 Thanks to the publisher & Netgalley for the complimentary ARC. All opinions provided are my own.Bethany Bennett’s lovely debut Any Rogue Will Do had me so excited about this new voice in historical romance. While West End Earl falls somewhat flat for me, I’m really looking forward to seeing what Bennett writes next. Adam Hardwick has worked as a land steward for Lord Calvin Carlyle for two years. They’ve developed a close friendship, Cal even referring to his amiable, red-haired friend as Puppy. But after Adam is attacked, Cal realizes that Adam is a woman, Phee, who has assumed her brother’s identity & the dress & mannerisms associated with men during the time so she can hide from her nefarious uncle & guardian. Cal’s there for her, even as this development causes him to develop romantic feelings for his employee/friend. There are lots of things standing between them but can they make it work? Kudos to Bennett for writing a sweet, beta hero who’s a good friend, a bold heroine, & an unconventional story. On balance I think Bennett writes with grace & sensitivity, & as I mentioned before, I think more great things are in our romance-reading future. But I was disconcerted by Cal’s rapid transition in thinking regarding Phee. As Adam, Phee garners none of Cal’s romantic interest; Cal even muses on how unattractive a sister of Adam’s would have been. But basically as soon as Phee reveals she’s a woman, soon after Cal’s aforementioned musing, she becomes attractive to him. The turnaround is very quick & it just feels odd to me. The story also goes in a very unexpected direction & while it eventually gets smoothed away, some of those vaguely rough edges took me out of the story somewhat. I love the sweet friendship between Cal and Phee & that the story (& Bennett) are willing to be daring, but sadly West End Earl doesn’t always work for me. 3.5 ⭐️. Release date: 06/29
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 Thanks to the publisher & Netgalley for the complimentary ARC. All opinions provided are my own. Q: what’s one of your fave 2021 covers? I think this one is gorgeous! Shout-out to Diana Quincy for writing a viscount/bonesetter couple in The Viscount Made Me Do It, a daring combo that was fun to read for the first time. Hanna Zaydan is the bonesetter in question, a woman who faces discrimination on account of her profession, her sex, & her Arabic ancestry & culture. But she’s not bowing down to anyone’s idea of what she should do, not even her mother & grandmother, who want her to marry an Arabic man & stop practicing bonesetting. Viscount Thomas Ellis “Griff” has spent the last couple of years in tremendous pain but that’s not why he visits Hanna. It’s because he sees her wearing his murdered mother’s necklace & wants to question her about its providence. The fact that she heals his arm when others haven’t been able to garners his respect for life & her beauty & demeanor capture his more romantic admiration. But there are big obstacles between them & tbh, I had my doubts about how it would all work out. The characterization of Hanna is often delightful. She’s ambitious, skilled, & she really isn’t afraid of much. There’s a flower scene with Griff—where she really lets her feelings go— that I adore. But Griff is frequently frustrating to me. One mark in his favor is his appreciation for Hanna’s skill, but I find his overall attitude toward her & their relationship to be not as romantic as I would like. There are a couple of moments where I feel like he’s somewhat cold. Hanna is a compelling heroine but sadly the romance in this one is a little lackluster for me. 3.5 ⭐️. Release date: 07/27.CW:
 Thanks to the publisher & Netgalley for the complimentary ARC. All opinions provided are my own. When I saw who the author of this book is—not to mention the delightfully soft seafoam cover & read the synopsis—I wanted it fiercely. Cat Sebastian books are one of my love languages. The Queer Principles of Kit Webb by Cat Sebastian did *not* disappoint. It gave me everything I was looking for: outstanding chemistry, emotional intimacy, & smooching, *&* even some things I didn’t know I was looking for, & it’s a big HURRAY for me. There’s a ballad about an indomitable, almost heroic highwayman, Kit Webb. He actually exists, minus some of the song details. But after a leg injury took him out of the highwayman business, he’s a coffeehouse owner. That doesn’t stop him from being tempted though—in more ways than one—when Edward Percy Talbot, supposed heir to a dukedom, invites him to rob his father the Duke of a precious book he carries in exchange for funds. You see Percy has just learned that his father is a bigamist & he’s being blackmailed to keep it a secret. But he & his stepmother, who grew up close, have hatched a plan that the supremely reluctant Kit Webb can help them pull off. The magnetic attraction between Kit & Percy from the get-go gives me butterflies: two intimidating, seemingly unreachable people who can’t help but stare at the other. Can’t help but want. I love how Percy is bratty—I believe the text says—but lovable, & how Kit gives him hard truths about what his family’s wealth has cost & is costing others. How the legacy Percy is so tied to has tied down others & thrown them away when they’re deemed useless. The scene at the estate Percy faces losing is so moving to me. (With that being said, I do feel feel the text’s two references to the Duke’s “property” in the West Indies & the deeds of manumissions Percy later commissions are too briefly considered.) Overall the dynamic between Kit & Percy is everything I love in romance. Kissing because they can’t help but kiss each other / emotional truths between people who just can’t keep it casual / & a HEA kind of love. 5 ⭐️. Release Date: 06/08
 Thanks to the publisher & Netgalley for the complimentary ARC. All opinions provided are my own.I’ve seen so many rave reviews of Kerrigan Byrne’s Tempting Fate & honestly I don’t know that I can add anything to the conversation . But if you love beauty & the beast/she’s an angel on Earth & I will do anything I can to protect her & keep unpleasantness from her door/virgin leads/a redemption arc, etc. this book is good to snatch up. Felicity Goode is a shy, beautiful, bespectacled heiress who must marry an aristocrat to fulfill the terms of her parents’ will. But she must find a bodyguard first, someone to prevent further threats & attacks against her. Enter Gareth Severand, who is actually Gabriel Sauvageau, former leader of the criminal Fauves. Extremely scarred & with a disfigured face, Gabriel faked his own death, took on an alias, & went through a series of facial surgeries. He’s about to leave England but he’s hired by Felicity when she mistakenly believes him to be an applicant. She has no idea of his real identity, a blessing Gabriel thinks, since she fainted from terror during his previous rescue attempt. Gabriel’s feelings for Felicity are STRONG from the beginning. She is everything to him & she sees him both imperfectly—she has horrible vision & her spectacles are initially broken—but also very well indeed—as someone who can protect her & use his violence & physical prowess for good. This is classic Kerrigan Byrne to me (and therefore quite enjoyable!): an absolutely devoted hero who’s possessive & uber protective & a heroine who is such an ideal that she can bring him into the light somewhat. Make him someone who can feel joy. I’m all about drama but there are moments when the prose feels somewhat heavy-handed, & I felt surprised & a little disconcerted by the ease of the shy Felicity’s intimate emotional revelations with Gabriel. Or maybe just her lack of awareness/surprise of how revelatory she was being. But I really enjoyed my time spent with these two sweeties, especially the Epilogue, which is sweet & lighthearted & made me happy for Gabriel. 4 ⭐️. Release date: 5/11. Thanks to the publisher & Netgalley for the complimentary ARC. All opinions provided are my own.⭐️ Q: what do you feel like is your most common star rating? A sapphic heist romance between a pianist & a weaver, Olivia Waite’s The Hellion’s Waltz has some sentences that really stand out to me in that wow kind of way 🤩, an intriguing premise, & two leads who find ways to make use of their great talents for the good of others. That sounds divine to me. Ultimately I didn’t swoon as much as I might have hoped for this one but I did find *a lot* to appreciate about the story. Sophie Roseingrave & her large, musically-inclined family have just moved from London to a much smaller town after being taken advantage of by a conman who used musical instruction to pull off his scheming. She hasn’t played piano in the months since, & she’s anxious at the thought. So when she sees a beautiful stranger—who turns out to be Maddie Crewe—apparently trying to pull one over on a local fabric shop-owner, she’s determined to stop it. It turns out, however, that Maddie & a crew of members from the Weavers’ Library are working together to right injustice & take down the fabric shop-owner, who’s been taking advantage of people who have no legal recourse to fight back. Sophie wants to help Maddie. She also wants to kiss her & vice versa. What works for me in The Hellion’s Waltz is first its consideration of social issues & how it includes some pertinent items of material history. Through Maddie & the other members of her library I learned more about factory conditions, the lack of options available to the women who wished to protest them, & Combinations (a term I had never heard of before). Similarly it was cool learning more about pianos & weaving. Emotionally, Sophie has an intriguing arc, facing her anxiety & being brave thanks to applause-worthy moments like her mom’s speech. Later Sophie herself has a fantastic speech about making mistakes & it’s so good I could envision it celebrated on a motivational embroidery hoop. When it comes to the relationship between leads, the pacing was a bit off for me. First, I wanted to see the leads together more & later, when things start really moving they rush a smidge for my taste. But ultimately The Hellion’s Waltz is well-written, wise, & soft & I recommend it. 4 .5 ⭐️. Release date: 06/15. Thanks to the publisher & Netgalley for the complimentary ARC. All opinions provided are my own.If emotionally stunning, poignant stories w/ steam are your jam please read Julie Anne Long’s Palace of Rogue series & prepare to fall in love. Often. I’m Only Wicked with You is 3rd in the series & it’s a somewhat circuitous journey to love that had me emotionally invested—stressing at moments & swooning at the end. When the book opens, American Hugh Cassidy, a self-made man visiting London, has recently tattled on his fellow guest at The Grand Palace on the Thames, Lady Lillias Vaughn, resulting in her being effectively grounded. Lillias, a beautiful, ice cold queen, was smoking a cheroot, something that an Earl’s daughter does not do. The tension between Hugh & Lillias, the acrimony & the sexual attraction, is strong & both leads feel the latter’s pull even as they acknowledge the former. But when they’re caught together, these enemies must marry unless they come up with another plan. First, this book—like the others in the series—is full of beautiful language & humor & warmth, & also lines that bring a flush to my cheeks. Like a line about Hugh wanting to pin her down on a mattress. The lust is top-notch, urgent. Both leads are imperfect (bc of course!); they aren’t always likable, sunshine & rainbows, & I liked that too—even if it sometimes made me a little uncomfortable (bc I have some long-held beliefs about how women “should” act that I’m still working through.) But the nuance to them both is beautiful; also their guardedness & the ways they’re affected by the vulnerabilities in the other. Though the wait for them to admit feelings was a little challenging for me (I could have used some more softness, earlier), the payoff is huge. The sweet moments between Hugh & Lillias are lovely & the epilogue is *chef’s kiss.* IOWWY is powerful & sexy & I can picture Hugh & Lillias running the world & falling more in love w/ every milestone. Though the dynamic between them isn’t my fave couple dynamic of the series, the whole lot is stellar & I am a huge huge fan. 4.5⭐️. Release Date: 08/24. Thanks to Avon Publishing & Netgalley for the complimentary ARC. All opinions provided are my own.️Q: childhood best friends to eventual lovers stories—love them, indifferent to them, dislike them? Joanna Shupe’s The Devil of Downtown was one of my fave releases last year & she’s rapidly become one of the authors I can depend on for a meltingly hot scene or two. But sadly The Heiress Hunt just doesn’t work so much for me. Harrison Archer overhears his BFF Maddie Webster say that she thinks of him like a brother...on the night he plans on telling her he’s in love with her. Crushed, he heads to Paris for three years, dropping contact with her entirely, sowing his wild oats, & working on making a name & livelihood for himself—a necessary thing since his horrible, wealthy family disowned him. Now, back in the US, he learns that Maddie is still not married but maybe almost engaged to a Duke, & he decides to ask her for help finding a spouse as part of a plan to take down his horrible family & to spend more time with her in Newport. I’ll be honest: I didn’t entirely warm to either lead in this one. As Maddie notes, Harrison is ruthless in pursuing his agenda (*this time around*) but it was never a kind of ruthlessness that warmed my heart, for whatever reason. Maybe because she isn't asking for a lot & he keeps ignoring her wishes time & time again. There are some things I love about how Maddie is portrayed. A tennis superstar who works hard at her dream?! Yes! How she takes charge during their first sex scene, re-calibrating some power dynamics?! Yes double yes!! But I just don't see a lot of depth to either character & don't really see a deliberate moment of change/agency on her part—outside of tennis—until the end. The big issue in their relationship is how Harrison takes control & doesn’t see her as a partner & that’s reflected in the story itself; unfortunately—despite the things I love about her characterization—Maddie often fades into the background for me. The Heiress Hunt has some super sexy scenes, a hero who is utterly devoted to the heroine, a heroine who is ready to take on the world of competitive tennis—so many good things. However, it sadly falls flat for me. Look for me to be one of the first ones screaming with excitement about Joanna Shupe’s next book, though. I am a major fan. 3.5 ⭐️. The Heiress Hunt is out on 03/09. Thanks to the publisher & Netgalley for the complimentary ARC. All opinions provided are my own.Q: which kind of anti-hero are you more drawn to: the charming, rogue type or the terrifying, mostly silent type? Kerrigan Byrne’s Dancing with Danger has a lot of the KB trademarks. ✅ a hero on the wrong side of the law. ✅ a heroine who comes across as “innocent” but not so sheltered that she can’t handle the drama associated with him. ✅ some darkness & violence. ✅ but a once in a lifetime love can offer some kind of hope & redemption. Wealthy and privileged Mercy Goode puts the skills she’s learned as a member of the Detective Eddard Sharpe Society of Homicidal Mystery Analysis to work after the unfortunate death of a friend. Whom does she discover at her friend’s murder scene but the charming ne’er-do-well, Raphael Sauvageau, smuggler, gangster, & lord of the Fauves? Assuming Raphael to have been the murdered woman’s lover, Mercy agrees to exchange info with him in an effort to find her killer. But the more Mercy & Raphael are around each other, the more their chemistry becomes apparent until Raphael issues a daring proposition 🤭. The explosive chemistry between Raphael & Mercy is complemented by the sweetness of how much Raphael delights in Mercy’s somewhat unorthodox personality. She’s saucy & he loves it. You can tell he has feelings for his chaton, as he calls her, from the beginning & an antihero having tender feelings that most people don’t pick up on (because they seem impervious to softer emotion ) is one of my fave things. While I read Dancing with Danger quickly & enjoyed it thoroughly, the plot also often feels rushed to me. The connection between the leads is intense but things between them progress so quickly that it feels a bit shallow. I think the somewhat short length of the book might be a factor here too. But with that being said Dancing with Danger is a sexy, fast read with enough of those things I love about KB’s writing to bring a sparkle to a reader’s eyes. I waffled a little on the rating but I’m going with 3.5⭐️. Dancing with Danger is out on 02/09/21. Thanks to Berkley Pub for inviting me to be part of the blog blitz celebration for Harper St. George's The Heiress Gets a Duke. All opinions provided are my own. My ReviewI’m all about an independent, business-minded heroine who would rather not marry a Duke, thankyouverymuch! Harper St. George’s The Heiress Gets a Duke offers that plus an aristocratic hero who *shudder* has to “work” to get his intended bride to accept his suit & some sweet & sexy moments between the two. American August Crenshaw & her family are temporarily in London to visit a friend when her wealthy parents announce that they’re marrying off her younger, more conventional sister to a penniless, arrogant Duke. Evan Sterling, said Duke, does not want to marry but he must to save the people who depend on him & to live that Big D—Duke, silly—life to which he is accustomed. But saucy August—who wants to help run her family’s company, Crenshaw Iron Works, & who decidedly does not want to marry—is the Crenshaw who catches his eye. The fortune-hunting hero/American heiress pairing isn’t one that I’ve encountered a lot before & it complicates the dynamic between Evan & August in an intriguing way. The set-downs August lays, the fact that she basically laughs in his face at his arrogance, gave me a lot of pleasure ;), & the vulnerable moment Evan has when he shares his grief over his brother is touching. But I think my biggest quibble with the romance is that it doesn’t feel that truly romantic to me. The hero & heroine are both quite resistant toward marriage well into the book, & though their resistance wears down, their romance arc is never assertive enough. Persuasive enough. Without offering any specific spoilers, it just feels lackluster to me. Please also note there is reference to Crenshaw Iron Work’s possible expansion into India, a moment that @liber_lady explores in greater detail in her own review. The Heiress Gets a Duke is an interesting read with a heroine who wants to make her mark on the world & the cover is truly ravishing, but unfortunately the romance falls flat for me. 3 ⭐️. The Heiress Gets a Duke is available today. About Harper St. GeorgeHarper St. George was raised in the rural backwoods of Alabama and along the tranquil coast of northwest Florida. It was a setting filled with stories of the old days that instilled in her a love of history, romance, and adventure. By high school, she had discovered the historical romance novel which combined all of those elements into one perfect package. She has been hooked ever since. She lives in the Atlanta area with her family and loves to hear from readers. Thanks for joining me at The Naptime Writer Blog! Hope to see you again soon! Thanks to @readforeverpub & Netgalley for the complimentary ARC. All opinions provided my own.@romance.in.the.wild 's glowing review of Emily Sullivan’s A Rogue to Remember made me request it right away & let me tell you that I did not regret it. This stunning debut is so emotionally rich, the setting is sumptuous, the way it kept me on a knife’s edge until it finally tumbled into a HEA was divine. It’s lovely. Set largely in 1897 Italy, ARTR tells the second chance story of Lottie Carlisle & Alec Gresham, who both grew up with Lottie’s political mastermind uncle as guardian. Very close as children, they had one magical night where it seemed their relationship would become romantic & then Alec left abruptly without word. Five years later, Alec, an agent of the crown, has come to Italy to bring the wealthy Lottie back to England before she succeeds in deliberately ruining herself. On their journey home they must wrestle with the weight of their past, shared & not, &, among other things, Alec must decide if he’s willing to take what Lottie would offer. I’m so excited about Emily Sullivan’s talent, about these characters she’s written & how beautifully she writes their journey. On top of the aforementioned emotional mastery on display here, this book offers stellar sex scenes including one in front of a mirror 🥵 & I think that’s all I need to say about that. I did think that one aspect of the plot could have been a little tighter but wow, what a book! 5 ⭐️. A Rogue to Remember is available on 03/09/21. |
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