes, there is a happy ending but it's not spelled out in great detail.  No Finlay making kissie faces or Isabella big with child.  Which, come to think of it, a lot you will probably love.  For me the proof is in the pudding, and I like happy endings spelled out in more detail.

This book does stand alone well even with Jack making a couple of small appearances.  It's a Regency era romance featuring a non-Duke hero with no terrible Almack's lemonade or ballroom in sight.  Well worth the time.

Final Grade = B

Review: The Book of Cold Cases

I scored an ARC of The Book of Cold Cases by Simone St. James many months before it's March 2022 publication date and there. it. just. sat. on my Kindle. My eye-ball reading this year has been the pits for a number of reasons, and not even the latest book by an author who is probably now my Top Favorite was pulling me out of my general disinterest.  But finally, I knew it was time. Maybe this would be the book to jump-start me. So I read the first chapter and...didn't pick up my Kindle again for over a week. My plan, she was not going well. But last night I really decided to get serious, hunkered down in bed and proceeded to stay up until 2AM to inhale the book in nearly one gulp.  Which would indicate I loved it, right?  Well....

In 1977 Claire Lake, Oregon was rocked by two random murders. Family men, fine upstanding men, gunned down on an isolated road, strange notes left behind near the bodies. The cops soon zero in on twenty-three rich girl orphan Elizabeth "Beth" Greer. They have no actual evidence against her other than a witness who saw someone resembling her fleeing the second crime scene - oh, and the fact that Beth does not behave like an appropriate twenty-three year old girl. But it's not enough to convict, and Beth is acquitted. She returns to her isolated mansion to live the life of a recluse.

Shea Collins is a receptionist at a doctor's office, which is how she meets Beth Greer. Shea knows she looks familiar and when she realizes who it is, she practically trips over herself to talk to the woman, to try to score an interview. By day Shea is an isolated loner who works a receptionist job going nowhere. By night she runs a popular true crime blog, The Book of Cold Cases, a passionate interest born out of a Shea surviving an attempted abduction when she was a child. Maybe the time is finally right? Maybe Beth sees something in Shea? No matter, she agrees to the interview and soon Shea is visiting Beth in her Creepy AF Mansion, where her mind starts playing tricks on her and everything is not what it seems.

I'm a sucker for a damaged heroine struggling to get through life and determined to solve a mystery, so Shea was right up my alley. Her would-be abductor is in prison, but a parole hearing is coming up - a fact Shea has buried her head in the sand over. She's newly divorced, working a job that's fine but not exactly fulfilling, with a fair amount of guilt and anxiety. The other half of this story is Beth's - starting in the 1960s and building up to the trial and acquittal in the late 1970s.  And here's where we run into a common problem with time-slip novels - I don't like Beth. 

One of the great things about St. James' book is the undercurrent of feminism bubbling below the surface.  The central feminist themes in this book are guilt (good Lord we women have a thing with guilt) and "What does it matter, I'm a girl and nobody is going to listen to me anyway."  Now look, we all know the latter happens.  It happens today in 2022 and it sure as hell was happening in the 1970s - but here's my problem: Beth doesn't even try.  She's stuck. She's a coward. She can't move forward, she can't move back, she can't open her mouth even if it's to save her own skin. And I never bought her logic as to why she kept her mouth shut in 1977.  I get 2022 - because by then her story becomes pretty fantastical - but in 1977?  Yes, guilt and shame but the fact she's not screaming from the the hilltops if only to save her own butt just didn't work for me. Beth became tedious.

What kept me up until 2AM reading was everything else. I liked Shea. The secondary characters are interesting - Shea's sister and brother-in-law, the retired cop who worked the case in 1977, and former cop, now private investigator that Shea develops feelings for (yes, there's a romance but it's very light and secondary).  St. James also excels at writing settings that are frozen in time. The mansion where Beth lives hasn't changed since the 1970s. There's also a ghost (of course there is) who provides suitably creepy atmosphere.  My one solid quibble on the woo-woo is that in the end I felt like the ghost was a short-cut to resolution in place of actual sleuthing.  Should this bother me in a Gothic? Probably not. Does it kind of annoy the mystery reading side of my brain?  Yeah.

What I'm left with is a book that kept me up until 2AM, that entertained me, but that I didn't love. Which isn't really fair. Look, I flat-out loved St. James last two books - so this one had a mountain to climb.  Is it an A+ sort of read that I'll badger people about?  No.  But it's also not "bad."  It's good. And given the current state my eye-ball reading, I'm taking my victory lap.

Final Grade = B

Reminder: #TBRChallenge Day is May 18!

Hey, hey, hey it's that time of the month again - #TBRChallenge time! The next Challenge is set for Wednesday, May 18.  This month's (always) optional theme is Tales of Old.

This was a suggestion that came out of the theme poll I ran last year and there's a lot of ways this one can be interpreted.  Path of least resistance would be go with a historical. Or you could revisit February's theme if you can't get enough fairy tales! Or hey, how about a "retelling" of a classic - like one of the Jane Austen retellings that seem to be, well, everywhere.

But remember, the themes are completely optional.  Maybe you dislike historicals, are bored with retellings and hate fairy tales. In which case I'd call you a monster (Kidding! I'm kidding!). Remember the goal of the challenge has been, and always will be, to read something (anything!) that's been languishing in your mountain range of unread books.

It's not too late to sign up for this year's Challenge!  If you're interested or you just want to follow along with those participating, be sure to check out the TBR Challenge 2022 Information Page.