A Notorious Countess Confesses by Julie Anne Long

November 5, 2012

"Mister Bluebird on my shoulder
It's the truth, it's actch'll
Ev'rything is satisfactch'll" - Ray Gilbert & Allie Wrubel

http://www.julieannelong.com/

Gather around my little kid-does.  We got us a winner!  A Notorious Countess Confesses is one to be savored.  Now, it may seem strange, but I find reviewing a good book harder to do than one not so good.  There is always a chance that one will be too flowery with one's praise.  I know my radar goes up when someone just luvs-luvs a book.  Well, I have to say this is one gem of a book.  May be spoilers.

Welcome back to Pennyroyal Green, the wonderful community created by Julie Anne Long.  I love series' that are set in little towns!  Let me introduce you to one of the finest mismatched couples created.  We have Adam, the vicar and Evie, the courtesan.  Neither one of these character types is high on my favorite list.  A vicar just doesn't strike me as exciting hero material.  And, as far as a courtesan, there are just way too many fake boo-hoo romance courtesans out there.

But then, in walks Ms. Long, a truly dynamic writer.  In her hands a vicar who, while he may be perfect, is no zealot.  He's smart, has a sense of humor, caring for his flock and oh yes, extremely handsome.  Most of the women in the community drool over him, hang on his every word and dream of being his right hand woman.  He is overloaded with jams and honey from his adoring female parishioners.  He is used to their adulation, so when a beautiful stranger falls asleep during one of his sermons, he is intrigued as well as a little insulted.

That beautiful woman is Evie, our heroine.  I loved Evie; she was a strong, smart woman.  She makes no apologies for her past, but she has one desire and that is to have a friend.  A female friend.  So, she enlists Adam's help in trying to reach this goal.

I can't say enough about how interesting these two people were.  They both know that they are worlds apart.  They are both very much aware how damaging a relationship between them would be.  But, hey this is romance and we all know resistance is futile.  In the hands of Ms. Long, their struggle turns into a very romantic love story.  The dialog was so wonderful, it had me posting notes all over the place.  Right from the beginning, I wanted to see just how Ms. Long would resolve this couples vast differences.  I was eager for it to end, yet at the same time I wanted to stretch this story out just a little longer.  I even found myself experiencing anxiety over Evie's eventual pain.  Some really great writing.

Now, was it perfect? Well, I had a bit of a problem with the eye brow raising, rainbow gleaming, blue birds tweetin', butterflies flying around my head ending.  It was just a little bit overwhelming, a little sappy.  And although some of my favorite Bible quotes were there, it was just a little too much.

However, even with the Zip-a-dee-doo-dah ending, this is a book that shouldn't be missed.  I highly recommend A Notorious Countess Confesses!

Time/Place: Regency England
Sensuality: Mildly hot

What the Cat Saw by Carolyn Hart

November 2, 2012

How do you get a warm fuzzy feeling from a murder mystery?

http://www.carolynhart.com/

Well, I don't know how you do, but that's the feeling I had while reading What the Cat Saw by Carolyn Hart.  This is the first book by Carolyn Hart that I've ever read, and it probably won't be the last.  In fact, I believe this is the first in a new series by her and I think I am interested enough in the characters to check out the next few.

What the Cat Saw was a fast entertaining read.  There was a bit of traditional old-fashioned mystery story going on.  No goo or gore.  No detailed autopsy reports.  No cops in high-heels running after the bad guy.  Just a comfy - cozy, cup of hot chocolate kind of crime to be solved.

And, of course, the crime must be solved by someone not really in law enforcement.  You know those guys, police, detectives, the ones who really should be snooping around.  The ones who really ask questions that can hold up in court.  Nah, we have Nela Farley, who used to be an investigative reporter but she lost her job.  And now she's filling in for her sister at a place where there has been a mysterious death.  She's also feeding the cat (Jugs) of the dead woman.  Then there’s Steve, also an investigative reporter, who may be the love interest in future books.  Anyway, these two, Steve and Nela solve the mystery...cause reporters are so much smarter than police

I enjoyed both Nela and Steve.  Ms. Hart did a great job of slowly building my interest in these two characters.  I'm sure, as the series progresses, I will become even more involved in Nela and Steve.  The romance in this book was a soft, gentle, budding romance and the couple did not hop into bed with each other at first glance. In fact, there was nary a kiss throughout the whole book.  There was an underlying sensual tension between the two characters that I found refreshing.  I'm looking forward to the development of this relationship. 

Now, I did have a couple of quibbles.  The title of the book implies that the cat, Jugs, is going to be a big part of this book.  While there were some interesting cat thoughts being communicated to Nela, I thought that there should have been more.  I did find the cat's disjointed words and Nela's ability to pick up on them rather interesting.  I just wish there had been more, because it was fun. 

The other quibble I had was that I had a hard time believing that people/suspects were going to spill their guts to a pair of investigative reporters, especially in this day and age.  I also found it hard to believe that the detective/police eventually seemed to turn over the case - or at least the questioning - to Nela.

But, those were minor quibbles.  Mainly I found this book a fun read...not as in funny, ha ha, but entertaining.  And I will definitely be reading the next in the series.

Time/Place: Current USA

Sensuality: Sweet, Just Under the Skin Tension

The Birthday Scandal by Leigh Michaels

October 30, 2012

Where’s Robert Altman when you need him?

http://www.leighmichaels.home.mchsi.com/

Has anyone ever watched the Marx brothers' movie A Night at the Opera? If you have, remember the very funny scene where all these people keep showing up and are eventually crammed in this teeny tiny cabin? And, then someone opens the door and they all cascade out. Or have you ever sat through a Robert Altman movie? Think Gosford Park, Nashville, A Wedding, The Player. All those characters and conversations that must be followed. One of my all time favorite movies is Gosford Park and even with all those characters moving in and out of the scenes I am still able to follow along. There is a focus in it, something I can grab onto.

Why do I bring up the Marx brothers' A Night at the Opera and Robert Altman, you may ask? Well, I’ll tell you. The Birthday Scandal. This is the first book by Leigh Michaels that I’ve ever read. While I may read future books by her, they will have to have the criteria of having just one main couple in them. You see, we have three couples, their father and their uncle to wade through. Let’s see, there’s Max and his wife Isabel and her sister Emma and her love interest Gavin, and Lucien, (Isabel and Emma’s brother) and then Chloe, the girl who is supposed to marry the father, but really is Lucien’s love interest and Dukes and Marquess' and Sleepy and Dopey and…oops, wrong story.

You might think that because there are three couples, there would also be three stories and there are. Sort of. The problem I had with these stories was that instead of being separate stories, they were ALL intermingled into one story. And, in that one story there wasn’t any strong lead characters that I could focus on. No, they all had equal space allocated to them. With all these tales weaving together, it was hard for me to keep track of who was doing what to whom. One moment I would be reading about Max and Isabel’s disastrous marriage and the next paragraph there is Emma snarling at Lucien. I don’t mind secondary love stories in books, if there is a strong principal love story going on. That wasn’t the case here; in fact, they all seemed to be secondary stories. I also read numerous anthology/novellas. Some of them are good, some not so much. But this book cannot be classed as an anthology/novella either. In those books, there is usually a separation of story-lines, but that wasn’t the case in this novel. 

There was just too much of a jumble going on, so much in fact that there wasn’t any room for any good character development. There were possibilities in this story, the author is a strong writer…the words are all there. It’s the construction of the book that caused me problems. There was just too much muddle for me to enjoy this particular book.  

Time/Place: Regency England

Sensuality: Hot! A lot of fingers in the pie hot!

On My Radar November 15 - December 14, 2012!!

October 25, 2012

Susan Carroll

no web site

The Lady of Secrets

Dark Queen series

Trade size paperback

9780345502957 

Release date December 11, 2012

Lecia Cornwall

http://www.leciacornwall.com/

How To Deceive a Duke

9780062202413 

Release date November 27, 2012

Kasey Michaels

http://www.kaseymichaels.com/

What an Earl Wants

Redgrave Family series

9780373776764

Release date November 20, 2 012

Miranda Neville

http://www.mirandaneville.com/

The Importance of Being Wicked

Wild Quartet series

9780062199034 

Release date November 27, 2012

Andrea Penrose

http://www.andreapenrose.com/

Recipe for Treason

Lady Arianna Hadley Mystery series

9780451238863 

Release date December 4, 2012

Jillian Stone

http://www.gjillianstone.com/

A Private Duel with Agent Gunn

The Gentlemen of Scotland Yard

9781451629064  

Release date November 27, 2012

The Title Caught My Eyes:

Carolyn G. Hart

http://www.carolynhart.com/

What the Cat Saw

9780425252741  

Release date October 2, 2012


For a more complete list of upcoming releases see Hey Delia!

Sweet Deception by Heather Snow

October 23, 2012

What's that about a rose by any other name?

http://www.heathersnowbooks.com/

With Sweet Deception, the second book in the Veiled Seduction series, Heather Snow continues on the path of being an author to keep an eye on.

Sweet Deception was a very enjoyable book with a really intelligent heroine, Emma.  Now, when I say an intelligent heroine, I'm not talking about the standard smart romance heroine, who is actually one big looby and spends the entire novel spouting how clever she is while all the time she does one stupid thing after another, to say nothing of all the idiotic misunderstandings she perceives.  Well, not in this case!  Nope, Emma is not a stupido, she is a brainiac...she is marvelous!  Not only is she brilliant, she's witty and she also cares for those around her.  And, she can see through any half-truths that a lying scum of a double agent stinking spy person might do.

Speaking of lying scum spies, let me introduce our hero - Derick.  Once again I applaud Ms. Snow.  She has created a bona fide anti-hero in Derick.  He's actually done some unforgivable things in the service of his country.  He's lied, cheated and bedded his way across Europe, he's quite close to being pretty sleazy.  And, there are no apologizes for what he's done.  One of the more amusing moments in this book is Emma's appalled reaction after she calculates how many women Derick has taken to his bed during his "country saving" career.

Derick and Emma made a great couple.  It was refreshing to read a story where there wasn't any big misunderstanding.  Even when Derick plays the secret-trust-unworthy-angst hero card, Emma sees through it all.  She never let's him get away with too much of anything.  I love this couple.

About the only thing I didn't care for between these two was the nickname Derick bestowed on Emma when they were young.  She's short, you know, and they grew up together and she followed him around.  So, he calls her Pygmy.  This nickname made me cringe.  For one thing it's too close to the word Pig to be charming.  Elf, teeny, shorty, dinky, wee, mini...all would have been better than Pygmy.

There were moments in the story that modern language/slang kept cropping up, but I chose to ignore it because I was enjoying the story so much.  Emma had the bad habit of putting the wrong word into a phrase.  Sometimes those idioms that Emma was destroying, while extremely humorous, had a bit of a modern flavor to them.  But, I can't prove that and, really, I don't want to.

Let's switch gears here and look at another aspect of this story.  There is a murder mystery going on in Sweet Deception and I found it engaging.  Even though I guessed who the murderer was at the very beginning, watching Derick and Emma race around to solve the mystery was an exciting ride.  And, for once the villain isn't shipped off to Australia, but actually pays for his crimes.

So, overall this was an excellent book, with just a few minor hiccups.  It keep me engrossed to the end and I found it hard to put down.  The main couple were a delight and I think you'll enjoy opening up this book.  If you like strong heroines, this series is for you.  This is a fun, interesting read and I recommend it.  In case you were wondering, it also works well as a standalone.

Time/Place: Regency England

Sensuality: Hot

 

The Ugly Duchess by Eloisa James

October 16, 2012

Two days of bliss, 2,550 or so days of separation followed by two days of no grovel. Something doesn't calculate here!

http://eloisajames.com/

Yes, Virginia, there are spoilers.  The Ugly Duchess by Eloisa James is a hard book to review because I had different reactions to different things. And let me say right up front that a couple of my pet peeves/hot buttons were in this book... we will get to those later.

Let's start with the happy couple, James (hero) and Theo/Daisy (heroine), shall we. When this story begins, these two are teenagers. She's 17, he's 19, and they grew up together. They also had a strong friendship, treating each other as brother and sister. At least on Theo/Daisy's part. James had a bit of a problem focusing on the sister part when Theo/Daisy developed a chest. It isn't too far into the book that these two friends are forced to marry. There are a lot of issues that will interfere with a blissful marriage, but I will only mention two major ones: Theo/Daisy is painted as unattractive, an ugly duckling and has a complex to go with it. James is hiding the fact that he is entering this marriage to save his father from financial ruin. So, we have Theo/Daisy's insecurities and James' guilt over his deceit. Then entering the picture is love. It doesn't take this couple long to come to the understanding that there is more in their relationship than just friendship. They are in love with each other. They have two wonderful days together. I loved this part of the book, from the awkward stumbling first night together to their confiding their hopes and dreams together. In this part of the book I liked James; he was a true hero and never saw Theo/Daisy as the ugly duckling. And then disaster strikes. Theo/Daisy overhears something that breaks her heart and she kicks James and his awful father out of the house. 

And, what does James do? Well, he's nineteen, so he leaves, he sulks, he pouts... he doesn't fight for the woman/girl he loves. Nope, he becomes a pirate, ur, privateer. Not the dirty smelly kind with the rotten teeth, nah, the Johnny Depp/Errol Flynn/Gene Kelly kind. He's a good deed doer kind of pirate, sailing the ocean blue with his long lost cousin (insert suspend disbelief here), whom he runs into and also happens to be a pirate/privateer. Now, here is where the book lost me for awhile. He's gone for seven years cavorting around the world. In the beginning he had thoughts of Theo/Daisy, but then she just sort of vanishes out of his head. Hardly ever does he think of all the things that his friend, his wife, his love may be going through. He never ponders the humiliation his leaving must have done to her. He never gives a thought for what kind of hard life she must be living. Oh sure, he's fighting other pirates, but he's still free to indulge in what he wants. And, he does indulge in three mistresses during this time period. Now, we have arrived at two of my hot buttons: long separations and infidelity. Let's look at the infidelity first.

When he leaves Theo/Daisy he is nineteen, and his hormones are racing, so I actually expected him to have affairs. He waits two years to indulge his appetites, and I kept thinking that Ms. James might show us more insight into James' head. I also thought that maybe when the couple were reunited again there would be a good explanation for his behavior, even some major groveling, so at the time the mistresses were introduced I wasn't too upset. And, by the way, might I ask why three? Is that a magic number? Less then three makes the other women special and more than three makes him a horndog? Is that like kissing on the third date? Three, the magical proper number.

I mentioned the other hot button: long separation. This is the what disturbed me the most in The Ugly Duchess. I felt this separation was way too long. The couple were apart for way too much of the story. Maybe, if the last part of the book had been longer it would have made the separation palatable. It's not as if I didn't enjoy watching each of the characters develop into their own person, but they grew into two different people than the two who were in the beginning. Then they are together again and it only takes two days for them to forget/forgive and move on with their lives. I had a problem with this. Theo/Daisy was hurt deeply by James' actions or inactions and she deserved more from him than what she received. I feel more time needed to be dedicated to the reunion part of the book. So, I was disappointed in the way their reconciliation was handled. I really wanted more of a grovel from James; even if he hadn't committed adultery, he left his wife, never contacted her for seven years. She could have been dead for all he knew. I just thought there was too much of a rush toward the happy ending in this book. Maybe I would have been more satisfied if Theo/Daisy had given James a harder time getting back into her good graces and her bed. 

But, in the end, I found The Ugly Duchess hard to put down. I was really interested in what was going to happen to this couple. I was eager to see how Ms. James would resolve their problems. I loved the beginning, the young couple were a joy, I didn't care for the resolution to Pirate James/Jack's homecoming...he had it way too easy. And, the resolution of the many issues that seven years' separation created deserved more time. In the end it's given a rather cavalier treatment. So, I did like a lot of this book, just wish there had been a more satisfying ending.

Time/Place: Regency England/the ocean blue

Sensuality Rating: Hot!!

Jennifer Johnson is Sick of Being Married by Heather McElhatton

October 12, 2012

Poop doesn't make me laugh

http://www.prettylittlemistakes.com/

I have discovered that I am not a big fan of "Chick Lit," if that in fact is what this is.  I didn't care for Sex and the Single Girl when it was on television and I usually avoid reading books of that genre.  However, I was attracted to the title of this novel and had heard this was a hilarious book.  As it turns out it seems that I do not find the continual references to body excrement funny.  I only made it to page 99 before the constant snarky comments from the heroine finally became too much.

I was very disappointed and probably in the minority.