The Disgraceful Lord Gray by Virginia Heath

April 13, 2019

Who knew English could be so bothersome?
https://www.virginiaheathromance.com/
And, the curmudgeon continues her march to the sea.
I don’t remember ever reading a book by Virginia Heath, so I thought – hey, what have I got to lose. I gave it a try, and my thoughts are torn when it comes to The Disgraceful Lord Gray. It began on a high note. Oh, don’t get me wrong, there wasn’t anything new in the plot-line. Good-guy spies (the King’s Elite) are out to capture the ringleader of a gang of bad smuggler/spies. There is a rake, aka non-rake Lord Graham Chadwick, aka Gray. Gray has a big funny exuberant dog by the name of Trefor. It’s always nice to have the requisite cute dog. Gray also has large thighs and we know what that means. Along for the ride is Gray’s stuffed-shirt superior, Lord Fennimore. Also making cameo appearances are the past and future heroes from the rest of the series. Gray and Lord Fennimore believe they have caught their man, Lord Gislingham. But they must prove he is the man they’re looking for, so they need to do some covert maneuvering. They have not taken into consideration Gislingham’s niece, our heroine, Thea Cranford.

Thea Cranford is twenty-three years old and she’s bored, bored, bored. And, she doesn’t trust men. You see men seem to want her only for her fabulous wealth. She is of course gorgeous, but she can’t see it. She also seems to have a constant inner dialogue between her impetuous-Thea and her stick-in-the-mud-Thea. These inner beings constantly fight with each other. I found myself increasingly annoyed with Thea’s Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde narrative. Thea has a tendancy to imagine things that aren’t really happening. For instance, she is highly suspicious of Gray’s actions, and she should be. She just conjectures the wrong things when it comes to Gray. I wish the author had taken her conspiracy/suspicious attitude a little bit further. I would have welcomed her vivid imagination turning into something quite farcical, but Ms. Heath stopped short of running with that narrative. Too bad, it could have been a lot of fun.

There were a number of scenes I thought were well-written and pretty funny. Thea’s companion/friend Lady Harriet Ruddington was hysterical. She became a scene stealer for me. She has an eye for sensual men. She doesn’t hide her aggressiveness when it comes to seeking out handsome men, and partaking in the fulfillment they can give. She has done plenty of talking into Thea’s innocent ears. There is no question that Thea has been taught what’s what and what goes where – thanks to Harriet. There was also a chuckle-worthy scene between Thea and Trefor the dog. It seems that when one is trying to spy on someone, there should not be a dog around who wants to fetch things. I did enjoy a lot of the interaction by all of the characters – the banter and dialogue were witty and entertaining. Now for the issue, the distraction. The English language.

This is the first time I have noticed just how different UK English is from US English. Oh, sure I’ve seen the extra “U” in words, but that’s never bothered me. Here’s my story. I was reading along, minding my own business when a sentence jumped off the pages at me. Here it is: “He was sat staring cockily right back at her.” I stared at that sentence a long time. I read it over a few times, even read it out loud. I gave up and added the word “typo” to my notes. Then I continued. It wasn’t long before I ran across: “He’s currently sat on the drive.” I like to think I’m not tooooo stupid, I was starting to notice a pattern with the mixing of tenses. I conferred with by husband. He repeated these sentences over and over and over until he said that while the sentence structure appeared to be awkward, it could still be correct. I did not journey down the “whatever you say honey” path. I continued reading and found more of these disturbing “sat” sentences. I also ran into a “she had been stood there belligerently…” The next day I decided to continue my search with a brainy person who edits. When I read the first sentence to her, she immediately said “wrong.” Then I started to ponder. I had noticed the use of the letter “u” in my reading. You know what I mean: favour, labour, colour. Those “u” characters which aren’t needed. I thought, hey, some authors from the UK insert the u in words! Could Virginia Heath be from Great Britain? Could there be a chance that “sat” and “stood” were also some kind of grammar anomaly? Well, after a morning spent researching, the answer turned out to be yes. My sources tell me that this practice is called “non-standard grammar.” Technically, when writing, this is incorrect and as I suspected, it does have to do with the mixing of verb tenses.  The pattern could be a regional accent, frequently used in the northern parts of the UK. Yorkshire seems to be one of the culprits. And, that, my little Petunia’s, is the shortened version of what I found. Where does that leave me with this story?

As I said earlier, I was torn. The players in this book were standard Regency characters. They had some humorous dialogue, some funny situations, and a number of scene-stealing moments. Once I moved past the “sat” and “stood” I was able to stay the course. Do I recommend this story? I guess it depends. Remember, I spent a half day trying to find the answers instead of reading. Here is my wishy-washy answer. If you are a stickler for correct grammar, you are probably going to be annoyed with this story. On the other hand, if you can ignore certain speech patterns then this is a pleasant, standard Regency read. At this point, I may even try another one of Ms. Heath books – just because I like to live on the edge. 
 
Time/Place: Regency England
Sensuality: Warm

To Wed an Heiress by Karen Ranney

April 12, 2019

Somewhere the sun is shining – but not here.
https://karenranney.com/
I know this may come as a surprise to some of you, but I have finally arrived at the conclusion that I’m turning into a curmudgeon. See the tears are falling from my eyes. Listen as my inner voice cries out for some good books!!! Puleese!!! Why am I flooding the world with my raindrops? Well, I’ll tell you. Karen Ranney has just presented me with a DNF. What makes this even worse is that Karen Ranney has been around foreveeeer. Although I do have to say, sometimes she hits the book out of the ballpark and sometimes she hits a foul. This one didn’t even get off home plate. (I’m not sure why I’m using sporting jargon, because I’m really not a big fan.)

I tried, I really tried to finish this tale, but just couldn’t. It started out promising, and I thought it might be a fun read. I was rubbing my hands together with glee when a very superstitious maid started spouting dark omens. But it wasn’t long before I noticed the writing was tooooo disjointed for me to grab hold of. Here’s the plot. There is a pampered heiress from New York, Hortense Mercy Rutherford. She is very young. She has packed a suitcase full of money and is running away from home. She has crossed the big ocean, and landed in Scotland. It doesn’t seem to matter too much that this might be a tad bit upsetting to her parents. Why did she decide to run? There are two reasons, and one of them is a doozy. The first reason is that she doesn’t want to marry the man her parents have picked for her. Her no’s have been ignored. The second reason has to do with the money in the suitcase. This story takes place after the American Civil War. Mercy’s family are wealthy northerners, at least her father and mother are. Her grandmother, on the other hand, chose North Carolina to live in. Well, because her grandmother cannot accept money from a Yankee, she and her daughter have hightailed it back to her homeland of Scotland. And, this is why when this story opens Mercy and her maid are bumping along the Scottish Highlands with a suitcase of money. She wants to save her grandmother from starvation. Seems like a plan to me, not a good one, but a plan nonetheless. Then they see the dragon.

As it turns out, there isn’t any dragon in this story; that would be silly. This isn’t a fantasy after all. No, it’s really an airship. Enter our hero, Lennox. Lennox is an inventor. He putters around his crumbling estate because he just has to invent something, something new. Who cares if he doesn’t have any money? Who cares if he only has two servants? Who cares if they don’t have food to eat? At least he’s got his airship, which he stitched together with his two little hands. Speaking of stitches, there are a lot of them in this book. Either Mercy is stitching Lennox up, or he is stitching her. There are a number of accidents in this story. Evidently Lennox may not be very good at putting an airship together, because he’s lost control and is headed directly for the carriage. He crashes into it. The maid's arm gets broken, and Mercy has to have her head stitched up. By the way, Lennox has food. Thanks to his housekeeper, who is just like a mother to him, she is able to provide them with locally grown carrots.

Anyway, before Mercy and her maid are fully recovered from their injuries Lennox kicks them out of his house. Why? Well, evidently there is a family feud between his family and hers. It has to do with a dead brother eloping with one of Mercy’s relatives. So, the families don’t speak. In fact, one might say there are some devious things going on in them thar’ hills.

Let’s jump back to Mercy and that suitcase of money she’s lugging around with her. It seems that even when her grandmother is presented with money, she still will not accept any Yankee coin. Nah, she’d rather treat her granddaughter dreadfully and complain about everything. She also treats her daughter, Elizabeth, horribly. Oh yeah, there are a bunch of other relatives living at the estate. Mercy and her grandmother have a number of differing opinions.

Mercy wonders how her neighbor Lennox is doing, so she decides to sneak out to visit him.

On the way to his house she spots Lennox in his airship - again. He has decided, to stitch it back together and forgo the carrots. And, as before, Lennox just cannot seem to get the steering mechanism to work, because it is headed for the nearby loch. The airship crashes into the loch, Lennox becomes tangled up in the rigging, and Mercy jumps in to save him. He cuts himself and she stitches him up while observing his big thighs. 

There is also a secondary romance between Lennox’s assistant and Mercy’s maid.  Then we get interrupted in the romance department because Mercy’s rejected fiancé, Gregory, shows up. Another horrible person joins the troupe. He’s abusive, he’s a jerk and he will not take a no from Mercy. He also tries to murder Lennox, but I don’t think he gets punished.

There was so much jumping around from one plot to another. Except for the stitching of each other, there wasn’t any chemistry between Lennox and Mercy. There were a bunch of unpleasant people, including Mercy’s father, ex-fiancé, and grandmother. I skipped ahead to see if the story was worth continuing. Alas, I stumbled across the villain solution and could no longer continue with this story. This was a DNF for me. 

Time/Place: 1860something Scotland 
Sensuality: Didn't see any

The Infamous Duchess by Sophie Barnes

April 11, 2019
Never a Good Sign

https://www.sophiebarnes.com/sb1/
A recent conversation I’ve had – warning, I paraphrase:
Delia, “How’s that book coming?”
Me, “I’m having a lot of trouble with this one. The verbiage is disjointed.”
Delia, “Oh, that’s too bad.”
Me, “Yes, the heroine is blah, blah, blah, blah. The hero is blah, blah, blah. It’s giving me a headache.”
Delia, “Oh, I’ll be looking forward to your review. I thought The Infamous Duchess sounded interesting.”
Me, “The Infamous Duchess?”
Delia, “Yes, isn’t that what you’re talking about?”
Me, “Uh, no. I’m talking about blah, blah, blah.”
Delia, “Well, your blog says The Infamous Duchess.”
After looking at my blog:
Me, “Did I read that?”
Delia, “Don’t know.”
My light bulb moment, “OMG! I did read it, only three days ago…and it has already been relegated to the dark corners of my mind.”

Yes, that is my sad story, and it isn’t a good sign for the Infamous Duchess. So now it’s time to pull out allll the stops and put ye’ old thinking cap on.  First step, we check our notes.

Oh look, here’s a note attached to the sentence -“You must be joking.” My note says, “Is this correct slang?” Well, that’s obviously not a good sign either. That means that I’ve been thrown out of the book by the use of slang. Now, before I started accusing anyone of using the incorrect words, I did do some research. It’s not always a good thing to go with your gut reaction. Because I had a hard time finding the exact phraseology I zeroed in on the word “joke.” Much to my surprise, I did find that the word “joke” appeared on the scene in 1791. What does that mean? Well, to me it means that it would be possible for the heroine to actually use that phrase in her conversation. But by the time I was thrown out of the book, it was already tooooo late.

Remember what I always say. I can overlook tons of incorrect verbiage, spellings, and historical inaccuracies if I have been captured by the story. Why wasn’t anything capturing my imagination in this book? To be perfectly honest, I found The Infamous Duchess dull. That is what happens when a Beta hero is allowed to be a super-duper Beta and the infamous heroine really isn’t infamous.

Just because our heroine was married to an older man who died, leaving her some money, doesn’t mean she’s a disgraced person. She has countered the title of “infamous” by doing good. She’s also established a hospital – a good hospital. She’s a little concerned when the story opens, because her evil son-in-law is threatening to close her down. Spoilers. We are told he is evil because not only is he making her life miserable, but there also seems to be the matter of disappearing women around him. That includes his wife. Now, I love my villains as much as the next guy, but this one didn’t make the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. I could find no threatening atmosphere to dig into. For me, that was the problem with the rest of the characters in this story. None of the people in this book had any flavor. Most of the time in The Infamous Duchess was used up with a lot of outside padding and standard Romanceland similarities.

From the typical should-I-give-up-my-independence-and-marry-this-wonderful-guy heroine, to the rake-not-rake beta hero, this story was filled with plot-lines/themes/devices which didn’t go anywhere, and prevented the much-needed character development. By the time I found myself at the end of this book, I had lost interest in the love story. It was easy for me to file this story into the dark midst of my mind. And, just so you know, I don’t like to forget stories created in a genre I care so much about. Sorry to say, I cannot recommend this book.

Time/Place: Regency England
Sensuality: Warm