Review: Her Lady's Honor

Her desires could be trampled by anyone else, simply because Beatrice was the spinster sibling with no rights of her own. She'd often wondered if being married would give her slightly more power, or if she'd end up as a shell of herself like Mother had.

Her Lady's Honor by Renee Dahlia has a back cover blurb that has been haunting my dreams since I first read it months ago.  So I was all set to love this story to the moon and back when I finally settled in to read it.  How did it turn out?  Well, it was kind of a mixed bag.

Lady Eleanor "Nell" St. George, daughter of a second son, niece to a Duke, used her wits and her family connections to join the war effort as a veterinary assistant.  Dreadfully close to the front, it was the job of Nell's unit to tend to the horses, keep them alive, patch them up and send them back into battle.  Now the war is over and Nell is delivering on a promise.  Her captain, gassed and hospitalized, asked Nell to ensure his horse is returned to him in Wales.

Beatrice Hughes is the captain's oldest, and spinster, daughter, seen as nothing more than a servant in her own home.  Her mother is a shell of her former self after her three oldest boys were killed in the war.  The captain is an abusive man who beats his wife and sees little to no value in his girl children.  Her sister Grace is selfish, still bemoaning the death of her fiance overseas, so it's up to Beatrice to keep the farm running, the smaller children cared for while her mother acts the ghost and her father drinks himself into oblivion.  Beatrice's life is not her own - and then in walks Nell, a beautiful, brave adventuress that her father treats respectfully because she's "a Lady."

Dahlia does some interesting things with this book in terms of conflict and the internal character struggles.  Class is a very big deal in this story.  Nell is a Lady.  Nell has privilege.  But her years in the war have made her less polished, a bit more crass, to the point where she's almost dreading going home to her family.  She misses them terribly, she longs for the comfort of home to process her war experiences, but she also recognizes that she's not "Lady Eleanor" anymore.  She's "Nell."  The war has changed her and there's no going back.  But at the end of the day, even with her baggage, Nell has choices.

In contrast, Beatrice has no choices.  She's a heroine trapped in a life that promises nothing but drudgery and uncertainty.  Stuck in place by family obligations, nothing to look forward to - not even dreams.  Because what good are dreams when your reality is so soul-sucking.  She could marry, but who's to say that she wouldn't end up saddled to a man just like her father, and Beatrice is well aware she's a lesbian. There's no questioning of her sexuality. So marriage, even as a possible escape, is out.

Nell has respect for the captain prior to showing up on his doorstep and once she meets his wife and children she has to reconcile the good solider she served under with the abusive man terrorizing his family.  Then Beatrice's mother goes missing and the captain's temperament takes an even more unsavory turn.

It's a weighty book with weighty themes and Dahlia does introduce moments of levity, but they don't always work.  The tone feels off when she does so. Also, while I sympathized with Beatrice a great deal it's still hard to not find her insufferable at times.  Girl, Nell is trying. Nell has issues, and says some callous things that hurt Beatrice.  But then Beatrice pouts and throws Nell's apologies back in her face even when, as the reader, you can tell Nell's apologies are heartfelt. That she's sorry, that she'll do better.  As for the romance, it's OK but not great.  It's very heavy insta-lust and while the chemistry is there, I never quite figured out how they fell in love.  Lust, sure. I got that.  Love?  Not so much.

However the setting is well drawn (the incessant rain, the farm, the small Welsh village...) and the cast of characters vast and interesting.  In a genre that tends to ignore class because it's inconvenient (and readers do seem to love Dukes living happily ever after with governesses...) the fact that Dahlia doesn't ignore it, addresses it even, adds compelling and realistic drama to the romance.  It wasn't everything I wanted it to be, but there was still plenty here for me to admire.

Final Grade = B-

Mini-Reviews: A DNF, A What-Might-Have-Been, and Comfort Reading

I was bound and determined to continue my Maisey Yates glom but terrible timing and realizing too late I was full-up on sexually inexperienced heroines led me to DNF'ing Seduce Me, Cowboy at the 30% mark.  The heroine is a good-girl preacher's daughter who has finally realized that being good has gotten her nowhere in life - so she moves out of her parents' house, quits her secretarial job at Daddy's church, and goes to work for our hero, who is a gruff wrong-side-of-the-tracks sort who has built a construction empire.  She's Never-Been-Kissed Rose-Colored-Glasses, and he's Mr. Grumpy Jaded Cynic.  I just couldn't with this child.  In the wake of everything currently going on in the US (posterity for my blog archives: COVID-19, George Floyd's murder, civil unrest) I just...couldn't with this child.  Plus this was the third sexually inexperienced Yates heroine in a row I'd read and y'all...I just couldn't with this child. Certainly I've read and enjoyed plenty of books featuring Sunshine-y Heroines and Grumpy Heroes, but now is not the time. Her Sunshine-y privilege just made me want to smack her into next Tuesday.

Final Grade = DNF

The Ghosts of Eden Park: the Bootleg King, the Women Who Pursued Him, and the Murder That Shocked Jazz-Age America by Karen Abbott was an audiobook listen I picked up at The Day Job because I like Truth Is Stranger Than Fiction nonfiction books and this is another one of those "Trials of the Century" that have largely faded from American consciousness.  George Remus was a morally bankrupt pharmacist-turned-lawyer in Cincinnati, Ohio who turned Prohibition bootlegger.  He dumped his first wife, married Imogene (who worked in his office - because of course) and ultimately caught the attention of Mabel Walker Willebrandt, who was appointed Assistant US Attorney General under the less than squeaky clean Harding administration. Willebrandt, charged with enforcing Prohibition, had a real problem finding field agents who weren't corrupt, and she thought she'd found her man in Franklin Dodge.  Turns out? Not so much.  Dodge and Imogene entered into an affair while Remus was in prison.  When Remus got out of prison? That's when all hell broke loose.

Abbott had access to extensive court documents - which, fine.  The problem is she focuses on the least interesting guy in the room.  Remus is just like every other megalomaniac sociopath criminal gangster that came before him, and since.  Imogene and Dodge are the story here.  How exactly did these two really hook up? Did Imogene set her sights on Remus from the word go in order to take everything out from under him - or was she pushed into it, either by Dodge or with her just being completely fed up with Remus's abuse?  We'll never know.  I get that Abbott is working with the historical record available to her, which means my final impression is that what I really wanted was a historical fiction account of these characters - not so much nonfiction.

Final Grade = C

Back in late summer 2017 I decided to revisit Marcia Muller's Sharon McCone series. I made great progress in 2018, kept going in 2019, but stalled out when it was time to read While Other People Sleep, the 18th book in the series. Frankly, I got distracted by other books, and I recalled being meh about this one when I first read it.  Turns out my memory isn't completely shot.

Sharon, now with her own agency, finds out through her grapevine that a woman was impersonating her at a cocktail party.  What Sharon hopes was a harmless prank turns out to be much more sinister - this woman is handing out her business cards, having one-night-stands, stealing from said one-night-stands, committing credit card fraud, calling her friends and family, and even is audacious enough to break into Sharon's house.  

This book feels like Muller just didn't have enough to oomph-up the main mystery.  There's other threads here - namely efficient office manager Ted is acting completely out of character, and some added bits about various other cases the firm is working (one is a guy hiding financial assets ahead of a divorce, the other a guy who thinks his girlfriend is cheating on him).  Then there's Sharon's relationship drama - Hy is off to South America, not in contact just as Sharon's life is unraveling, and he's likely in danger.  It gives the book a very scattershot feel for the first half.  It's not until the second half, when Sharon loops in all her colleagues about the woman who is ruining her life and the focus lands firmly there that things smooth out.  Then it turns out to be a decent cat-and-mouse style read.

Not a favorite in this series but I desperately needed Competent Female Porn - and smart, female private detectives are my jam. They're 100% comfort reads for me.  Smart woman solves the mystery, saves the day and justice is served - I mean, what's not to love about that?

Final Grade = C+

Review: Hold Me, Cowboy

Because he was the kind of man a woman could make a mistake with. And she had thought she was done making mistakes.

Hold Me, Cowboy by Maisey Yates gives readers the romance of Sam McCormack, the hermit-like, grumpy older brother of Chase, who got his romance in Take Me, Cowboy.  Chase is the business guy.  Sam is the artist. His iron sculptures of typical western motifs (horses, longhorns, you get the idea....) dot the town of Copper Ridge and are bringing in a nice income for the family business thanks to tourists happy to throw around some cash.  But Sam is in the midst of an artistic crisis - inspiration has fled the building.  I mean how many horses and cows can one guy sculpt?  So he heads to a mountain retreat only to find himself face to face with a woman who drives him to distraction.

Madison West, daughter of the town's most prominent family has an ice queen reputation. Sam still swings by her family's estate to make sure her horses stay in shoes and she's always staring down at him with a haughty attitude - like she's supervising "the help."  Truth is Madison has baggage - the kind of baggage that has kept her celibate for 10 years.  Ten. Years. Well, she's over it. She's rented a cabin up in the mountains for a weekend get-away with a guy named Christopher.  Except snow arrives, Christopher can't get up the mountain, and the electricity goes out in her cabin. So she heads next door for help and runs smack dab into Sam.  These two are like oil and water but they're snowed in, they're both horny - what happens up on the mountain stays up on the mountain AMIRITE?!?

But eventually they head back home and naturally they both still have an itch that needs scratching.  It's 12 days until Christmas - so they agree on a 12 day fling.  Have some fun, scratch the itch, they're totally wrong for each other so it's not like they're going to fall in love or anything.  Ha ha ha ha!  Silly romance couples.  Will they never learn?

I've been reading category romance a long time, and Desire is one of the shorter lines - typically clocking in a smidge over 200 pages.  I've been reading this line for close to 20 years, I know the rhythms.  What Yates does here is kind of fiddle with that rhythm - which didn't entirely work for me at first and it took a little time for me to find my footing.  Basically this book opens with chapter one then boom! Smoking hot sex scene.  Character development, what makes them tick, their baggage, the internal conflicts - Yates eventually gets the reader there but it all comes after the characters decide to hit the sheets.  And of course what happens is that these two people who think they're oil and water, actually have a lot in common - and that's when the story gets interesting.

Yates has a way of sucker-punching the reader with emotional heft in what you think is going to be a quick, sexy beach read.  The reason why Madison has been celibate for 10 years? She was a naive "in love" 17-year-old taken advantage of by a much older man, in a position of power. And when she went looking for a safe haven?  She didn't find one.  On the other foot, Sam has been celibate for 5 years after a tragedy nobody, not even his brother, is aware of.  When all this comes bubbling to the surface in the final half the book, Madison bravely stands in front of Sam and just lets it all out. The anger, the guilt, the blame, and ultimately the realization that she's fallen in love with him.  The question is - will our self-pitying hero pull his head out of his butt in time to realize it.

As great as the emotional stuff was, the pacing on this book didn't work quite as well.  I "get" why the early sex scene but it threw me off my stride for half a minute.  Also, I was confused where this book fit in the Copper Ridge series timeline for a while.  It seems like it's much later after Take Me, Cowboy but then it turns out it's only a few months?  And there's a lot of West family stuff here that I wasn't lost or confused about - but it's kind of dropped into the story, and I think it will work better for those readers who have read the single titles about Madison's various siblings first.  I'm admittedly reading out of chronological order.

But, typical Yates, this was a quick, steamy read that kept me engaged in flipping the pages.  Sexy with a heavy dollop of emotional angst.  The glom continues....

Final Grade = B-

Review: Take Me, Cowboy

I fell for Maisey Yates thanks to her work with Harlequin Presents.  Nobody writes an unapologetic fairy tale as good as Yates and she positively sings in the short contemporary format.  When I pick up one of her category romances, regardless if it entirely works for me or not, I know I'm in the hands of a pro.  My Kindle is positively stuffed with her books for this reason so I've decided a Yates mini-glom was in order.

Take Me, Cowboy is part of her Copper Ridge series and the first book in a spin-off trilogy she set in that world for Harlequin Desire.  There were a few bumpy patches but ultimately the second half of this book hit me right in the solar plexus.

Anna Brown is a tomboy.  She's got two older brothers who essentially raised her after Mom took off and in a bid to get her father to pay attention to her, hell to SEE her, she got very good working on engines.  She's now a heavy machinery mechanic with her own shop on Chase McCormack's land in Copper Ridge, Oregon.  The problem is she's been invited to a chichi party at the estate of the town's most prominent family and her brothers, ass-hats that they are, tease her that she couldn't possibly land a date.  Anna, never one to back down from a challenge and frankly, looking for a change, takes that bet.  She just didn't plan on her BFF, Chase, picking up the mantle.

Chase's parents died in an accident, leaving him and his hermit-like brother Sam running the family ranch, which includes their iron works business.  Chase, haunted by the last words he spoke to his father, is determined to turn the family ranch around and for that? He needs an invite to that fancy party.  Anna is his ticket in.  He just, you know, needs to be her Henry Higgins. Naturally, they both get more than they bargained for.

Friends-to-Lovers with Pygmalion tossed in for extra seasoning - this is basically Wendy Crack.  Anna's hormones have been tripping over Chase for a while now, but he's such a man-whore with "a type," plus Anna has no desire to potentially wreck the one true friendship she has to her name.  Chase is a love 'em and leave 'em type - having his pick of women, enjoying some fun times, but never-ever staying the night or frankly going out on second date.  So yeah, a real prince.  This was the first bumpy patch for me.  The references to Chase's "type" and how he treated those other women. I mean, I get it. Chances are very good those other women knew what they were signing up for, but my tolerance for this sort of hero behavior has ebbed considerably over the years.

The other bump was Anna's lack of experience.  She's slept with one guy, exactly one time.  She doesn't see what all the fuss is about when it comes to sex.  Look, I get it.  Anna's emotional baggage is such that I understood why she wasn't running through men like Kleenex but Chase, inevitably, goes all gooey thinking about her lack of experience once they start "doing it" and ugh - can we set this trope on fire already?  On the bright side, Anna isn't dead below the waist and has experienced plenty of orgasms on her own prior to Chase and his magic doodle arriving on the scene.

So what did I like?  Everything else.  Anna is a straight shooter with an underlying vulnerability that I find very appealing in a romance heroine.  The world isn't kind to plain-speaking women and underneath all that Anna has her insecurities like we all do.  I also loved how brave she was.  OMG, The Black Moment in this book is amaze-balls.  Anna, straight shooter that she is, just lays it all out there.  Opens herself up, pours out all her vulnerabilities, plainly tells Chase how and what she feels and naturally he's a thundering, scaredy-pants jackass about it.  Anna is an effin' rockstar.

That's what makes this book for me.  Yates can write a jackass hero with the best of 'em (hey, she writes Presents after all!) but it's her heroines that keep me coming back for more. Because her heroines give as good as they get and don't back down.  Anna, will you marry me?

Final Grade = B

Review: Slow Dance with the Best Man

I've said it before, I'll say it again - I'll suspend a lot of disbelief when there's a skilled writer driving the bus.  I'm not sure where Sophie Pembroke has been all my category reading life, but if Slow Dance with the Best Man is any indication I need to go diving into my Kindle to see what else I have languishing there.

Eloise Miller has spent a lifetime fading into the background thanks to an actress mother (big fish, small pond of local theater) who had a habit of falling in love with her leading men, humiliating Eloise's father (who always took her back, natch) and made Eloise the target of local mean girl, Melissa Sommers.  Well, Melissa Sommers is now an "actress" - or at least another Hollywood pretty face ("actress" might be overstating things) and she's engaged to "actor" Riley Black and has a giant ring to prove it.  Now Melissa is back in her small English hometown, at Morwen Hall, the Gothic manor estate that is now a world-class hotel to get married and run everyone ragged.  Eloise worked there as a teen and once she finished university she went back to her hometown and is vying for the manager role.  Pulling off Melissa's wedding will be a serious feather in her cap, assuming she can keep from strangling the bride.

Noah Cross got his start in traveling Shakespearean theater troupes, but these days he's the personification of superficial leading man - shallow action movies where lots of stuff blows up and parts that play heavily on his charm.  He feeds into this with superficial relationships and being seen about town with an impressive variety of pretty faces.  But he's getting restless and his agent has sent him a script for a part he would kill to land.  The problem? It's a serious movie, a serious part, and Noah has been placed in his typecast box.  So when his agent somehow manages to get a video call set up with the script's writer and director, she makes Noah promise to keep a low profile and behave himself.  The problem being he keeps getting distracted by a certain pretty hotel manager....

This is a light, fluffy concoction set around The Wedding Of The Moment that ticks all the boxes.  You've got Melissa, a villain you can't help but hate, and a main couple both hiding behind past baggage neither has begun to unpack.  Given Eloise's childhood she thinks of actors in much the same way as cockroaches in a kitchen, and Noah has been playing Mr. Superficial Good Time in response to a past tragedy he's refused to deal with.  However once these two lock eyes, they both recognize that there's something between them - something that frankly scares the heck out of both of them.

How well a reader enjoys this story depends entirely on how much they can suspend their disbelief.  Noah and Eloise fall for each other right away and the flirting kicks in immediately.  They fight the attraction until they can't any longer, tumble into bed, and then do a disaster job of trying to keep the fling (which isn't really a fling but they're both deluding themselves at this point) on the down low.  Until, of course, it all comes tumbling out into the open.  We're talking a matter of days here.  So the reader has to buy into the idea of a Hollywood star falling in love with A Nobody in a matter of days when they both have baggage that have kept them from "serious relationships" for some time.

I could do that, mostly because I was utterly charmed by the story, the couple and the sparks shooting off between them.  The Romance line is an on-the-page low heat line but that doesn't mean the books can't sizzle - and this one does, thanks to Noah's roguish charm and Eloise's push back to his flirting.  The sex scenes may be closed door but believe you me, I had no doubt these two were hot for each other in the all the right ways.  It also doesn't hurt matters that Pembroke can write.

A new-to-me-author, an enjoyable romance, a pure fun escapist delight.  Now I'm off to scour my TBR for more Sophie Pembroke....

Final Grade = B+

Mini-Review: Billionaire, Boss...Bridegroom?

I've spent the first quarter of 2020 doing what I call "obligation reading" and then hit a slump at the tail end thanks to work stress and COVID-19.  Well, I finally got past those obligation books and the first stop on Wendy's Going To Read What She Wants meant comfort read.  The Harlequin Romance line is my go-to for comfort reading. The books just feel like warm hugs to me.  So I went diving deep into my Kindle and pulled up Billionaire, Boss...Bridegroom? by Kate Hardy.

Bella Faraday was working as a freelance graphic designer until a traitorous boyfriend cleaned out her savings account and her biggest client went bankrupt. She's just landed a job with an independent music label in London when she gets a call from her sister. Her even-keeled, totally responsible sister who has just called off her engagement.  Bella is riding to the rescue when she hops in the nearest taxi only to discover it's already occupied. Um, by her new boss - Hugh Montcrieff. 

Hugh is the youngest of five and the only one not working for the family's brokerage firm.  He's set to head to the country house to celebrate one of his brothers' engagements - but he's not relishing more pressure to give up his record label "hobby" or to finally "settle down."  He's charmed and taken by Bella and thinks she could be the answer to his problem.  His proposal? Spend the weekend with his family and play the role of totally unsuitable new girlfriend.

Hugh suffers from an abundance of what I call Romance Hero Logic. He's not the progeny of Evil Romance Novel Family Genes, his family is legit lovely - so why he just doesn't, oh I don't know, TALK to his parents...but then we wouldn't have a plot contrivance.  Bella basically says as much to him but agrees to the charade.  The problem, of course, is that's she's bloody terrible at it. She may show up wearing outrageous clothes, but she can't hide her caring and charming temperament.

I liked Bella tremendously and it's the kind of warm hug atmosphere I'm a sucker for in Harlequin Romance.  But this hero y'all.  Besides the Romance Hero Logic, he gives the heroine a dreaded ultimatum at the end all because his last relationship flamed out when he mixed business with pleasure.  So one of THOSE heroes.  Bella, blessedly, doesn't cave to his stupid ultimatum even if she does love him and her heart is shattered.  He eventually realizes what an idiot he is and we get our happy ending. Although I'm left with the feeling that he doesn't deserve Bella or his lovely family for that matter. What a butthead.

But as a comfort read during a time when I desperately needed one, this fits the bill.  I just feel like Bella deserved better.

Final Grade = C+

Review: The Sun Down Motel

Hi Future Wendy, it's Past Wendy. I'm writing to you from August 25, 2019.  About a week ago your mind got blown when Berkley actually approved your NetGalley request for The Sun Down Motel by Simone St. James. The book isn't actually out until February 18, 2020 (um, that's tomorrow for you Future Wendy...) but Past Wendy knew that as much as she would end up regretting it later, she had to read this book Right. Now.  Why regrets?  Because it would mean just having to wait that much longer for St. James' next book.  Past Wendy, having read this book 6 months before the release date is now waiting 6 months longer than Future Wendy for the next book (got all that?).  But seriously, I had to read this book right away.  And, of course, it was all the happy book noises you can imagine.

In 1982, 20-year-old Vivian "Viv" Delaney runs away from her small Illinois town to escape an overbearing mother.  Her parting shot? I'm going to New York City to be an actress!  Where Viv ends up is in upstate Fell, New York.  The town is a bit dark, a bit odd, but something about it speaks to Viv, so she stays.  She gets a job as the night clerk at The Sun Down Motel, one of those seedy around the edges places that never realized it's full potential. However, like Fell itself, there's something not quite right about the motel.  There are unexplained events, ghosts that walk the halls, and given how small Fell is, they sure do have a problem with missing and dead girls.  Then, one night, Viv disappears...without a trace.

Fast forward to 2017 and Viv's niece, Carly Kirk, has landed in Fell.  Carly was born after her aunt's disappearance.  She's presumed dead, but a body was never found and her death left a chasm in the family.  Carly's mother, Viv's younger sister, succumbed to cancer, haunted by her older sister's disappearance.  20-year-old Carly, still grieving for her mom, not sure what she wants to do with her life, decides a break from college is in order. What she knows for sure is she wants answers.  How does a pretty 20-year-old in a small town just vanish? And her body never recovered? It's not right, and Carly decides she's going to go to Fell and get some answers.  She's not even in town for a day before she finds herself a roommate (in her aunt's old apartment no less!) and a job working the night shift at the Sun Down - still just as haunted 30 years later.

St. James' work generally skirts around the fringes of "romantic elements" and while Carly does get a "love interest" over the course of the story, it's very much a secondary element with the suspense and Gothic setting taking center stage.  As creepy as I thought St. James' last book was, this one is even creepier.  As in, it left me feeling unsettled - which having cut my teeth on Nancy Drew and reading Patricia Cornwell by the age of 16 well...unsettling Wendy takes some doing.  Fell is a fictional town, but the upstate New York setting is inspired, the town locked away in time (Carly finds herself pulling old newspapers at the library because the archives haven't been digitized yet) with spotty cell reception, and seriously, No Name Motels are right up there with vans that don't have any side windows.  Creepy.

But the genius of this story is how St. James centers it on the female gaze.  This is, by far, the most interesting female-centric suspense novel I've read in a while because ALL the female characters are interesting, multi-faceted and calling the shots. Viv, realizing nothing is being done about all the murdered women that keep turning up in Fell decides to play amateur sleuth and...solves it.  The cops cannot seem to find a connection between the victims, but she does.  Carly, grieving and determined, wants answers to what happened to Aunt Viv, which means retracing her steps and stumbling across the same mystery of the murdered women.  There's Alma, the only female cop on the Fell police force, dealing with rampant 1982 sexism on the job, and relegated to the night shift because...of course she is.  She's an unvarnished straight-shooter but also kind of sly and slick, which I tend to gravitate towards in female cop and PI characters.  And then there's Marnie, a photographer getting by, occasionally doing freelance for the cops at crime scenes, and entering Viv's orbit because she was hired to tail a married woman meeting her lover at the Sun Down.  These are also women cognizant of the road blocks they face because, men.  The 1982 story line in particular.  It's enraging, but riveting to read about the women circumventing these obstacles thrown in their way.

If I have any gripes about this story it's that I felt the beginning was a little slow to start and the ending a little too rushed - but it's creepy, it's compelling, and it's filled with dynamite female characters working to solve the mystery and find justice.  It's not my favorite of St. James' oeuvre (which is basically splitting hairs anyway) but it's so very good.  Dark, compelling, creepy, the kind of book that keeps you up at night flipping the pages.

Final Grade = A

Guest Review: Good Girls Lie

Today the Bat Cave is hosting guest reviewer Janet Webb who many of you know from her writing at Heroes & Heartbreakers (RIP), Criminal Element, and as a longtime resident of Romancelandia. Welcome Janet! 

The title Good Girls Lie is a play on words since the girls who attend The Goode School in Marchburg, Virginia are bound by a strict honor code: the stricture against lying is listed first. The school and the town are both fictional although J.T. Ellison is an alumna of Randolph-Macon Woman’s College in Lynchburg, Virginia (class of ’91). Ellison said she has “woven pieces of the school’s legends and tragedies into this story, all put through my own creative lens.”

The first chapter is entitled The Hanging. Ellison paints a horrifying picture—the opposite of how you might imagine a pastoral, purposeful prep school.

The girl’s body dangles from the tall, iron gates guarding the school’s entrance. A closer examination shows the ends of a red silk tie peeking out like a cardinal on a winter branch, forcing her neck into a brutal angle. She wears her graduation robe and multicolored stole as if knowing she’ll never see the achievement. 

The scene quickly shifts back in time to the arrival of Ash Carlisle, a new student from Oxford, England. Dean Westhaven welcomes Ash into her inner sanctum and asks her over a perfectly prepared cup of Oolong tea if she remembers the words of the Honor Pledge. Ash dutifully recites it.

“I will hold myself and my fellow students to the highest standards. I pledge absolute honesty in my work and my personal relationships. I will never take a shortcut to further my own goals. I will not lie, I will not cheat, I will not steal. I will turn myself in if I fail to live up to this obligation, and I will encourage those who break the code in any way to report themselves as well. I believe in trust and kindness, and the integrity of this oath. On my honor.” 

A classic mystery trope is the stranger entering an environment that is rich with long-standing traditions and customs. What is more hide-bound than an elite girls boarding-school? Think of The Official Preppy Handbook: fitting in at a boarding school is all about knowing and following the unspoken rules, be it clothing, manners, or the all-important who you know and where you’re from. Ash is worried “about fitting in with the daughters of the DC elite—daughters of senators and congressmen and ambassadors and reporters and the just plain filthy rich,” but she is “more than” pretty and as for her intelligence, she’s off the charts: “she’s both book smart and street-smart, the rarest of combinations.” Whilst Ash muses about her acceptability in a new environment, Ellison lays down a troubling marker.

Despite her concerns, if she sticks to the story, she will fit in with no issues. The only strike against her, of course, is me, but no one knows about me. No one can ever know about me.

What could this mean? Why does Dean Westhaven have to remind herself to call Ash by the last name Carlisle, instead of Carr? Troubling information like this is meted out in trickles but what really informs Good Girls Lie is the dichotomy between everything the school publicly represents and the actions of the girls behind the gates. The Goode School is known colloquially as a “Silent Ivy,” a sobriquet that plays on the school’s phenomenal acceptance rate at the Ivy Leagues. Of each class of graduates, “a full 90 percent go traditional Ivy.”

It is a laudable record. Goode accepts only the best, guarantees a serious return on investment. And in turn, expects blood, sweat, and tears. And future endowments. Elitism costs. 

“Blood, sweat, and tears.” That’s a rather harsh description of high school, albeit a demanding girls-only prep school but Ash discovers the truth of it early on. Exhausted after dragging a huge suitcase up two flights of stairs, she looks at her information packet to find out the number of her room. It’s 214. A group of girls “point to the left as one, a flock of helpful, smiling little birds.” At the end of the hall, she finds the number written on a piece of paper, taped to a door. It’s a thoroughly gothic introduction to boarding school life.

Steeling myself, I open the door into…darkness. A heady, musty smell, overlaid with bleach. Across the room are two cobwebbed windows covered in smeary, dotted dirt. The floor is draped in tarps; neatly stacked ladders line the far wall, a row of paint cans in front of them. A fluorescent light swings from the ceiling. When I flip the switch, it comes to life with an ominous crackle. 

That’s not all Ash hears—outside the door are “peals of laughter.” Really? “Oh, ha, bloody ha,” she thinks. But isn’t hazing of new students traditional? Or is this an indication of how things are going to be? Ash’s insularity, combined with her British background, make it impossible for her to escape notice. She is quickly targeted by her fellow students, particularly Becca, a member of the senior class. Becca is a natural leader, luminous, intelligent, and brilliant at blowing hot and cold at Ash. Becca and her followers quickly uncover the mystery of Ash’s mysterious background although Ellison deftly inserts clues that indicate that there’s much more to Ash than meets the eye.

The “hanging” marks a shift in the plot, from uncomfortable scenes of bullying and competition to dark secrets and downright terror. A paragraph describing Good Girls Lie takes on a frightening resonance: “In a world where appearances are everything, as long as students pretend to follow the rules, no one questions the cruelties of the secret societies or the dubious behavior of the privileged young women who expect to get away with murder.” Getting away with murder in this venue means more than scamming someone or something and getting off scot free—at The Goode School, murder is brutal and inexplicable. Good Girls Lie is a complicated, absorbing tale that is painted in morally ambiguous shades of grey, not black and white.

Review: Ride the High Lonesome

I love historical westerns, and yes, I'm self-aware enough to recognize that the sub genre is problematic. While westerns, be they contemporary or historical, have celebrated somewhat of a rebirth, riding on the coattails of the small town contemporary boom - I've always preferred the darker and grittier westerns.  Westerns where the main couple tends to be in peril (a lot).  Possibly because even if the author doesn't implicitly spell it out, the reader is confronted with the problematic nature of the sub genre - even if it is only found in between the lines of the text.

Ride the High Lonesome by Rosanne Bittner is the start of a new series set post-Civil War in "outlaw country" where men make their own law and live by a code (be it good or bad - the lines blur an awful lot).  Kate Winters lost her husband in the war and left Indiana to travel to Oregon to live with her brother-in-law's family.  However, the wagon train she is traveling with is attacked in route, and Kate is the only survivor, hiding under the rubble of a destroyed wagon.  She emerges to find her fellow travelers dead, with no supplies, no horse, and no idea where the heck she is.  So she starts walking and happens upon a band of men stringing up another man to hang him.  They're going to steal the guy's cattle, and would have taken his horse - accept the horse fights back, they decide to not dally, and take off with the herd.  Kate still has no idea where she is, where the nearest town is, but she needs that horse and the meager supplies still strapped to it.  That's when she notices the hanging man isn't dead.  Yes, she's desperate - but she's not a monster.  Plus, she has no idea where she is. She weighs the odds and cuts him down.

Luke Bowden is a might cranky. Naturally our boy wants his cattle back, his money back, oh and to put a bullet in every one of the men who tried to murder him by doing a piss-poor job of hanging him.  He doesn't need a woman along for the ride, but he's also indebted to her.  Plus the outlaws are more than likely heading to the nearest town to sell off the herd - so he can deliver her to civilization and get his revenge.

What follows is a road romance with all the trigger warnings you can possibly think of.  Nobody is writing westerns like Bittner anymore (if they are, please leave me suggestions in the comments section!).  Over the course of this story you have Luke almost dying by hanging, Kate nearly getting raped twice (well, multiple times really since the second instance would have been a gang rape...), and more dead bodies than I can keep track of: 5, 6, 7, 8?  I lost count.  It's a western set in a violent time, with the shadow of the Civil War shadowing everything.

I can roll with all of this, even as I recognize that the violence in the plot will be a sticking point for some readers.  No, my issues with this book are entirely based on writing and characterization.  The dialogue is stilted at times and the writing falls into repetition.  Kate is a heroine that's hard to get a bead on.  I started out loving her.  She's vulnerable, but recognizes that shit has to get done - or else she's going to die.  She's a "good woman" but she saves a man from hanging, fights off her would-be rapists, and is pretty brave in the face of getting stranded in outlaw country with her only help being a man she needs to trust, but doesn't know if she quite can.  But then she's also a former Civil War nurse who doesn't do much to doctor up a bullet wound she receives until Luke rides in at the 11th hour to save her.  She also turns clingy and needy which I "get" but found annoying compared to those times when she sucks it up and barrels through a situation because she doesn't have much choice.

Luke is your prototypical Alpha western hero who lives by a code even though he skirts around the edges of the law when it suits him.  He takes no issue with killing a man, but only when he feels said man does something to warrant it.  And he's bound by honor to protect Kate because she saves his life.  But, and wouldn't you know it, he was also done wrong by a woman so he's got trust issues, and at the end he does something for no other reason than to "test" Kate's faithfulness that had me wanting to find the nearest cast iron skillet and beat him over the head until he was bloody and unconscious.  Frankly Kate sticking by his side, saving him from hanging, and practically mooning over him in the final chapters should have given him a clue. No, this thundering jackass has to "test" her some more.

Sigh.

So where does this leave me?  I was sitting at a B- for most of this book.  It was slow in spots, the repetition got repetitious and the dialogue was a bit stilted for my liking - but it was fine and frankly nobody writes westerns like this anymore.  But for as brave as Kate is over the course of events in this story, there's an underlying thread of Rescue Fantasy and adherence to traditional gender roles which were hard to ignore because there's zero subtlety.  Kate Is Woman, Ergo Luke Protects Kate Because He Is Big Bad Man.  Kate Stares Lovingly As He Rides Away and Sits Her Ass On Shelf To Pine.

Luke's "test" and Kate simply resigning herself to a life of lonely waiting while he rides off with vague promises to return put a bullet between the eyes of that B-.  Yes, there's a happy ending and yes, I'll read the next book in the series, because of course I will.  Why?  Because nobody else is writing westerns like this anymore.

Final Grade = C-

Review: Herons Landing

There are two types of contemporary romance readers: those who turn up their nose at category and novellas because they're "too short" and those who look at single titles and think, "Dear Lord, how much filler crap am I going to have to wade through to get to the good bits?"  If you've been following this blog for any length of time you'll know I'm definitely the latter.  And yet?  I still occasionally dip my toes into the single title contemporary pool looking for...I'm not sure exactly.  One that doesn't make me feel like I'm wading through filler, I guess?  Herons Landing by JoAnn Ross is the first book in her Honeymoon Harbor series that sort of read like it was probably spun off another series.  While there's plenty of "filler" in this story, I'm here to tell you that if you love world-building and you love small town contemporaries?  This one is very, very good.  Even a hater like me has to recognize.

Brianna Mannion is in the hospitality business, a concierge at a ritzy Las Vegas resort/casino. She's used to the comically bizarre,  but after a run-in with a guest she not-so-lovingly dubs "Dr. Dick," she quits her job and heads home to Honeymoon Harbor, a quaint small town in the Pacific Northwest.  "Dr. Dick" was the final straw and when she sees a grand Victorian home that she's been obsessed with her entire life, Herons Landing, up for sale?  She takes it as a sign.  She's going home to open her own bed & breakfast - and for that she needs a contractor to help her restore the old gal to her former glory.

The best contractor in town is Seth Harper, her former childhood crush.  Like, serious crush.  Brianna has been pining after this guy since she was in short pants.  But Seth only had eyes for her BFF, Zoe - who went to nursing school on the Army's dime and was killed in a hospital bombing in Afghanistan.  That was two years ago and Seth is still heavily grieving. His routine of getting through the days, weeks and months since Zoe's death is so consistent that the town residents can set their watches by what Seth is doing at that moment.  Seth is at Quinn Mannion's brewery picking up dinner, so it must be 6:00PM on a Tuesday.  He's still got Zoe's car in the garage.  This guy might as well have "no fly zone" stamped on his forehead.

Brianna was Zoe's BFF and Seth is still mourning - so they share in that grief.  But as they begin to work on Herons Landing they are reminded of how much they think alike, how much they have in common, and naturally what happens in romance novels starts happening between Seth and Zoe.

Look, I'm going to be brutally honest.  If you strip out all the small town "stuff" from this book the romance between Seth and Zoe is essentially category romance length.  Like, probably the length of a Harlequin Desire (around 200 pages).  It's kind of frustrating actually because while I do think the author does eventually get there with the ending, I wanted a lot more of Seth working through his grief to see Brianna standing on the other side.  In the end I have every confidence that Seth is ready to move on - that he'll always love Zoe - but Brianna is a new happiness, a promising future if only he can get past his survivor's guilt.  I just wanted more lead-up getting to that point.

Ah, but that small town "stuff."  I have a low tolerance for such shenanigans, often suffering from cutesy overload - but Ross's world-building is so, so good.  Her characters are interesting without being overly saccharine.  She teases that some characters have a "past" that could become fodder for later books.  Plus she includes some added drama with Seth's parents - whose marriage has hit the skids. It's really clever - showing another side to Seth's character through his parents' pasts.

It did feel overly long to me at times and I did feel the pacing (especially early going) took a while to get anywhere - but oh how it pays off in the end.  Because y'all know what happens right?  Seth is a jackass, Brianna gets her heart broken, and the emotional aftermath that plays out is gut-wrenching.  Like cold-hearted Wendy almost leaked out some tears while listening to the final chapters of the audiobook gut-wrenching.

So, yeah.  Look.  I'm probably never going to be a reader to fully embrace long-ass single title contemporaries and I've never completely gotten on board with the small town contemporary craze - but folks, if this is your jam?  This book is a good one.  And the set-up of the series is also very promising.  Even I'm invested, which is saying something.

Final Grade = B

Review: The Lady's Guide to Celestial Mechanics

Historical romance is my first love in the genre, but over the years the sub genre has evolved, my tastes have changed, and I just need something "more."  What that "more" is isn't so easily defined and when I try to explain it I end up sounding like a ninny.  So I haven't really tried.  Well, after (finally) reading The Lady's Guide to Celestial Mechanics by Olivia Waite - I think I've finally figured it out.  I'm here for feminist historical romance, a social justice warrior sort of romance pushing back on the patriarchy - but I also still want something that reads fairly true-to-live.  It was a hard life for women who openly defied male-dominated society at large.  Oh sure, women did it - but it was never easy nor did it always end happily.  That's what made Waite's debut with Avon stand out for me.  These are two very unconventional women who are more than aware of the men standing in their way, and while there's uncertainty, and even doubt at times, they forge on.  They hit road blocks, they are dismissed and belittled, but they forge on.  And the whole thing reads like a bloody historical and never once feels anachronistic or silly.  Oh, and it's a romance so I get a happy ending.

I. Want. More.

Lucy Muchelney is sitting in her small country church watching the love of her life, Priscilla, get married to a man.  Worse yet, Lucy grew up with and likes the guy.  She's devastated, heartbroken, the worst of it being that Pris felt so little regard for her and their love that Lucy found out about the engagement when the banns were read in the bloody church!  Upon return home to the house she shares with her artist brother, Lucy discovers a letter from the Countess of Moth, who is looking for someone to translate a revolutionary French astronomy text.  Having aided her dead father's work for years, Lucy knows she's the gal for the job - and heads off to London posthaste.  She figures the Countess will have a harder time saying no if Lucy is literally standing on her doorstep.

Her not-dearly departed husband no longer holding her hostage with his mercurial moods, Catherine St. Day is looking forward to a life of quiet solitude - just as soon as she can aid the Polite Science Society in getting this French text translated.  When Lucy shows up on her doorstep Catherine braces herself, seeing the same determined tilt of her chin and the gleam in her eyes that reminds her of her dead husband - a comparison that is anything but good.  But Catherine admires the girl's moxie, takes one look at her outdated country wardrobe and thinks, "sure, why not."  Having corresponded with Lucy and her father for years, Catherine thinks she's surely as capable as anyone else.  But when Catherine presents her to the Society, and Lucy is callously dismissed out of hand in an appalling manner, Catherine decides to pull her money on their project and back Lucy all on her own. 

What I loved about this book, besides the fact that it's a historical that feels like a historical while still giving the reader "unconventional" heroines, is the romance is a slow burn.  Lucy very comfortably identifies as a lesbian, but she's also aware of the society she lives and has to operate in.  She simply cannot just walk up to Catherine and say, "I think you're hot - how would you feel about a torrid love affair?"  Catherine, for her part, is a widow and took a male lover after her husband's death (which did not end well), and it's only after spending time with Lucy, getting to know her, and the slow burn chemistry begins to smolder, then ignite, that the characters land in bed together.  Waite didn't put the cart before the horse, which I cannot tell you how refreshing that was to read.

I also loved how both women are smart, logical, have dreams - but also are realists.  They are well aware the obstacles that are in their path, acknowledge them even, and then like all resourceful women that have come before and since, look for ways to maneuver around them.  This is, quite possibly, the most startlingly feminist romance I've read in a long time that didn't feel like overblown wish fulfillment.  Like, seriously - I felt like this could have happened (heck, it probably did and I just don't realize it - that's how true it all felt).

There is a lot of science talk in this book, and coming from someone who took four years of college to get past three measly science requirements (obviously not a subject I'm keen on, nor terribly good at...), none of it flew over my head or made my eyes glaze over.  My only real quibble with this book is that the pacing of the conflict ebbed and flowed.  While I appreciated the slow burn of the romance, there are portions of the story that sag a bit.  I carried on through them because I was very invested in the characters, but the second half of the story is back-loaded with most of the conflict.

But, quibbles.  It's a lovely romance, featuring lovely characters, and a great sense of time, place and history.  It's also the kind of book where I wanted a romance for darn near every secondary character - that's how much I enjoyed this world Waite has, obviously, lovingly created and brought to life.

Final Grade = B+

Review: The Shape of Night

I was really excited when I first heard about The Shape of Night by Tess Gerritsen.  As much as I love the Rizzoli/Isles series (the books, the TV show...not so much), the last book, while a good suspense novel, felt regressive in terms of character development.  So a "break" to return to her romantic suspense roots felt like a smart move to me - and let's be honest, I am here for Gothic anything every day of the week and twice on Sundays.  So how was this?  Well, it's different - I'll give it that.  It was a very mixed read for me during the first half, but it's compelling and it will certainly irritate the heck out of Eww, No Romance Cooties In My Dead Body Books brigade - which I take perverse pleasure in because...well, I'm a spiteful old cow.

Ava Collette is running away from Boston after Something Bad Happens, and heads to a quiet small town in Maine to rent an old coastal manor named Brodie's Watch.  Built by a sea captain, Jeremiah Brodie, who went down with his ship, the isolated manor has a color history including rumored sightings of the ghost of Captain Brodie, the death of a teenage girl one Halloween night, and a previous tenant who hastily left town with two months left on her lease. 

Ava's not in residence for long before she's experiencing encounters with Captain Brodie, who seems to see directly into her soul, revealing her deepest, darkest and most shameful secrets.  As she falls in love with the house and under the spell of a ghostly apparition, Ava's grasp on what is real and what is not starts to unravel, leading her to confront her own past and solve the mystery of Brodie's Watch, a house that has a history of claiming the lives of its female occupants.

The big hurdle for me was Captain Brodie who is not only a ghost but a BDSM ghost.  Yes, you just read that sentence.  The whole thing felt hokey, silly.  But, as a general rule, my enjoyment of supernatural, let alone sexy supernatural, is pretty low.  A lesser writer, one I don't have a history with (I've read A LOT of Gerritsen over the years), would have been on a shorter leash.  So I stuck with this, and in the end, Gerritsen puts a spin on the whole BDSM angle that worked for me.  Your mileage may vary.

What worked better for me were the side subplots that also added to the mystery and tension of the story.  Namely, why is Ava running away from Boston, what really happened to the previous tenant who left behind personal belongings, and the story behind Brodie's Watch as a whole.  Ava follows the recent trend of suspense novel heroines who hits the bottle liberally, leading her to making terrible life choices (see: leaving Boston) and questioning her sanity. 

My two firm quibbles with this story is that Ava's drinking problem, while eventually addressed, never really gets more than a surface treatment and the mystery of why she fled Boston is revealed but I suspect some readers will be annoyed that it's never fully aired out.  Revealing more than that is a Huge Honkin' Spoiler - but suffice it to say that Ava is party to something Really Not Cool and I suspect it will be a bridge too far for some.  Hey, everybody makes mistakes.  Everybody has regrets.  But Ava's is a doozey.  Boy howdy.

Which makes it sound like I didn't like this book.  I did.  Is it perfect?  No.  But it's haunting and compelling and even with my quibbles it's a story that has lingered with me days after finishing.  Which, given the amount of books I've read over the course of my lifetime?  Is saying something.

Final Grade = B

Epic Ranty Spoiler Review: The Witch of Willow Hall

Buckle in kiddies, Auntie Wendy is about to unload on The Witch of Willow Hall by Hester Fox. If the title of this blog post hasn't clued you in, there is no way I can talk about this book without giving ALL the spoilers, including trigger warnings.

I cut my reading teeth on Gothics, loving mysteries and female protagonists as I do.  And while I'm happy to see more Gothic stories offered of late, for the love of all that is holy can we lay off the incest subplots?  Because this is the second Gothic I've read in the past month with incest in it.  Consider that trigger warning #1.

Lydia Montrose's family leaves Boston to settle in backwater New Oldbury in 1821 thanks to rumors surrounding her family.  Those rumors, as we find out later, involve her beyond vile older sister Catherine and their brother, Charles, having an incestuous relationship.  Spoiler alert: they did and it was consensual.  Anyway, Charles has been shipped off somewhere and if you think there's going to be a big showdown with him at some point in the story you are mistaken.  He firmly stays off the page and we never know what really happens to him other than he writes Catherine to say he's in lurve with a dancer.  Because of course he is.

Anyway, the Montrose family is made up of Lydia the middle daughter with "powers" she doesn't realize she has because her idiot mother won't tell her about them even though said "powers" run in the family.  There have been past episodes in Lydia's life (like when she hurt a bully who murdered her pet kitten - consider that trigger warning #2) but she's such a dolt she conveniently keeps blocking out the memories. Catherine is literal trash who does everything in her power over the course of the story to make Lydia's life miserable.  There's the plot moppet younger sister, Emeline, who is the very reason why the term "plot moppet" was coined - but never fear...she dies.  Consider that trigger warning #3.  But she's so freakin' annoying you'll be glad she's dead. (Yeah, I said it).  Mommy Dearest walks around in a denial-ridden depressed haze and Daddy Dearest is All Business All The Time and had the house built in New Oldbury to be a country home.  Well, now they're living in it and he's got a new business partner, John Barrett, who Lydia is smitten with, he's smitten with her but because this book is already highly annoying the conflict between them is basically one Big Misunderstanding after another because THEY JUST WON'T TALK TO EACH OTHER!

Lydia is the protagonist and is not only in denial about who she is, but she's the type of self-sacrificing heroine who will bend over backwards to "protect" those she loves.  Why she loves any of these vile people is beyond me, but she spends 99% of the book protecting Catherine from herself because, surprise!  Catherine is pregnant with their brother's child.  Consider this trigger warning #4.  So Catherine is literally throwing herself at every man with a pulse to get a proposal (not easy in New Oldbury), including John Barrett, and just being the worst sort of toxic person you can imagine.  And yet?  LYDIA KEEPS HELPING THIS SACK OF HUMAN GARBAGE!  There's a bunch of nonsense about protecting her frail mother as well - but seriously?  The woman who willfully closes her eyes to the sack of garbage one daughter is and does nothing to help her other daughter understand the "powers" she inherited?  Sorry if I fail to understand the need to protect Mommy Dearest.

If you're thinking that Catherine will eventually see the error of her ways or that Lydia will grow a spine - let me assure you: they do not.  Catherine goes on to miscarry the baby (consider that trigger warning #5) and begs Lydia to "take care of it" - which she does.  Then Catherine recalls a previous moment with Lydia offered her tea - only to act strangely and spill it on the carpet before Catherine can take a sip.  Yes, Lydia concocted a tea with herbs that can "take care of such things" but chickened out at the last minute.  Catherine then thinks that Lydia murdered her precious love child, which she conceived WITH THEIR BROTHER (!!!!) and ramps up her campaign to make Lydia's life miserable.  And Lydia continues to ineffectually wring her hands from the sidelines.

Look, I get it.  It's 1821.  Women didn't have a lot of agency.  But what women could and did do was find ways to manipulate the societal mores of the time to get where they wanted/needed to go.  Lydia is nothing more than a reactionary heroine who refuses to take proactive action towards making her own life better.  Instead she coddles a plot moppet younger sister and distant mother, cleans up messes left behind by her VILE older sister, and pines after John Barrett. Then to have her willfully ignore the unexplained episodes in her life (her "powers") is just...OMG, can she just die already?  Because I can't.

Since I've already spoiled everything, why not the ending?  Lydia and John do end up together.  The villain (no, not brother Charles or Catherine - it's Lydia's former fiance' and Daddy's former business partner's son!) is vanquished, and Catherine leaves the country to take her vile act on the road but that's OK because Lydia muses that she hopes her sister finds happiness (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!).  And Charles, the brother who likes to have sex with his own sister and leave her to deal with consequences?  Well we don't ever find out since he never appears on page but my guess is he probably married the dancer and is living his best life - because nobody else gets what they truly deserve in this book, so why would he?

Stick a fork in me, I'm done.

Final Grade = D-

Guest Review: Summer on Mirror Lake

Today the Bat Cave is hosting guest reviewer Janet Webb who many of you know from her writing at Heroes & Heartbreakers (RIP), Criminal Element, and as a longtime resident of Romancelandia. Welcome Janet!

Honeymoon Harbor is a romance destination worth visiting—it’s a vibrant Pacific Northwest community, complete with a long-ago Romeo/Juliet*esque family feud, gorgeous brothers, to-die-for scenery, and plots that gently wind themselves around the heart strings. Summer on Mirror Lake is the 3rd Honeymoon Harbor book. Herons Landing #1 and Snowfall on Lighthouse Lane #2 are the first two book in the series. It reminds me of Debbie Macomber’s Pacific Northwest series (a compliment, believe me!) because earlier characters don’t disappear after they get their HEA: they are woven into the plot. (N.B. what really packs a wallop, the pointed brother to brother advice.)

Gabriel (Gabe) Mannion is the second oldest Mannion son, destined from birth to compete with his over-achieving older brother Quinn (former hot-shot lawyer, now crafts beer entrepreneur extraordinaire). Gabe did not expect to collapse at the funeral of his mentor but hey, who would? Where to recover and recuperate?

When he lands in the emergency room after collapsing at the funeral of a colleague and friend, Wall Street hotshot Gabriel Mannion initially rejects the diagnosis of an anxiety attack. But when warned that if he doesn’t change his adrenaline-fueled, workaholic lifestyle he could end up like his friend, Gabe reluctantly returns to his hometown of Honeymoon Harbor to regroup. 

Gabe reluctantly admits “that everybody had their limits,” and he decides to go for a run each morning along a lakeshore trail and visit Quinn’s bar each night to drink away his chagrin at having a life-plan interruptus. He knows that second chances don’t come along all that often. And in case we missed it, JoAnn Ross slyly reminds us of the quintessential second chance story.

But it wasn’t too late. He figured that ER doc was more like Scrooge’s Ghost of Christmas Future. He hadn’t revealed what would happen. Only what could. Gabe was perfectly capable of changing his fate. All he had to do was make a plan. It wasn’t all that different from analyzing financial data. 

What could go wrong? Gabe is a man with a plan and everyone in Honeymoon Harbor knows he’s richer than God. The problem with drinking at Quinn’s bar is that after two weeks Quinn tells it to him straight: “You do realize that you’re driving customers away.” Come again? But Quinn’s right, the bar isn’t as busy as it was when he first came to town. Of course, Gabe denies that it has anything to do with him but Jarle Biornstad, Quinn’s Norwegian giant of a cook, agrees: “The edgy vibe radiating off you is scaring people away.” They tell him how to fill his “days of leisure.” He should build a boat, something he loved to do before he went away to college. Specifically, a Viking faering.

“Even if I wanted to, which I haven’t said I do, it’d be a push to get a decent-size one done in three months.” Which was his deadline. By then he’d be rested, at his fighting weight and ready to get back into the fray.  

“Because your summer schedule is so booked.”  

Gabe gave him a hard stare. “You’re pushing me.”  

“Just saying,” Quinn said mildly. That was a funny thing about the eldest Mannion. Gabe couldn’t remember his older brother ever yelling, or even raising his voice. Yet, somehow, just like his dad, who was the quieter of his parents, he always got his way, always made things happen. 

Quick aside to JoAnn Ross: when is Quinn’s story coming down the pike because I’m more than ready!

I’m sure readers are more than ready to meet the heroine of Summer on Mirror Lake. Chelsea Prescott, head librarian and friend to all, faces life with a determinedly glass-half-full attitude. That’s her choice. Her childhood slid into tragedy after her younger sister died and her doctor dad left the family. Her mother died when Chelsea was in college—police called it an accidental overdose, but Chelsea saw it as a slow, tragic suicide. Honeymoon Harbor’s library was her safe place and former head librarian Lillian Henderson was her second mother. Chelsea may have stepped into Lillian’s shoes, but she’s determined to put her own stamp on the job. The Summer Readers’ Adventure group is Chelsea’s pet project—she not only wants kids to delve into books during the summer, she’s planning field trips to enhance the curriculum. What would match up better with a “Caldecott Medal-winning children’s book on northern myths” than a visit to see an actual Viking ship under construction? Brianna, a good friend of Chelsea, and the only Mannion sister, spills the beans, although she warns her girlfriend “not to get your hopes up.”

"He’s been a loner out at the lake, and extremely noncommunicative even with us. I have the feeling something significant happened in New York, but if anyone knows what it was, it’d be Quinn, and he’s not talking." 

Everybody knew that Quinn Mannion held secrets as tightly as a priest hearing a confession at St. Peter the Fisherman’s church. Which was why he undoubtedly knew personal things about most people in Honeymoon Harbor.  

“Well, it wouldn’t hurt to ask,” she decided. “All he can do is say, no, right?”  

“Right. And good luck. Quite honestly, I think it’s be as good for him as it would be fun for the kids.” 

A week or so later, Chelsea tracks down Gabe in a “back corner of the Honeymoon Harbor wooden boat-building school.” He doesn’t remember her although he has fond memories of Lillian Henderson. Chelsea tells him that Mrs. Henderson is on the advisory board.

“I didn’t realize libraries had advisory boards.”  

“Many do.” Twin dimples appeared in her cheeks as she smiled. She was, as his grandfather Harper would say, cute as a button. Even as her naughty librarian glasses had him imagining unbuttoning a few more of those buttons, Gabe reminded himself that he didn’t do cute. 

And he doesn’t do boat-building tours, telling her it’s a liability issue. Chelsea protests: “Even if I promise that they won’t touch a thing?” “Even then,” Gabe says and if you think that’s the end of it, you need to read more romance.

Summer on Mirror Lake is my favorite of the Honeymoon Harbor series because the protagonists are so different, yet they’re absolutely made for each other. Even when they resolve their difficulties over boat visits and decide to have a secret summer fling (that everyone in town knows about), the end of August looms like a big dark storm cloud. Everyone knows Gabe’s real home is the gold-paved canyons of Wall Street—or is it? JoAnn Ross never disappoints—take this to the beach and enjoy.

Mini-Reviews: The De Bryun Sisters Duet

My last couple of contemporary reads have been misfires, which left me in a state of uncertainty in figuring out what I wanted to read next.  A historical seemed the most logical answer, but what historical?  I opted for Christine Merrill.  Merrill's books sometimes work for me and sometimes don't, but I am never, ever bored.  Merrill takes risks with the Regency and sometimes those risks don't always play out - but you know what?  I'm never, ever bored.  Plus having a TBR pile that can be seen from space means I had both books in the de Bryun sisters duet in my digital TBR.  Nearly sitting side-by-side.  Loosely connected to the Belston & Friends series, these two books stood alone well.

In The Truth About Lady Felkirk, our heroine, Justine de Bryun is masquerading as the wife of an unconscious man, our hero, William Felkirk, brother of a Duke.  Justine is under the control of a Mr. Montague, the man who was once her dead father's business partner (jeweler) and now her guardian. In the name of protecting her younger sister, off at school, Justine is essentially an unwilling mistress, a captive and manages to save Felkirk's life when he gets too close to the truth about some long missing diamonds.  She convinces Montague to let her take the man back to his family, pray for his recovery, and maybe she can learn the location of the diamonds.  It's a miracle Felkirk survives, but he's awake now and with selective amnesia.  A blessing for Justine who, not knowing any other way, tells the Duke and his wife that she and Will were married via elopement.  Now here's William, wide awake, with no memory of his "wife."

Distilling down to it's essence, what we have here is a Rescue Fantasy, which I normally deplore - but Justine is one of those heroines who is one part crafty and two parts stuck between a rock and a hard place.  After her father's murder, and her mother's death, she and her sister are at the mercy of Montague. To protect Margot, Justine took the part of sacrificial lamb.  She's completely at his mercy even as she skirts around the truth looking for a way to achieve her and her sister's freedom.

It all gets a little melodramatic at the end, and the "mystery" of the missing diamonds isn't much of a mystery, but the Sword of Damocles-like tension that hovers over the romance (ooooh, when will William's memory return?) kept me invested and the pages turning.  Not a knock-out read, but an enjoyable one.

Final Grade = B

I literally jumped right into Margot's book after finishing the last word of Justine's.  A Ring from a Marquess has plenty of problematic elements that I probably should have loathed, but dagnabit, I could not tear myself away from this story!

With Montague dispatched, and Justine wanting nothing to do with the jewelry store where she has nothing but unhappy memories, Margot is now a businesswoman.  She's had to let go of two goldsmiths wanting to marry her and take over HER business, but other than that?  Things are going well.  Especially since her best customer is Stephen Standish, the Marquess of Fanworth, heir to a Dukedom.  Standish has a reputation as a rake, a bit of a cold fish, which has everyone from Justine to her current goldsmith warning her off.  But she enjoys his visits and much flirting ensues.  That is until she inadvertently sells Stephen a set of rubies that once belonged to his mother.  Um, they were stolen from his mother.  Needless to say, he wants revenge against the woman who played him for a fool and an indecent proposal is agree upon.

So yeah, this is distasteful in the extreme.  In order to keep her independence, to save herself and her shop, Margot coughs up her virginity to Stephen.  Blessedly, the truth about those stolen rubies comes to light about 30% of the way through the story.  But does Stephen tell Margot this?  Of course not.  Instead, completely besotted, he wants to marry her.  And to do that he concocts a plan with her brother-in-law to get her to agree.  Margot is strong-armed into marriage to Stephen, by him, her brother-in-law and Justine.  Justine doesn't come out looking all that great in this book if you haven't read the previous one.  She's spent her whole life wanting what is best for her sister, protecting her - to the point where Justine was Montague's unwilling mistress.  So really, Margot marrying the heir to a Dukedom?  It's not like she's sending her to the gallows.

This is a couple that doesn't communicate with each other - well, at all.  But Merrill, she's a crafty one.  She gives Stephen a stutter.  D's and P's are especially hard.  And his father, the Duke, is a horrible, awful man who rode Stephen mercilessly to the point where Stephen chose avoidance and silence.  When he has to speak he chooses his words very carefully (avoiding sounds that exacerbate his stutter), but preferably he prefers to rarely speak at all.  Leading to his reputation of being "just like his father" - as in, a complete and total asshole.  So yes, it's completely believable that Stephen would have trouble communicating with his new wife.

Ah, but these two crazy kids are perfect for each other.  We just need to get them to the point where they can talk to each other.  And they do, and it was wonderful and I completely wiped my mind of any niggling little issues I have with Margot feeling railroaded into marriage.  Also, bless her heart, but Merrill does not whitewash the consequences of Stephen marrying a "shop girl" even if she's, by marriage, part of the Duke of Belston's family.  There's also the minor fact that Margot has no plans, whatsoever, to close the jewelry shop - even though everyone, including her husband, expect her to.  How Merrill resolves these issues is very satisfying and frankly appreciated, when other authors have chosen to simply sweep issues like this under the rug.  The fact that Merrill did not?  Gold star from the librarian!

Final Grade = B-

I inhaled both of these books in a 24 hours period and they did just the trick of pulling me out of the mini-slump the unsatisfying contemporaries left me in.  Happy, happy sigh.

Review: A Baby to Bind His Bride

I'm at the stage in my life where I'm past the point of apologizing for what I like to read. I'm a grown-up. I understand that I like some problematic stuff. I recognize it's problematic and move on.  Such is the case with Presents.  Presents tend to trigger the "pure fantasy" part of my brain. I don't read them as being "real world." They operate in a fantasy, fairy tale world (at least for me - I can't speak for other readers of the line).  But, to be honest, Presents is a minefield kind of line. There are some that are really awesome and some that are regressive to the point where I feel dirty afterward...and not in a good way.  A Baby to Bind His Bride by Caitlin Crews is a rarer bird though. This is a book that wants you to think it's progressive...but, it's really not.

Susannah married billionaire Leonidas Betancur when she was a sheltered and naive 19-year-old.  Theirs was a marriage arranged by their families. Leonidas, being a jackass Presents hero, hops on his private jet, ON HIS WEDDING NIGHT, to broker a business deal, leaving his wife behind.  OF COURSE before the consummation of the marriage because, sheltered and naive 19-year-old = virgin bride.  Anyway, his plane goes down in the Rocky Mountains in a fiery crash, and while his body is never recovered, it's presumed he's dead.

Fast forward five years and Susannah has morphed herself into "the Widow Betancur."  Leonidas' family is a nest of vipers, and in name of protection, she reinvented herself into the consummate widow.  She lives in black. She evokes the memory of her dear departed husband, never mind she was married to him for less than 24 hours.  She's no man's pawn and since Leonidas' "died" she's been running the family dynasty.  But she's tired and desperate for freedom.  And to be free she needs to finally get answers - because she's not convinced Leonidas is dead.  That's how our story opens.  She finds her husband living in a religious compound in the mountains of Idaho with a host of acolytes who think he's a god.  If that isn't the perfect metaphor for every Presents hero EVER, I'm not sure what is.  Anyway, Leonidas has amnesia (because OF COURSE) but once he sees Susannah, and hastily divests her of her virginity (because OF COURSE), the light dawns and most of his memory comes back.  But what will happen when he finds out his wife only found him in order to divorce him?

This is a Presents, so yeah, the plot is preposterous.  But that's kind of their thing.  Why Susannah felt like only a divorce would "free her" is never explained to my satisfaction but I loved this idea of a girl who everyone gives zero credit morphing herself into this ball-busting widow.  Unfortunately, we never really see that in action.  Oh sure, the author tells us about how she thwarted Leonidas' very randy cousins and kept his Evil Mother at bay - but Leonidas is in the picture from Chapter 1 which means he's the one protecting her throughout this story.  No seeing Susannah busting heads in the boardroom.  No seeing Susannah stand up to her parents at a society function.  No seeing Susannah have a darn backbone.  No, instead what readers get is Leonidas' kidnapping Susannah once he finds out she's pregnant because there's no way in Hell he's going to give her a divorce now.

"The marriage, the Betancur name, all of that is noise. The only prison you need worry about is me, Susannah. And I will hold you forever."

Yeah, no.  Then, to add insult to injury, eventually Leonidas lets Susannah leave the isolated Greek island, she jets off to Australia but comes back to give some big ol' speech about how she's always loved him (why, exactly?!) and he does next to nil in the groveling department.  But hey, it's OK because at the end of the story the author tells the reader that they're now running the empire together (oh, I'm supposed to think that's progressive!) but Susannah, naturally, squirts out a baby boy.

BECAUSE OF COURSE SHE DOES!!!!

Look - have I liked problematic as f*ck Presents in my day?  Yes. Yes, I have.  But don't spin me a story that has the window dressing of "progressive" and "feminist" and then fall back on regressive Presents stereotypes.

You know, I finished this book a few days ago.  And back then I slapped it with a middling C grade.  The author knows her way around the format and line, plus it's a well executed story from a craft standpoint.  But the longer I spent away from this book the more annoyed I got.  Look, does romance have a problem with reinforcing traditional gender roles?  Yes, of course it does.  But don't wrap a story in the trappings of progressive and "different" and then...revert back to this nonsense.  Just stick with the nonsense right out of the gate.  I actually prefer that.

Final Grade = D+

Spoiler-y Review: Claim Me, Cowboy

My Kindle is chock full of Maisey Yates. Having enjoyed many of her Harlequin Presents, when she made the move to single title and Harlequin Desire I kept buying.  But she's prolific and I'm a slow reader and here we are.  So I decided it was high time to try one of the Desires and randomly landed on Claim Me, Cowboy because 1) I've had an ARC languishing forever and 2) it just finaled for a RITA, so why not this one? It's smack dab in the middle of the Copper Ridge series, but it stands alone very well and Yates keeps the series-itis to the bare minimum.

The plot is patently absurd, but it tweaks the nose of patently absurd category romance plots that have come before, so I bought it hook, line and sinker. Joshua Grayson is a successful PR guy with a loving family and a big fancy house in Copper Ridge, Oregon.  What he doesn't have is a wife and his father thinks that's just no good - so the old man puts an ad in the newspaper.  Yes, an ad. To find his son a wife.  Joshua is highly annoyed with his old man so places another ad, this one looking for a woman who will play the role of highly unsuitable potential wife and just maybe his father will get the message to butt out.  Who Joshua gets is Danielle Kelly and a baby.

Danielle is all of 22, Joshua assumes the baby is hers, and she doesn't correct him.  Life hasn't been easy for Danielle, raised by a single mother (who had her at 14) who was always looking for love in all the wrong places. Finally away from Mom, working as a grocery store cashier in Portland, life is pretty OK - until the day Mom shows up pregnant.  Danielle takes her in, baby Riley is born, and while Mom says she's going to change her ways...she naturally does not.  Danielle ends up losing her job thanks to unreliable child care, and social services expects her to have a steady life and income if she's to keep custody.  She's desperate. So desperate she answers Joshua's ad and we're off to the races.

I've been reading romance a long time, meddling parents are pretty much a staple, and frankly Joshua's father is one of those guys who thinks the little woman should make a happy home, and squeeze out a passel of kids while the man of the house brings home the bacon.  So if Joshua thinks he can tweak the old man by bringing home a much younger fiance with a baby - more power to him I say.  Frankly the old guy has it coming to him.

No, what doesn't really work with this story is the romance.  I just never believed in it because I never felt like Joshua grew as a person.  He starts off the story as a jerk. The kind of jerk who uses woman but that's OK because they know the score:

He was happy enough now to be alone. And when he didn't want to be alone, he called a woman, had her come spend a few hours in his bed - or in the back of his truck, he wasn't particular. Love was not on the agenda.

My. Hero.

Not.

And then there's the matter that, while they're overstepping, his family ultimately cares about him.  Deceiving them sticks in Danielle's craw for a good chunk of this story, but our girl is desperate - a desperation that Joshua is ultimately counting on:

She was prickly and difficult, but at least she had an excuse. Her family was the worst. As far as she could tell, his family was guilty of caring too much. And she just couldn't feel that sorry for a rich dude whose parents loved him and were involved in his life more than he wanted them to be.

And there's the rub.  To counteract this, Yates gives Joshua a tragic backstory - a former fiance, a late miscarriage, and a spiral into drug addiction, which I think was supposed to make him sympathetic to the reader, but instead he comes off as even more self-absorbed and narcissistic. He doesn't seem to care all that much what became of the former fiance (he assumes she's living on the streets now) - he's more concerned that "he failed her."  Um.  Well, what did you do to, oh I don't know - get her some help?  Look, people who turn to drugs ultimately have to help themselves break the cycle - but from what I could tell Joshua pretty much leaves her to wallow in her depression and drug addiction until she cheats on him with one of his coworkers - and then he walks away to live in seclusion back in his home town and wallow in "his failure."

Which leads us through to the end of the book with Joshua and Danielle ultimately deciding to get married for real.  He proposes out of a sense of guilt.  She accepts because it means financial security for her and Riley.  Naturally Danielle falls in love with him, but knowing his baggage we get The Black Moment:

He didn't love her.  He wanted to fix her. And somehow, through fixing her, he believed he would fix himself.

I never felt convinced that Joshua moves past this. That he's only with Danielle out of a sense of guilt and atonement.  I never felt like he loved her for her.  He loved her because he could provide for her and "save" her.  As for Danielle?  Well, naturally, she's a virgin.  So is she falling head over heels for the rich dude because he can make her life easier and he gives her incredible orgasms?  Look, marriages have been built on less, but I spent a good chunk of this story feeling like she deserved better - especially since her sassy, spunky smart mouth is kind of what saves this story for me.

There's an audience for this story, no doubt.  The joy I've found in Yates' work with Presents is that she can flat-out write The Fairy Tale.  But, to be honest, Cinderella is one of the harder fairy tales for me to swallow in the modern romance genre.  Too much Rescue Fantasy for me.  But there's an appeal there for a lot of readers.  The idea that the handsome rich dude will swoop in, fix everything, and give the woman a damn break for a change.  Look, I get it.  It's appealing. Just not to me.  And Joshua never really grows as a character enough to convince me that he's past his need to assuage his guilt.  Plus, he's kind of a jackass.

Final Grade = C-