Library Loot Review: Regency Christmas Liaisons

The plan was to have Regency Christmas Liaisons by Christine Merrill, Sophia James and Marguerite Kaye read before Christmas, and that didn't happen.  Instead I finished reading it after the New Year and it's a rare anthology where there's not a single dud in the bunch.  Oh sure, some stories I liked more than others, but this is a very solid holiday anthology with just enough angst to keep sugary holiday sweetness in check.

Unwrapped Under the Mistletoe by Christine Merrill finds our spinster, poor-relation heroine, Daphne Bingham, preparing for holiday guests.  When her parents died when she was young, Daphne was taken in by the Duke and Duchess of Twinden. Slapped with the odious, ill-fitting nickname "Daffy," she had one season that did not take. Now she's the Duchess' fetch-and-carry girl, chaperone for her cousin, and all-around cat magnet. The household cats adore her. The fly in the ointment as far as the Duke and Duchess are concerned is that Daphne keeps filching shiny baubles. They are found in her a room and she has no memory of taking them. They're worried about Daphne's light fingers with holiday guests arriving so naturally instead of helping the poor girl they ask thief-taker, Charles Pallister, to play the role of a distant relation and catch Daffy in the act. Instead, what naturally happens, is that Charles is smitten from the jump.

Merrill spins a classic Cinderella tale while not making the villains cartoonishly evil (oh, they're all terrible but they're not of the twirling mustache variety).  Daphne is the complete opposite of her nickname; smart, resourceful, level-headed.  Charles is very good at solving puzzles but finds the fact that he's been hired to catch Daphne red-handed extremely distasteful. Instead of helping the poor girl, her family is basically throwing her under the carriage, all while taking her for granted and relying on her to make their lives easier.  A very nice romance with a cozy feel, and I loved the cats!

Final Grade = B

If I have one quibble about One Night with the Earl by Sophia James is that it's a story that flew right out of my head after reading it. Case in point, I had to read a couple other reader reviews to jog my memory since Harlequin's back cover blurbs on anthologies tend to be light in the pants.  It's still a good read, just not one that stuck with me for very long.

Elizabeth Martin was at a convent school when Guy Martin swept her off her feet and straight to Spain. The marriage started floundering almost immediately, and while she took care of their twins, Luis and Jenny, Guy had numerous affairs and eventually was killed in a duel. With nowhere else to go, Elizabeth and the children come back to England and Guy's childhood home, where his reputation was well-known. She makes the acquaintance of her closest neighbor, Lord Alexander Grey, when he stumbles across Luis getting beat up by bullies. He takes the boy back to his mother, and having known the boy's useless father, suggests he teach the boy to box. He's got family coming to visit for Christmas and he has a nephew roughly Luis' and Jenny's age.  He invites Elizabeth to join them, also recognizing that she could use a friend and ally of her own.

This is a nice story. Alexander is a good guy and Elizabeth is a widow licking her wounds. Jenny is so desperate to see her mother happy she's taken to leaving notes for the fairies to find and Luis is part boy who wants a mother's love and part angry young man still smarting from his father's general jackassery.  

Final Grade = B-

A Most Scandalous Christmas by Marguerite Kaye is a quiet story where not a lot happens, but it's got a tricky happy-ever-after to pull off.  Lady Silvia Merton is in her 30s and divorced. Her husband was a notorious philanderer who didn't even have the modicum of decency to be discreet. She realizes that if she doesn't leave him, he's slowly chip away at her self-esteem and self-worth until there's nothing left.  So she divorces him. A tricky endeavor since she's a woman and therefore is, essentially, her husband's property. He has to bring the case for the divorce and naturally the way to do that is to accuse his wife of the very behavior he's taking part in. Since Silvia has been unable to produce an heir, he readily agrees to set the wheels in motion.  Once divorced the consequences are swift. Silvia is persona non grata to even her family and has taken up residence in the Yorkshire Moors. She wanted her freedom, and what she got was a life of seclusion. She decides to take a trip to York only to feel uncomfortable and hurry back home after one day. It's on her way back to the moors that she meets up with Ellis Wyn-Jones, a second son and inventor of some note.

Ellis met Silvia years ago at a dinner party where her husband's loutish behavior was on display (the man was openly flirting with his mistress in front of his wife!).  He was taken with Silvia immediately, but naturally nothing ever came of it. Now they meet again and get to talking. She's dreading another Christmas alone and he's dreading the boorish family gathering at his brother's home where another "suitable" marriageable miss will be paraded before him. So our two misfits come up with a plan - they're spend the holidays together at Silvia's home on the moors. No expectations. No boorish family traditions.  Just the two of them. Alone.

This is a nice story about two well-matched people. The story itself basically boils down to Silvia and Ellis spending time together, talking, getting to know each other.  The fly in the ointment is that Ellis thinks he's not interested in marriage and even if he were?  Silvia's divorce means she cannot marry again.  Which begs the question - how is the author going to work out the happy ending?  Turns out, quite well. It's really lovely.  It's one of those stories where the characters make their own happy ending. Society may brand her scandalous and him eccentric - but they love each other - and love will find a way.

Final Grade = B

This was a nice, cozy anthology with the right amount of angst.  I'm not sure if it was intended, but the authors all delivered stories featuring alienated, misfit heroines who end up finding their perfect matches. Not a bad way to kick off my reading in 2022.

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.

#TBRChallenge 2018: Wish Upon a Snowflake

The Book: Wish Upon a Snowflake by Christine Merrill, Linda Skye, and Elizabeth Rolls

The Particulars: Historical romance anthology, Harlequin Historicals #1207, 2014, Out of print, Available in digital

Why Was It In Wendy's TBR?: It's a holiday anthology from Harlequin Historical. How could it not be in my TBR?

The Review: Anthologies, by their very nature, can be wildly uneven affairs.  Not every reader is going to find a good fit with every author.  Case in point, I'm trying to think of the last anthology I read where I liked all the stories, and my hazy memory is coming up blank.  Which is what makes this book really interesting.  There are varying degrees here, but I enjoyed all the stories!

Christine Merrill is grossly under appreciated for her willingness to take risks with the Regency setting.  I've read some really "out there" stories by her.  Have they all be raving successes for me?  No. But she's a risk taker, and I've always appreciated that about her work.  The Christmas Duchess features some refreshingly different elements from a normal ol' Regency Christmas tale and I quite enjoyed it.

Generva Marsh is having a very bad day.  Her daughter, who was supposed to be married on Christmas Day, has just been jilted in a very public and embarrassing fashion.  Naturally, though none of it is her fault, the girl is suitably ruined.  So the last thing Generva, a widow, is in the mood for is for the once-intended groom's uncle (a Duke!) to show up claiming victory because he was able to secure the special license in time for a Christmas wedding.  Thomas Kanner, Duke of Montford, is a bit surprised by Generva's response - which is to say she hits him over the head with a broom.

What I loved about this story is that it features an older, forthright heroine and a Duke hero who is, well, charming as heck while being a genuinely nice guy.  He's immediately smitten with Generva, sings Christmas carols, and reckons to fix the mess his heir has made. Generva loved her husband, but as a sea captain he was away an awful lot, so she's learned to be self-reliant.  She's past the age of believing that Prince Charming is going to show up on her doorstep and rescue her!  Bonus points for a well-written child character, the heroine's school-age son, who provides some nice comic relief at just the right moments.

Grade = B+

Once upon a time Harlequin experimented with shorter digital lines, one of which was Harlequin Undone.  These were marketed as short spicy reads set in a variety of time periods, and featured more sexy times than your standard Harlequin Historical.  As I was reading Russian Winter Nights by Linda Skye, I was struck that it read very much like an Undone and...I'm a genius (plus I read a lot of Undones!) - this is a reprint.  It was first published as part of the Undone line in 2013.  What's shocking is I hadn't read it until now - although a quick look in my Kindle Dumpster Fire of Doom shows I have this in my digital TBR!!!

Ekaterina Romanova is the niece of Empress Anna of Russia, who is naturally vile since hello - she's a Russian ruler (seriously, it's basically a job requirement).  She was summoned by her aunt to court, which frankly doesn't bode well, so Ekaterina has been aiming to keep a low profile.  She was succeeding until she meets Andrey Kvasov.  Their encounter is a chance one, suitably steamy, and naturally neither finds out right away who the other one truly is.  This leads to many complications, especially since it becomes quite clear that Aunt Anna has marked Andrey as her next conquest.

Skye does an excellent job of creating the backdrop in this story.  There's intrigue and political shenanigans aplenty, and it creates very high stakes for the lovers.  But after the somewhat traditional read that is the Merrill story, jumping into this one which reads more erotic felt like a bit too much of a tone shift.  The language in the love scenes tends to flirt too much with "overwrought" for my tastes, but it's not the purplest shade I've read in my day.  Also while the ending ties things up somewhat satisfactorily, it lacks a sense of finality. The story ends with the lovers getting the upper hand but do they really?  I mean, the villain is the Empress of Russia!  I'd have preferred them riding away from the Catherine Palace together.

Grade = B-

A Shocking Proposition by Elizabeth Rolls reads a bit more traditional than the previous two stories, in that we have a young, unmarried heroine determined to save her virtue, and her home, from an oily cousin trying to force her into marriage.  Madeleine "Maddy" Kirkby's solution is to propose a marriage of convenience to Lord Ashton Ravensfell, the younger brother of a Duke.  They knew each other as children, he's recently returned from fighting on the Continent, and he's obsessed with antiquities.  Given that part of Hadrian's Wall is on Maddy's property - well, it seems like a reasonable solution to her predicament.  Of course the evil cousin won't go quietly into that good night...

The main leads are charming, and well matched.  The villain, while one note, is suitably vile to give the story enough heft of conflict to spur us forth to the happy ending.  It's not quite as steamy as the Skye story, but still quite steamy - what with the heroine getting deflowered in the carriage ride back from the wedding! - and while the hero has a bit of a White Knight Complex, he's protective of the heroine, obviously smitten, and a breath of fresh air from the recent Alphaholes invading the genre.

Grade = B

All in all, this was not a bad way to spend my time and I inhaled the anthology in nearly one sitting.  Given that the book I tried to read before this one got DNF'ed out of indifference?  This was a big win!  It's a really solid holiday collection and I'm glad I chose it to close out my TBR Challenge reading for 2018.

Overall Final Grade = B

ETA: I just found out that the Rolls story was also originally published as a Harlequin Undone short!  Which explains the deflowering in the carriage scene!  But unlike the Skye story, it wasn't languishing in my digital TBR.

Digital Review: To Recapture A Rake

When it comes to writing novellas, the plot tends to be the thing. Author should come up with an idea what allows them to flesh out a believable romance in less than 100 pages (hence, a lot of reunion stories!), all while giving readers a plot that can work in a short format.  To Recapture A Rake by Christine Merrill is a perfect example of an author who knows she's writing a novella and delivers a satisfying, fully-realized romance without stuffing the reader like a Christmas goose.

Caroline Sydney is well and truly ruined.  As a debutante she got her head turned by Vincent Wilmont, the Earl of Blackthorne.  He did propose marriage, but in typical rakish fashion: I'm an earl, I need an heir, and gee - you'll do.  Caro being madly in love with him turned him down.  Such a man, despite her love, is destined to hurt her.  She'll do her duty, squirt out an heir and then he'll run off to bed a multitude of mistresses.  But then, as tends to happen in romance novels, "stuff happens" to damage Caro's reputation.  Vincent swoops in and in the name of protecting her takes her as a mistress.  And they carry on like this for nearly a year until Caro cannot take it anymore.  She loves him, he says he loves her - but they never go out.  He seems ashamed of her.  Like he wants to closet her away as his private play thing and nothing more.  She she tosses him out on his ear.

It's usually the guy who ends these types of relationships, so Caro throwing out the notorious rake the Earl of Blackthorne as the scandal sheets aflame.  Which is how Vincent finds himself accepting membership into the Hephaestus Club, a gentleman's club filled with social rejects.  As any reader worth her salt can deduce, this novella is naturally a set-up for a series that the author is launching in the fall.  And while, yes, it is sequel bait - it is delightful sequel bait.  Think of the Hephaestus Club as The Band Of Misfit Brothers.  Naturally it's through the workings of the club that Caro and Vincent find their way to their happy ending.

This novella is a perfect example of a story that works as a novella.  As a full-length romance I think it would have gotten on my last hot nerve.  Vincent and Caro are apart thanks to a lack of communication.  If they would just sit down, lay all their cards out on the table, well there would be no conflict.  However it's easy to understand why Caro isn't forthcoming with Vincent.  Young ladies in Regency London just don't blurt out every little thing that's on their minds.

"Even if a man's faults are plain as day, we are not to ask embarrassing questions."

And for his part?  Well, Vincent is a man.  He can't help it that he's clueless.

With the help of a secondary character (who I am, officially, half in love with), the two make their way together and there's enough verbal sparks to keep the pages flipping.  It also does a lovely job of setting up the upcoming series, and dang I love the concept of this particular gentleman's club.  Kudos!

Final Grade = B

Note: From what I can deduce, this is a Kindle exclusive.  Hopefully it will be available in other formats down the line.  Also, of note, if you are an Amazon Prime member - you can read this story for free.