The topic of this
month is Holiday
Themes
Published: Sept-2012
Genre: Historical
My Rating: 3.5-4-3-3.5-3-3-3-2
stars
In December
we have to choose something related to Holiday. And as it’s December an
obvious book was this Christmas anthology, as I did last year with another
anthology written by the Word Wenches.
It was in my TBR pile
because, as I have
already written here, Joanna Bourne is one of my favourite authors. And I
bought it because of her story, I read it and even published a review about it in September 2015, but then I didn’t keep on reading
the rest of the book.
So I bought this Christmas anthology because of
Joanna Bourne’s story, but I didn’t find the moment to read the rest of the tales
until now. Anyway, these stories are written by great authors, and it shows.
They are the Word Wenches: Mary Jo Putney, Jo
Beverley, Joanna Bourne, Patricia Rice, Anne Gracie, Susan King, Cara Elliott,
and Nicola Cornick. They have written several Christmas anthologies, short
stories in which there’s a celebration of the season and very little sensuality
– these are ‘Kiss Only’ novellas.
These women are very competent, even if the
plots are not quite original. Their characters are adults. These are Regency
times, when women tend to have not very interesting things to do, because, do
you know? Beautiful people, balls and walks under the moonshine do not a novel
make. Well, some authors do it, but they tend to bore me.
So these wenches have tried to find interesting
ways for their heroines to be active, in order to solve the problems that make
their happy ending difficult.
It starts with Mary Jo Putney’s She Stoops
to Wenchdom (3.5 stars). A story
of disguises. Lucinda ‘Lucy’ Richards, very virtuous daughter of a vicar, goes
to a party and there she finds the man she has always loved: Captain Gregory
Kenmore. But Greg has come back from the war quite broody so, although he likes
this girl, he thinks he does not deserve someone so innocent and pure.
What can Lucy do? Stay put in the vicarage? Of
course not!
She knows that the Captain opens himself with
the jovial girls of the tavern so she puts on a wig, disguises herself as a
barmaid, and there she goes one night, to see if he can make him talk to her, a
supposed stranger. She will have more success than she expected.
Then we have the story written by the late Jo Beverley, Miss Brockhurst’s Christmas Campaign (4 stars). Three broken
compromises are enough for Penelope ‘Pen’ Brockhurst to find out that she can
only be happy with Cardross ‘Ross’ Skerries, her best friend. So she wants to
conquer him these Christmas. But there’s a problem: it looks like he is
courting a young woman, ideal, delicate and feminine.
So what can Pen do? Go home to cry? Of course
not!
So she decides that a campaign is necessary, and
her arms will be her intelligence her wicked tongue –showed in very witty
dialogues with a little bit of malice- and the knowledge of all the Pagan sense
of the Christmas rites, something that horrifies his intended’s very Christian
family.
The best thing of this story is the humour in
it. Apart from that, as the story is told from Pen’s point of view, what she
thinks and feels, therefor, Ross remains a mystery.
The third one is Intrigue and Mistletoe, by Joanna
Bourne (3 stars). A young woman called Elinor had a father that was a
scholar in Greek and Latin. She is travelling in Christmas time. There’s a
snowstorm and she goes to a full inn to take shelter. There she meets Jack, a
very handsome and tall man she had a relationship with two years ago. As it is
a Bourne’s story, this man works as a spy, of course! In the end it is Elinor
the one who solves the problem of who the spy is and where is the secret
message that Jack is looking for.
Then, Patricia
Rice tells us another story of disguises with Wench in Wonderland (3.5 stars). Damaris is poor so she
works as a companion for Lady Alice, who elopes with the man she loves. Damaris
is the one who will have to explain things to the man Lady Alice’s father has
chosen for his daughter. But there’s an accident, and she is confused with Lady
Alice.
What can Damaris do? As she is a very sensible
and pragmatic woman, she keeps the charade in order to Lady Alice to elope
successfully but at the same time she organises Trevelyan’s manor. She is so
good at this that widower Adam, Viscount Trevelyan, thinks she is so great that
his brother has to keep her. But, what do you think is going to happen when he
discovers that she is not his brother’s fiancée?
Nicola Cornick tells the story of a second chance
with your best friend who has loved you for years. It’s called On a Wicked Winter’s Night (3 stars). Lydia Cole, a duke’s daughter, has got a child and is not
married, so she went away to the Welsh coast. Her best friend wanted to marry
her, but she said ‘no’ because she thinks that he did it for friendship but as
a matter of fact he has loved her for years. Now Johnny, the new Baron of
Newport finds her again and wants her in his life forever. A friends-to-lovers
story with a little rushed end.
The adventure and the atmospheric quality of
the style in this anthology is given in Cara
Elliott’s story, Weathering the Storm
(3 stars). It shows that sometimes,
knowing how to steer a boat is more important than to waltz. American Sophie
Thirkell has a mission –she has to arrive to London before Christmas time
because she wants to reconcile her English family with her father. But she is stranded
in Cornwall. The only boat is one that Bentley, Lord Beete, buys. He is a
diplomat that needs to go to London to give same messages to the government.
Do you think that Sophie is going to start
crying while this not very nice viscount? No!
She is not very good with the waltz but she
knows her way in a boat, whereas Bentley doesn’t. So they go to the sea, and
that’s the beginning of an adventure for both of them.
In The
Mistletoe Bride (3 stars), Anne
Gracie tells the story of a poor spinster whose future is the home of a
very stingy uncle. What is she going to do? She sees the chance to marry Ronan
James McAllister, a man who needs to be married in order to inherit. As he had an
unhappy marriage before, he has decided to marry a woman who is going to die
soon. But what he ignores is that, instead of an agonizing woman, he will meet a
very healthy Marguerite Blackett-Smith. Again, here we have got a story with a little
bit rushed end. It does not sound very believable that they profess eternal
love two days after they meet for the first time.
And last and –in this case- least, Susan King and her A Wilder Wench (2 stars).
This is the story that I liked less. What can the vicar’s niece do in order to
free her brother form jail? She decides to become a highway-woman, and this
twist of the plot is something very difficult to understand. How is this going
to help her brother? I just don’t know. The thing is that Edward Armstrong,
Lord Dunallan, the new viscount and sheriff of Stirlingshire, sees the crime
and wants to stop this bandit. He is very surprised to discover that the
culprit is the very beautiful and charming vicar’s niece. The plot made little
sense to me and, apart from that, Scottish stories are not my thing and
moreover I cannot feel sympathy towards people that goes against the law. So it
was a bittersweet end to quite a competent anthology.
I have written about short stories before. That
it’s a format that usually works well if the couple knew each other beforehand,
with the topic second chance at love
in full swing. Otherwise, two people meeting and falling in love in few days do
not make a very believable end.
I still think the same, although, in this case,
two stories of people meeting and falling in love in very few days is
convincing and charming. I prefer the way that Elliott has done it in Weathering the Storm: it’s clear that
they have fallen for each other and they will keep on exploring that attraction
in the future.
This is the last TBR
Challenge of this year. I say the same as last year, I’m sad that my English is
not as good as it used to be. But anyway, I’m ready to keep on doing the TBR
Challenge in 2018. Hope to see you next year.
Your English is quite good! I certainly could not blog in Spanish! My reviews would consist of "no bueno" or "bonita" and that's it LOL
ResponderEliminarThis is a big anthology with a lot of authors, so kudos to you for reviewing all of them. I like short stories and novellas, but in romance - yes, the reunion theme tends to work best. Makes the shorter timeline more believable.
Some books are so bad that don't deserve a review longer than "no bueno", so I guess you have an idea there!
EliminarYou can always trust the Word Wenches to give wonderfully written stories.
Thank you for your kind words. See you next year!