Review: Lady Lost

I have to hand it to Jane Goodger, after finishing How to Please a Lady, and despite not being completely in love with it, I dove back into my Kindle to see if I had other books in the series. Turns out I did, the third and final book of the Lost Heiresses trilogy, Lady Lost.

Hey, so remember the terrible, vile, no-good Duke the heroine in How to Please a Lady was supposed to marry?  Well he's now back out on the prowl and has set his sights on Lady Lilian Martin. Her father passed when she was quite young and a religious fanatic distant cousin inherited the title. Her mother is knocking on death's door and is desperate to secure a good marriage for one of her daughters before she pushes up daisies. The Duke seems like the answer to Mama's prayers and he's paying attention to Lilian, despite her reservations - until he sees youngest sister, barely 16-year-old, Theresa, at a house party.  Mama is desperate and even though Theresa is barely 16, well one daughter wed to a Duke is better than none.  Shortly after the wedding, Mama dies.

Lilian is living with her sister and brother-in-law, blessedly in a large house with servants who sneakily protect her from the Duke's lecherous, rapist ways when she hears a noise in the night. She discovers a pistol lying on the floor (that she, naturally, foolishly picks up) and the Duke lying in a pool of his own blood.  Her sister then happens upon the scene and starts screeching that Lilian is a murderer and Lilian, realizing how terrible it all looks, makes it look more terrible by running away.

Marcus Granton will one day be an Earl and has gone into exile at his family's rambling, rundown Yorkshire estate after his wife dies in another man's bed - and this other man was hardly the first. Marcus knew he was being cuckolded but this last humiliation is too much, as are the whispers that he drove his wife to her wicked ways because he's such a cold fish. He's in his carriage heading back to his country home when he happens upon Lilian, very sick and cold, passed out in road after walking for untold miles. Being the grumpiest of grumpy heroes, he's loathe to bring in a house guest, but he can't very well leave her there to die.  Imagine his surprise when no sooner does he deposit Lilian in the only ready, aired out bedroom in the manor (uh, his) that he hears a knock on his door.  A sour, vile matron with a small 5-year-old child - claiming that the young girl, Mabel, is his.  Except, she isn't.  She is his dead wife's illegitimate daughter, whom she got pregnant with while Marcus was off in America dealing with his wayward sister in the previous book.  He knows he's not the Daddy, but that begs the question - who is?  

There's a lot going on here, and it does take a while to cook.  Of course the Duke's murder is the talk of every town, but word hasn't quite reached Marcus just yet.  Still, Lilian knows her days are numbered and in a bit of a panic.  This Big Secret is actually dispatched rather quickly and what happens next is a bunch of back-and-forth with a constable handling the case. They solve it rather quickly through sheer luck (and a confession) but it still doesn't quite fit, so it's a lot of case closed, case not closed, oh wait case is closed again.  

The first half of the book is Marcus being a grumpy grump and slowly opening himself up to Lilian and Mabel who proceed to charm him despite his efforts to resist. It's really a lovely slow build and when the first kiss and love scene happen, as a reader I actually anticipated them.  

Of course it all goes to hell in a handbasket in the final third. Goodger is writing a Victorian-set story after all, which means Drama Llama is pretty much a requirement!  There's the small matter of the Duke's murder, the fact that Lilian, an unchaperoned Lady has been living with Marcus for many, many days, and the twist to Mabel's paternity - which honestly I should have seen coming and am ashamed of myself for missing it.  In my defense I did inhale the book in a day, I didn't take much time to stop and think about it before the big reveal.

There's lots of action and drama at the end, and we of course get the requisite happy epilogue with the heroine giving birth to her first child - but 5 years later! Honestly I think that's worth a mention. A heroine who isn't pushing out the heir 9 months after the wedding? Practically unheard of in romance - especially since once this couple starts hitting the sheets they barely get out of the bedroom.

The Drama Llama being backloaded to the final third of the story was a lot, but it did make me race through to the finish line. It's a really nice example of a grumpy romance hero, who is quite legitimately grumpy!, opening himself up to love without completely morphing into a pod person. I adored the declarations of love, so fitting for the hero's character and the heroine's personality is the perfect compliment. I genuinely liked these two as a couple, Mabel was perfectly sweet without being too plot moppet-y, and I was a sucker for all the Victorian angst at the end.  A nice historical read.

Final Grade = B

Review: How to Please a Lady

I'm in a bit of a disagreeable reading mood at the moment - which is to say I have no idea what I'm in the mood to read. What this translates to is me throwing spaghetti at the wall.  I took a deep, deep dive into my Kindle for a historical romance and unearthed How to Please a Lady by Jane Goodger. This is the second book in a series that splits it's time between late Victorian England and New York, features that most bananapants of romance tropes (a virgin widow!), a cross-class romance, and stands alone reasonably well.

The book opens with the former Lady Rose Dunford, now Mrs. Cartright, widowed nearly two years and annoyed with her new neighbor. The man is a rake of the first order, entertaining all manner of "ladies" during the night and quite frankly, the sound carrying all too well. So imagine her shock when she discovers her new neighbor, a wealthy, handsome, self-made man is none other than Charlie Avery, her family's former stable groom.

Great set-up, right? Well brace yourselves because we then flashback to some years earlier to England where we spend the next 60% of this story. Rose, daughter of an Earl, is engaged to a Duke, and Charlie takes care of her beloved horse in her father's stable. They played together as children and while Charles carries a torch, he's smart enough to know that stable hands don't marry Earl's daughters and that there is zero opportunity for him in England.  In a fortnight he's leaving to join an uncle in America where he hopes to make something of himself. 

Rose isn't in love with the Duke but her mother is over the moon and frankly she knows what her role is. What she didn't bargain for is the Duke being an odious, vile villain and sexually assaulting her (spoiler: forced fellatio). Charlie deduces what has happened and tells Rose to inform her mother, but Rose knows how futile that is. No, instead, she hits upon the idea to go to America with Charlie and show up at Mr. Cartright's front door. He's an acquaintance of her oldest brother and she liked him when they met at a ball recently.  She also heard a rumor that Mr. Cartright likes boys more than girls and that these rumors are holding back his career in the US State Department. Frankly after her experience with the Duke being a beard for a gay man sounds more than ideal to Rose.

Just from the back cover blurb we know eventually Rose does marry Mr. Cartright and settles into a comfortable life. The real meat and potatoes of this romance is in the final 40% when Rose and Charlie, now a self-made man, reunite. Here's the thing about flashbacks, when they work they're great but they're very tricky to pull off, and this authorial choice in this story just didn't work for me. I get teased with a great opening chapter and then I spend the next 60% stuck in Flashback Land a little bored and anxious to get back to the New York storyline. Why the tease? Just start at the beginning and tell this thing in a linear timeline. It reeks of too many cooks in the kitchen trying to be clever.

What I did appreciate is that the author does not sweep the class differences, which are a lot, under the rug. Rose is a woman of privilege and naturally a little snobby. She's what I call thoughtlessly cruel. She's not evil, but has a tendency to say cruel things without realizing they're cruel until Charlie gets hurt or angry. These are people from two very different worlds.  Once reunited, Charlie may now be successful and wealthy, but he's ill-equipped to navigate high society waters, which is where Rose comes into play.  Also, I liked that not everything is magically right as rain in the end. Rose and Charlies, of course, get married but that doesn't mean her parents are ready to welcome him into the family fold.

I wasn't in love with this and the use of a very long seemingly never-ending flashback annoyed me, but I was engaged and read this in a day. I was also swept up enough in the world-building to pick up the next book in the trilogy (yes, of course it was in my TBR) about Rose's older brother who harries himself off to a life of isolation after his Good Time Girl Wife dies in another man's bed. Let's hope the flashbacks stay locked up in a closet somewhere.

Final Grade = B-

#TBRChallenge 2015: A Christmas Waltz

The Book: A Christmas Waltz by Jane Goodger

The Particulars: Historical romance, Kensington Zebra, 2010, Third book in trilogy, In Print

Why Was It In Wendy's TBR?:  I'm a sucker for Christmas books and westerns.  I also liked the sound of the blurb. 

The Review: This is a perfect example of the right book finding me at the right time.  Oh there are faults. Plenty of them.  I see and acknowledge the faults.  But at the moment I was reading this book on a lazy Saturday afternoon/evening?  I didn't really give a good gosh darn about any of those faults.  I was swept up into the story.

Lady Amelia Wellesley fell in love with Carson Kitteridge when his Wild West Show toured England.  He told her wonderful stories about his hometown in Texas, his rambling ranch, how he loved her and wanted to marry her.  He even asked her brother, an earl, for her hand in marriage.  He tells her he will send for her once he's back home in Texas and Amelia waits for a letter that, you guessed it, never comes.  Desperately in love, and correspondence delivery not always being reliable, she decides to come to Texas anyway.  Surely Carson will be ever so happy to see her!  However the reality of the situation is that Carson lied about everything.  Small Forks, Texas is nothing like he described, he has no ranch, seemingly no source of income and his older brother is certainly no moronic simpleton that Carson has to protect and take care of.

Dr. Boone Kitteridge has spent his whole life cleaning up after Carson and marveling at how seemingly intelligent women fall for his brother's smooth talking brand of malarkey.  But when Lady Amelia shows up, so pretty she makes his eyes hurt, he vows to not bail out Carson this time.  What he can't seem to do though is keep himself from falling for Amelia - a development that has Boone totally flummoxed as he's - well, he's terrible with women.  No experience, lacking all the charm his brother has, and carrying a mountain of "I'm unworthy" baggage thanks to a father who beat the crap out of him while doting on Carson.  Boone was essentially raised by the man who ran the general store, and while that man was good to him - let's just say affection was in short supply.  So falling for Amelia is something that Boone is not only ill-prepared for, but it also scares him spitless.

What we have here is a romance heroine who reminds us all that women, for as awesome as we are, can be completely and totally stupid when it comes to men.  Carson lied about everything to Amelia because, you guessed it, he wanted to get under her skirts.  To that end he simply told her everything that she wanted to hear.  She realizes fairly quickly just what a liar Carson is, but it takes a little bit longer for her heart to catch up to that fact.  She fancied herself in love, and that's not something a naïve young women gets over in a hurry.  However as Carson digs himself deeper into his hole, Amelia begins to see Boone in a new light - especially when circumstances arise that keep her from immediately returning to England.

This book can be read as a stand-alone, although past characters (namely Amelia's brother and sister-in-law from A Christmas Scandal) do play a healthy role in the latter half.  As much as I liked this story, and in fact inhaled it, it's not without problems.  Namely Amelia who fluctuates from too-stupid-to-live (making the trip to Texas and not realizing before then that Carson was a smooth-talking lothario), naïve and frankly self-absorbed (she says some things to Boone that damn near broke my heart).  Boone is classic wounded, Beta hero (virgin hero alert!) but by the end I wanted to shake him senseless and scream, "Talk to her damn you! Talk to her!!!!"  Yeah, yeah, his incredibly crappy childhood - but by the end all of the conflict stems from both characters being unwilling to just admit to the other how they truly feel. 

There's also a moment in the story were something Very, Very Bad happens to a secondary character - and while I understood why that choice was made from a plot standpoint - it's going to bother some readers.  It just....will.  And while I'm at it - this has got to be the most Un-Christmasy romance ever written.  Basically?  There is no Christmas until the final chapters when the couple finds themselves attending a Christmas Ball.  Good for those readers who dislike holiday romances - maybe not-so-grand for those of us who love holiday romances.

So mileage is going to vary on this one.  I can see all the issues with it, but for whatever nebulous reason of the moment - none of those issues bothered me all that much.  I think it's because that during a year when my reading mojo has been MIA, reading a book in a day is the equivalent to stumbling across a unicorn in my backyard.  I got sucked in.  I fell for Boone.  I liked Amelia (warts and all) and I wanted them to get together in the end.  Which, of course, they do.

Final Grade = B