Review: Cinderella's Royal Seduction

Cinderella's Royal Seduction by Dani Collins was not the book I had on tap to read next. I'm currently traveling, and like a dodo, I didn't download the book I was planning to read and couldn't get the airplane wifi to work. So, I went trolling through my Kindle for a book that was already downloaded and here we are. For a completely random pick out of my digital TBR, this one was pretty good.

Cassiopeia “Sopi” (seriously) Brodeur oversees the Lonely Lake Spa tucked away in the Canadian Rockies. She's been running the property since her father's death, as it was something he purchased for Sopi's mom.  Unfortunately, her stepmother Maude, and her two vacuous stepsisters have decided they're bored with Europe and have come back to Lonely Lake. Even worse? They've cancelled all their bookings because Prince Rhys Charlemaine from one of those tiny made-up principalities that exist in Presents Land, has decided to visit. As a getaway. Except, of course, it's really not. Maude plans on shoving her daughters in his face thinking he'll want to marry one of them.

Rhys is a very eligible bachelor, so it doesn't take long for the spa to fill back up with single women vying for his attention. He's learned to expect this type of behavior, even as he's bored by it. The only reason he's visiting the spa is because Maude approached him about selling, and having an already impressive real estate portfolio, he's naturally curious. Also, even though he was in no rush, he knows it's time to find a wife. He's the spare, but his brother, who is blissfully married to the love his life, just found out he has testicular cancer. The chances of them producing an heir is slim to none, which means in order to keep the line of succession intact, it's falling on Rhys. Royals are obsessed with this kind of thing normally, but it's a heightened concern for Rhys. His parents died in a military coup, his brother and him struggled in exile for years, and only recently returned to the country to reclaim the throne. A sign of weakness, such as a failure to secure the line of succession, is something that cannot happen.

Before we know it Rhys and Sopi cross paths, sparks fly before he even knows her name, and once he finds out who she really is, he realizes that Maude is trying to swindle her inheritance out from under her. He also knows he's found the woman he wants to marry, but he's royal and she's a nobody - which, you guessed it, isn't going to fly given the precarious situation in his country. 

This story leans hard into the Cinderella trope to the point that the only thing missing are seamstress rodents. Sopi is at the beck and call of her intolerable step-family and a jack-of-all-trades at the spa, doing everything from housekeeping, waitressing, to stepping in to help out with spa services. However she's not a saccharine doormat, there's fire and backbone in her.  

Rhys baggage is really interesting, a man haunted by what happened to his parents and to him and his brother when they were mere children. As far as Presents go, this one is definitely kinder and gentler. The setting is unique and the hero isn't a raging Alphahole you want to take a baseball bat to upside the head.

But, c'mon, it's still a Presents.  The story loses it's footing for me around the halfway point when the marriage of convenience plot heats up and there's pretty icky broodmare overtones. Yes, Rhys is royal. Yes, getting married and getting a woman knocked up is a big deal. Doesn't make it any less icky. He has an attraction to Sopi and certainly his sense of justice to thwart her stepmother kicks in, but it's not like he's declaring his love right away. The importance on getting pregnant, quite frankly, turned me off. Maybe because it's the 21st century and I like to think of women as more than their uteruses. Look, I understand WHY Rhys wants kids right away. The author sells that very well. Doesn't mean I still didn't find it icky.

Things end on a high note with a suitably emotional ending and Rhys having to reconcile with his past trauma.  This is a really good example of what Presents can do so well, which is sell readers on a heightened, intense fairy tale - which this one does in spades.

Final Grade = B-

Roarin' In: Unusual Historicals for March 2023

March roared in like a lion for yours truly. Besides some truly wild weather for the part of the world I live in (rain, so much rain...), it's been a crazy busy month on the work front. My reading has suffered a bit because of that, coming in fits and starts.  The current patterns seems to be barely reading during the week, then gorging at the trough on the weekends.  Which is also why I'm fashionably late with this month's Unusual Historicals post - but it's worth the wait! Some choice picks this month, including a Wendy favorite reprint!  Read on Macduff...

 

The Untamed Warrior's Bride by Michelle Willingham 

To claim what should be his… 

He must claim her! 

Piers of Grevershire might have been born illegitimate, but he’ll fight for the land he knows is his. To do so, he must win Lady Gwendoline’s hand in marriage! What starts as a secret mission of vengeance soon becomes more as Gwen’s unique fire ignites a powerful connection between them. And when they’re married, Piers finds earning Gwen’s trust means revealing his true identity—and the betrayal that risks destroying their fledgling bond…

Let me tell you how grossly behind I am on Willingham's backlist - I need to go on a binge of my Harlequin Historical collection, which is now forming it's own mini-cluster of mountains in my TBR pile.  This is the second book in her Legendary Warriors series and features that most medieval of staples, the hero out for vengeance who inconveniently falls in love with the heroine who initially started out as a tool to achieve said vengeance. I'm expecting some good groveling here.

The Prospector's Only Prospect by Dani Collins 

After eight days in a cramped stagecoach, divorcée Marigold Davis already regrets her decision to come to Denver City to marry. She certainly didn’t realize she’d signed up for mosquitoes, mud, and scores of rough men eyeing her like a hot meal on a cold day. But with her life in Kansas all but incinerated, Marigold needs a husband. Even if she’s not the bride that gold prospector Virgil Gardner is expecting… 

Virgil Gardner has a reputation as a grumpy hard-ass, and he’s fine with it. He’s also no fool—this is not the woman he agreed to marry. It takes a tough-as-nails woman to survive the harshness of a Rocky Mountain gold claim, and this whiskey-eyed, gentle beauty is certainly not the type. Now it’s just a matter of how quickly she’ll quit so he can find a wife who will stick. Someone who can care for the only thing he values even more than gold–his children. 

But Marigold isn’t about to give in. Cramped in a one-room shack. Berry picking turned into a bear escape. Or cooking for an entire crew of bottomless pits. She’s got more grit than most. And just when Virgil starts to realize his replacement bride might be the treasure he’s been looking for, an unannounced guest arrives…to change everything.

I will never not want to read a historical western written by an author who came to write said historical western from some other sub genre.  I'm still lugging around the baggage from the Great Historical Western Migration to Regency Ballrooms and Almack's Terrible Lemonade from the late 1990s and early 2000s after all.  So when an author does the opposite of that - and comes to historical westerns - I'll always be intrigued.  Collins is best known for her work with Harlequin Presents and this is not only her first historical western, it's her first published historical.

Hotel of Secrets by Diana Biller 

During ball season, anything can happen— even love. 

It’s ball season in Vienna, and Maria Wallner only wants one thing: to restore her family’s hotel, the Hotel Wallner, to its former glory. She’s not going to let anything get in her way - not her parents’ three-decade-long affair; not seemingly-random attacks by masked assassins; and especially not the broad-shouldered American foreign agent who’s saved her life two times already. No matter how luscious his mouth is. 

Eli Whittaker also only wants one thing: to find out who is selling American secret codes across Europe, arrest them, and go home to his sensible life in Washington, DC. He has one lead - a letter the culprit sent from a Viennese hotel. But when he arrives in Vienna, he is immediately swept up into a chaotic whirlwind of balls, spies, waltzes, and beautiful hotelkeepers who seem to constantly find themselves in danger. He disapproves of all of it! But his disapproval is tested as he slowly falls deeper into the chaos - and as his attraction to said hotelkeeper grows. 

This is Biller's third book and of course I haven't read the other two yet. Like you even have to ask?  Anyway, she's garnered herself a loyal and ardent fan base in Romancelandia already, and this one is set in Vienna and the heroine's family owns a hotel. I cannot say no to hotels, boardinghouses, and the rest of their ilk in historical romance. It's a very particular blend of catnip that I like.  Anyway, this is a trad published (Macmillan), trade paperback release - so I'll likely be leveraging my library card for this one.

Frontier Midwife Amanda by Kate Bridges (Reprint)

Will Amanda's new life be torn apart if she reveals her tender secret and opens her heart to Chase? 

Midwife Amanda Ryan moves to a beautiful Rocky Mountain town after a heartbreaking family loss, optimistic and hopeful for a new start. She doesn’t expect a run-in with the tall and handsome owner of the town’s lumber mill, former Mountie, Chase Murdock. 

Who is he to claim that her new cabin is actually his cabin, declaring she’s been swindled by the same crook who just fleeced his lumber mill? She insists she has papers to verify she bought the home, fair and square. 

Setting out to prove each other wrong, Chase and Amanda can’t risk getting emotionally entangled. He’s had it with dishonest people, and she's hiding something. Yet, their time together is lively and filled with laughter. Unexpected kisses turn into passion. Their intimacy builds into something much deeper, but Amanda’s not ready to move forward after all the heartache she’s suffered in the past. 

Bravely and silently dealing with the loss of her own baby and resulting infertility, then her shocking divorce, Amanda nurtures the other women in town. She can’t have children and wonders if she could ever be the wife that Chase deserves. 

Falling in love with Chase means risking her heart. Or is he a stronger man, a kinder man, than Amanda might imagine? 

Gah! I've been waiting forever for this to be reissued because it's a good 'un! Originally published as The Midwife's Secret by Harelquin Historical in 2003, you can read my review from 2005 (!) right on this here blog. The hero has been swindled by his business partner, his fiancée has run off, and now the heroine shows up claiming to own a piece of his land. For her part the heroine has a pretty big secret. She's a midwife and not only is she divorced (!), she's barren. And she knows for a fact that women tend to not want barren, divorced women as their midwife.  

The Maiden's Hand by Susan Wiggs (Reprint)

Roguishly handsome Oliver de Lacey has always lived lavishly: wine, weapons and women are his bywords. Even salvation from the noose by a shadowy society provides no epiphany to mend his debauched ways. 

Mistress Lark's sole passion is her secret work with a group of Protestant dissidents thwarting the queen's executions. She needs no other excitement—until Oliver de Lacey drops through the hangman's door and into her life. 

As their fates become inextricably bound together in a struggle against royal persecution, both Oliver and Lark discover a love worth saving…even dying for.

 

Wiggs wrote several historical romances (in a variety of settings and time periods) before she settled into the women's fiction she's been writing for the last several years.  This is the second book in her Tudor Rose trilogy and it was originally published under this title back in 2009.  Prior to that though, this story's first appearance was back in 1995 under the title Vows Made in Wine. I really, really need to dig this trilogy out in 2023 because this back cover blurb practically sings to me...

That's it for this month's trip through Unusual Historicals.  What are you looking forward to reading?

Review: Confessions of an Italian Marriage

Confessions of an Italian Marriage by Dani Collins has the kind of bananapants plot that keep readers coming back to Presents. Oh sure, the Alpha heroes, the glitz, the glamor - whatever. It's the hyperintensity of the romance with a side of bananapants. That's the appeal. At least for me, and I basically lost an evening inhaling this story.  Was it successful?  Well, yes and no. 

Spoilers ahead!

CW: Miscarriage

When Giovanni was a teenager he was in a horrific car accident that killed his parents, his older brother, and left him a paraplegic. He inherited money, but not one to rest on his laurels, our Italian hero made billions in app development. Living a double-life, he meets a complication at a gala event - Freja, who is a waitress with the company catering the event.

Freja's mother died when she was young and she was raised by a nomad father who took her all around the world writing travelogues. Naturally Freja was a regular topic of discussion in his writings, so she's sorta/kinda famous in the circles of people who read travelogues. It was while on their last adventure together that her father had the opportunity to join a group touring North Korea (wait for it...) - and he naturally took Freja with him and naturally he had a stroke and naturally the tour group left them behind and naturally Daddy died and Freja was now stuck in North Korea courtesy of the government.  She eventually gets out with the help of her father's agent back in New York.

So Giovanni and Freja meet at this gala and Freja knows of him because during her father's travels she took fencing lessons (of course) from Giovanni's older brother.  The older brother, and their parents, having died in that car accident that turns out wasn't an accident.  Giovanni knows someone who works at Interpol (because of course he does) and he's now working undercover as a spy.  He's not James Bond, he's more of an "information gatherer."  And now here's Freja who "knew" his brother and just happened to spend time in North Korea.  He has to check her out.

Naturally what happens next is that these two burn up the sheets and Giovanni falls into lust.  Then, of course, they're so hot for each other that one time they don't use a condom.  Which Giovanni doesn't think will be an issue since he can't ejaculate and Freja was naturally a virgin before he came along (no pun intended).  But, wait for it, he ejaculates.  By some miracle since it's apparently rare for him.  This is handwaved away thanks to medical mysteries blah, blah, blah - but more likely it's because this is a Presents and the heroine has a magic who-ha.  Anyway, so now they wait to see if she's pregnant - and given the title of this book I think we know the answer to that....

Stuff happens and then, because Giovanni is a super-secret spy, he has to fake his own death.  The book opens with Freja suspecting her husband isn't dead and she's pissed. She inherited all his wealth, the vultures are circling and she wants to draw her husband out in the open. So she asks her very smart gay friend to assist in running the business and "marry" her. Freja has a book coming out soon, plus a blog and social media reach - so she's been splashing her impending "nuptials" all over the Interwebs.  And naturally, Giovanni returns bringing all his secrets out into the open.

Like I said, bananapants.

The story itself is well executed.  It opens at present-day with Giovanni "dead", then we get several chapters of flashback time about the start of their relationship, and then the final third covers the reunion. Also Giovanni's disability is handled well.  It's not used as a prop for angst or used for emo baggage to generate a "wounded hero."  Other than the accident leading to Giovanni doing "spy work" and the whole "oopsie-doodle I ejaculated, I didn't think I could do that!" his disability is not used to prop up the conflict either.  He's a guy, who needs to use a wheelchair, living his life. I liked that aspect, as well as Freja's feistiness once Giovanni comes roaring back into her life.  But it is bananapants.  I'm not sure I can say I liked this per se, but it was compelling, well-executed and heck, I lost an evening reading it.  That's the magic of Presents.

Final Grade = C