TBR Challenge: ‘THE PIRATE PRINCE’, by Gaelen Foley

The topic of this month is Favorite Trope

Published: Aug-1998

Genre: Historical Romance

My Rating: 3 stars

Part of a series: The Ascension's Principality Trilogy #1

In July we have to look for a novel with a favourite trope. As I said last year, I have several of them: beta heroes, friends to lovers, best enemies, second chance at love, amnesia, disguise....

In my database, I’ve got this book as one of those with the topic ‘Best Enemies’.

‘The Pirate Prince’ is a book that I bought in paper, and not as an e-book. I’m not sure why it was in my TBR pile. I must have seen a good review somewhere.

The main character, Lazar di Fiore is a man in search of revenge. While he was young, and heir to the throne, he saw all his family butchered. He had to fly away to save his life. Awful experiences followed his flight. And he’s back to take his revenge. He has got this idea of killing everybody in the Monteverdi family, because that man was a traitor to his father the king Alphonse and is nowadays the governor.

He will start abducting and killing his beloved daughter, Allegra. But one thing is that name and another, a very different one, this young woman herself. She’s beautiful, a good person, and has her own dreams about the legend of the missing prince.

In order to talk a little bit about Allegra, I have to tell you about this imagined kingdom of Ascension, an island with a Spanish name that is supposedly somewhere in the Mediterranean, to the West of the Italic peninsula. As all the islands in Western Mediterranean Sea, it belonged to the Romans, then to Barbarians, the Muslims, afterwards… Spanish people and later on they had their own royal family, the Fiore. But there was this coup d'état, instigated by the Genovese, and the king Alphonse was killed, with everybody else in the royal family but Lazar, who survived and went away. But everybody thinks he died, and therefore his existence is the matter of legends.

Allegra is the daughter of the governor, a Genovese. But she dreams about this fantasy prince. She wants the people to be freed, and shows her commitment towards the people of Ascension. She helps in whatever form she can do it.

When she is kidnapped by this handsome stranger, a pirate, little does she know that he is the lost prince of her dreams. And that he wants to kill her in order to have his vendetta.

But of course when Lazar sees this woman in the flesh, and hears about her ideals, it would be rather difficult to kill her and everybody else in her family.

This was an entertaining book with a complex mixture of old and new skool of historical romance. I had the same feeling I had while reading a Pamela Clare’s historical, with that mixture of old and new.

It has the length of those old stories, I think I’d love it more if it had a hundred pages less! And the plot itself was very old-skoolish, revenge, a pirate ship in the ocean, the hero as a direct danger towards the safety of the very young and very virginal heroine. She, of course, has never had a lusty thought in her life until she meets Lazar.

The sexy scenes are very few and apart, although there’s this sexual tension all through the novel. Sometimes it sounds like a joke, it looks like they are going to do it, but then something happens.

But on the other hand, there are traits of more recent historical romances. The point of view is not only that of the heroine but also we know, in every detail, what Lazar thinks, and decides, and is afraid of, his thoughts, his feelings, everything is there, on the page. Lazar looks like the rapey hero of the bodice rippers, but in the end, he will never had sex against her will.

Lazar di Fiore is the character you remember more of this book. Allegra is more your commonplace idealistic woman that wants everything to be better and, although she does not know, at the beginning, that he is the lost heir to the throne, once she accepts this fact, she wants him to change and be a better person, accept his inheritance and becomes a new and bright king for the island.

But Lazar is a more complex character. His life has been rather difficult, he has had terrible experiences that have damaged his soul. He expects nothing, he has made no plans beyond his revenge, and never in his wildest dreams has thought about claiming the throne.

He considers himself a cursed person, which he cannot love because everybody he loves is going to die sooner or later. So even when he finds himself in love with Allegra, he rejects any future together because he does not want her to die.

In the end, it was a lovely book, rather entertaining, although some parts were very long for me, and I skipped them.

I see this is the first book that Gaelen Foley published so, all things considered, it was a great achievement.

I thought that this was my first book by Gaelen Foley. But then I saw that the second book in the trilogy, Princess, is on my shelves, translated to Spanish. I must have read it more than a decade ago. I don’t remember anything about it. Perhaps I should re-read it.

TBR Challenge: ‘MISS WONDERFUL’, by Loretta Chase

Berkley, 2004

The topic of this month is Comfort Read  

Published: 2004

Genre: Historical Romance

My Rating: 3 stars

Part of a series: Carsington Brothers #1

In June the topic is ‘Comfort Read’. As I said last year, for me, a comfort read is a book that I know how it’s going to develop, I have a general idea of the style and I assume that nothing is going to be too hurtful or very intense.

Loretta Chase, with her light and fluffy historical novels set in the Regency, is a good example of a comfort read. I know what to expect: quick dialogues, charming characters, a little problem or two that will be solved and sweet sexy scenes.

Some books of this Carsington Brothers series have charmed me before, and I went for this ‘Miss Wonderful’, one of the few that I have not read yet.

The series is about a rich and aristocratic family, more specifically, several brothers. This is the story of the third one, Alistair. In his youth, he was very inclined to fall in love. He had several romances that went south for one reason or another, and then went to war. He was injured in Waterloo and survived, not being he himself later on.

Now, being twenty-nine years old, he has become a dandy, who looks very carefully how –and everybody else’s– dresses. But he hasn’t gone back to his amorous conquests. And although he does not recognize this before anybody, he does not feel quite himself yet.

Anyway, as his father, an Earl, says, he is a very expensive son. So his father tells him that he has to find out a way of getting a living for himself. Otherwise, he will have to marry an heiress.

So Alistair Carsington has a problem to solve. He puts all his money in the project of a friend, a canal. When there’s a problem with that building construction, he has to go to Derbyshire to solve it. There he finds Miss Mirabel Oldridge, a very intelligent and capable woman that is completely against the canal.

Mirabel Oldridge’s father is an eccentric that loves botany and does not care about his properties. 31-years old Mirabel has been managing everything. She loves her little corner of Great Britain and rejects the idea of a canal crossing it.

When Alistair and Mirabel meet, something sparks between them. He falls head over heels even if she is awfully dressed, it doesn’t matter that they are enemies in this project of a canal. They feel an intense attraction. They don’t want to give in to temptation.

Alastair is a beta hero in the sense that he is not overwhelming, he does not want to be recognized as a war hero, he doesn’t want to give in to the temptation of this wonderful Mirabel. By the way, it’s she the one that has to take the initiative if she does not want to stay on the shelf forever. He even tries to find a solution that could be good for everybody, for him and Mirabel.

As a romance novel, we all know that everything is going to be all right in the end. And as it is Loretta Chase, everything is light, nothing dark or intense, even in the moments when there’s a little bit of danger for the characters. Witty dialogues, soft humour that makes you smile… I understand that so many people love this story. I just enjoyed it but in the end, there was nothing special in it and I’m afraid that I will forget it in a couple of days.

It was an easy and pleasant book, what I call a perfect comfort read.

TBR Challenge: MISCHIEF AND MISTLETOE

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. 

TBR Challenge: ‘THE CINDERELLA DEAL’, by Jennifer Crusie

The topic of this month is Recommended Read (a book recommended to you by someone)

Bantam, Oct-1996 WTF??

Published: Oct-1996

Genre: contemporary

My Rating: 3 stars

Part of a series: Loveswept (LS) - 807

I just love everything that Jennifer Crusie has published.

In November we had to look for a book that was recommended to you by someone. I only had one of those in my kindle. It was the Spanish translation of ‘A Fallen Lady’, by Elizabeth Kingston. So I started reading it. That was going to be my book this month. But it isn’t.

My experience with that book was like a beautiful palace surrounded by dense clouds of smoke. Sometimes they opened and you could see a charming book with wonderful characters, glimpses of a precious story. But then the black smoke came back and you could see nothing more than awful words and incomprehensible sentences. The dense smoke came from the fires that the translator had started with all her dictionaries, grammars and orthography of the Spanish language.

English-speaking people are used to foreigners like me making a lot of mistakes, but people who speak French or Spanish, with the Academies that give the official rendering of each word and what it exactly means, have less patience.

So it wouldn’t be fair to speak badly about a book whose plot, characters and style, in the original form, must be great.

Therefore, I decided to look for something different, and I realised that there was not another book in my kindle that was a recommendation. But Wendy usually says that ‘Remember: the themes are optional! The whole point of the TBR Challenge is to read something, anything, that has been languishing for far too long’.

And here I am, talking about one of the few Crusie’s book that I haven’t read yet.

As the title says, it’s a kind of Cinderella story, and that fairy tale air permeates all the book. Lincoln Blaise is a History scholar that needs someone to pose as his fiancée in order to get his dream job in a Midwestern college. He asks Daisy Flattery, a story-teller, his charming and quite Bohemian neighbour in need of some money.

A history scholar and a story-teller. There must be a joke in there that I just don’t get.

Anyway, this is one of those stories of opposites attracting. He is stuffy, very formal, and tidy while she is a free spirit, a feisty heroine. He’s a scholar, she’s an artist. He likes cold petite blondes and Daisy is just the opposite: tall, with curly black hair and all the right curves in the right places.

In a sense, it reminded me of Strange Bedpersons (Dec-1994), which is also a love story between a conservative hero and a leftish heroine.

So like Cinderella she has to perform a role: the prim and proper bride-to-be, oozing Southern charm. This storyteller does not consider herself a liar. She just likes creating and telling stories that could be unreal but not untrue. And this charade is just another story, Linc’s story, which she is trying to tell.

But we know that in Romanceland, this kind of plot leads to a real relationship. And Daisy starts asking herself if she could be part of Linc’s story, if they could make a story that belongs to the two of them.

I don’t want to tell you all the details of the plot. Just that this is a funny and heart-warming. It can make you laugh and think, perhaps cry in a certain moment. The style is quick and witty, as you can expect from a Crusie’s novel.

Apart from telling stories, Daisy is a painter. She makes very interesting works, for instance detailed pictures about real women like Rosa Parks or Lizzie Borden, who was accused of killing her parents. There’s a very significant moment in the book about two paintings she does of Linc.

Will these two people work as a couple? The jury is still out. The main problem you could find in this book is, maybe, Lincoln’s attitude. He wants her to be with him, but he’s always afraid of her doing something embarrassing. Only at the end of the book he accepts that she’s the woman of his life and that he wants her just like she is, and not like the perfect college teacher wife.

I had this feeling that yes, they have their HEA, but now and then it will not be so happy, because they are going to clash. They still have very different views about life. And you have to believe, as this is a romance novel, that they will always overcome it.

The setting, a college town in the Midwest, is a little bit oppressing. Each professor has to have a wife, it’s a very conservative surrounding and I was feeling quite uncomfortable while reading it.

Jennifer Crusie’s production has got three phases: first, category novels; then, contemporary novels and the third one what I call ‘miscellaneous’, a little bit of everything, alone and in the company of others.

This is one of the category novels she wrote for Bantam back in the 1990s. In AAR Reader Poll of 1996, it got a Honorary Mention in the category Feistiest Heroine (Daisy Flattery). It was also a RITA nominee. And some readers consider it one of their favourite books.

In my opinion, it has aged well. The characters are still witty, attractive, people that you would fall in love with.

So if you want something entertaining, you can give it a try. You will laugh and also, maybe, weep a little, and close the book with a smile on your face.

TBR Challenge: ‘THE PREY’, by Allison Brennan

The topic of this month is Paranormal or Romantic Suspense

Published: 2005

Genre: romantic suspense

My Rating: 3 stars

Part of a Series: Predator #1

In October the topic is a novel either Paranormal or Romantic suspense. Paranormal is not my thing, so I looked for anything suspenseful. I did not find it on my kindle. But then I remembered this book that I bought on paper and in a Spanish translation.

Why did I buy it? I bought it with other books with a reduced price. I saw that this book was number 979 when RomanceNovels.Me chose the best 1000 romance novels. And in Romance Readers at Heart was a Reviewers’ Top Pick in 2006. So it could be an interesting book, I thought.

The plot in itself is something we have all seen many times. A woman that is threatened by a killer. She needs protection. She got it in a very sexy form. Her bodyguard falls for her and the feeling is reciprocated.

What makes this book a little bit different is that the killer is doing something really awful. Rowan Smith worked for the FBI, and now she writes suspense novels. This assassin does in real-life what she has imagined in her books.

She’s got her secrets. Something happened when she was a kid, and it looks like the killer knows her very well. The past, that she thought was forgotten, has come to haunt her. Even if she refuses to acknowledge it. Two men go to her house to protect her: first Michael and then his brother John. You have certain doubts about who is the hero. But they are solved nearly in the first scene with John. He makes her feel ‘something’ whereas his brother makes her a little bit nervous because he likes her and she sees him just as a friend or a brother.

The first part of the book was a little bit slow. And it took me a couple of days to enter into the story. The translation was not a very good one and that could be the reason why I felt disconnected.

On the other hand, Rowan is not a very sympathetic heroine. It’s difficult to warm up to her. She’s always with her Glock and points it to anyone, even her bodyguards. Just for fun by the look of it. Something really stupid, if you want to know my opinion.

In certain moments, as I was disconnected to the story, it reminded me of a TV movie, something not good enough to be brought to the silver screen. Trite dialogues, lame performances, anticipated twists and turns.

But the second part was more intriguing and there was a point when I just couldn’t stop reading until the end, just to know what happened next.

So in the end, it was quite an interesting book, with enough romance and suspense to have a good time with it. But it is not going to rock your word, certainly.

When I discovered that this was the author’s first novel, I was surprised. It’s certainly a great achievement.

I’m not sure if I’m going to read the next two books of the series. If I find them in a reasonable price, I think I will give Brennan’s work another chance.

TBR Challenge: ‘SPECTRED ISLE’, by KJ Charles

The topic of this month is Historical

Published: Aug-2017

Genre: historical/Paranormal

My Rating: 4 stars

Part of a series: Green Men #1

In September we have to look for a historical romance. We usually relate ‘historical romance’ with the Regency or the Middle Ages, Vikings or Westerns but the Roaring Twenties? Well, yes, they are history too. What’s a historical novel? For me, it’s a book set in a time when I was not born yet. So ‘historical’ is something that –IMO- depends on the point of view of the reader. For many people, the 80s or the USSR are history, but for me, as they are part of my life, they are contemporary.

So I’m sure that a novel set in the 1920s is a historical one, even if it’s tinted with paranormal elements as this one is.

This is the first book of a series about Green Men, mythical creatures in the English folklore.

Saul Lazenby is an archaeologist that fought in the Middle-Eastern theatre of World War I, something went wrong and he was in jail. His family rejects him, and part of the suspense of the story is discovering what happened in the past for him to be so despised. The war is over, and he had difficulties finding a job, so he is very grateful towards Major Peabody, a silly old man that believes in anything supernatural.

Saul helps him in his nonsensical researches, as he does not believe in any of that. But he will be surprised to find himself in the middle of inexplicable events, like a tree spontaneously burning – and in those moments, once and again, a very attractive and ironic man appears, the mysterious Randolph Glyde, very upper class, with the stiffest upper lip you can imagine.

This is how Saul sees Randolph - A thoroughbred aristocrat, effortlessly superior, endlessly disdainful.

And Randolph wishes – If only more of his work involved sinewy, sunburned, sensitive men, rather than people who lacked the common decency to die properly.

It happens that Randolph Glyde is a member of a group of people with extraordinary powers that fight against the shadows, the bad things, the villains that are coming back from the dark to haunt, and kill and destroy. He did also fought in the WWI, in the ‘War Beneath’, with supernatural powers fighting for Britain or Germany. He lost all his family. But it looks like that war is not over. When he finds Saul in those places, he asks himself whether Saul is friend or foe.

Saul is attracted to Randolph, but he cannot trust him, as he was painfully betrayed in the past and everybody has abandoned him after the war. And Randolph does also find him very attractive but he still has to find why Saul keeps on appearing when something strange happens. If he were just an Oxford archaeologist…

Here you find everything you expect in a KJ Charles novel -sexual tension, romantic uncertainty, a little bit of suspense, compelling dialogues and two or three mysteries. Not all of them are solved in this novel, I’m sorry to say. You’ll have to wait for the next books in the series.

I could say that, up to this point, KJ Charles is one of my favourite authors, since I discovered her in 2015 with Think of England. Therefore, this novel has not been in my TBR pile for long. She writes two kinds of historical novels -with and without paranormal elements. I like all of them but I prefer those without paranormal elements, because that is a genre I’m not very fond of. This is a book very close, in style, to the Charm of Magpies series.

The characters are so sexy, their feelings so intense and so little expressed, that you fall in love with them and cannot stop reading until the very end. Yes, it’s one of those books that can keep you awake at night or make you be late to your work.

I have to add that very few novels give you the real sense of the terrible carnage that World War I was. Both in Britain and France and Germany, a whole generation of young men was destroyed, absurdly destroyed, in the kind of industrial war that used men as mere cannon fodder.  There were villages where none of the young men survived. And the post-war times were full of old men and despair. The Roaring Twenties were not so Golden or Happy in a Europe, in countries that still suffered from the consequences of the war. Only after Locarno agreements (1925) the situation started to really improve, but for very few years. The Great Depression was just around the corner.

Part of that desperation and the horrifying experience of the Great War is shown here. And I have to say that I’m always impressed when romance books, that are supposed to be just commercial fiction, portray these things better than many literary books.

So, another great book by KJ Charles. Yes, I do not give it 5 stars but it is only because of the way I grade books, comparing them with other books written by the same author. And 5-stars books by KJ Charles are –for me- Think of England, A Seditious Affair and An Unnatural Vice.

But I have still to find a story of hers that hasn’t kept me glued to the page. 

TBR Challenge: ‘THUNDER ON THE RIGHT’, by Mary Stewart

The topic of this month is Kicking It Old School (publication date 10 years or older)

Published: 1957

Genre: romantic suspense

My Rating: 4 stars

In August the topic is a novel that was published more than ten years ago. So I went to my kindle and looked for the oldest thing there that can still be considered a romance novel.

And there I found it, a Mary Stewart’s gothic. I don’t know why I bought it. I guess I it was cheap and I enjoyed other things written by her.

As usual, the heroine is a young English woman abroad. In this case is Jennifer Silver, daughter of the Bullen Professor of Music at Oxford. A couple of years ago she had a beau, Stephen Masefield. He had fought in Korea –I guess it was in the Korean War that lasted from 1950 to 1953, but later on he talks about having been in the WW2, so I’m not sure-. Anyway, he came from war with a little limp and wanted to keep on studying music, went to Oxford, met Jenny and were very good friends. He had to go to Vienna, and did it alone, as Jenny’s mother doesn’t want him as a son-in-law.

The beginning of the book is two years later, with Jenny, now 22 years old, in the astounding landscape of Gavarnie, in the French Pyrenees. She’s gone there in order to meet her cousin, Gillian. This girl is half French and she’s the widow of a Frenchman. Jenny has received quite perturbing letters from her, talking about illness, and a convent in the mountains and that perhaps she will profess as a nun, something that absolutely has no sense for Jennifer.

So there she goes, to talk to her cousin. In the hotel she meets Stephen again and discovers they still feel very comfortable with one another. But Jennifer has to go to the nunnery, looking for her cousin. There she goes and in an impressive description of a totally gothic atmosphere, she meets what she supposes is a nun, Doña Francisca. In very few and harsh words, she’s told that her cousin is dead. It's quite a shock for Jennifer, who just does not understand it.

Jennifer asks questions, and wanders through the dark aisles and frightening rooms of this convent isolated in a stormy valley in the mountains. And she starts doubting everything, she cannot accept that her cousin is dead, she dislikes that woman –who is not as a matter of fact a nun but the bursar and some things she’s told make her think that the dead woman cannot be her cousin.

I enjoyed this book a lot. It’s a gothic novel that instead of a mansion in, say, Cornwall, you’ve got a convent in the Pyrenees, with a sinister woman all dressed in black that, by the way, is Spanish and reminded me of certain old women that I know of, with very bad character and that think that religion justifies anything when, as a matter of fact, they are only satisfying their own ambitions and vices.

These old writers knew how to engage you in a story. It’s like being told a tale before the fire, slowly and creating the entire needed atmosphere. You feel intrigued and a little bit frightened. Many books published nowadays sound like a movie script.

And she adds a very subtle –o so British! - sense of humour, that you can smile, even in the midst of the dreadful things that happen in the book.

The quality of the writing in authors like Mary Stewart and Georgette Heyer, even if the plots lack something, is the reason why they keep on being published and enjoyed. I wonder how many contemporary romance writers will still be read in fifty years time by fans of the genre.

Yes, her forte is the style. She knows how to create an atmosphere that catches you. She uses the necessary descriptions, but she also knows how to use very skilful dialogues now and then. Her heroines are lively, resolute, and brave but never lose the good sense and the composure of a lady. The hero, in this case, is rather beta. He warns Jennifer not to turn him into a hero. But of course, in the end he also has his heroic moment.

It was a nice change to read some Spanish expressions without misspellings. That’s something that usually happens when reading in English. Hundreds of million people speaking Spanish in the world and they cannot find one who writes it correctly. For instance, I’m reading Beauty like the night, by Joanna Bourne and even she has misspellings in the few sentences in Spanish included in her book. But not with Mary Stewart, she had her Spanish well written. I only found one word wrong –I don’t know why the Spanish name ‘Jesús’ is written as Gésus, a strange word that mixes Italian and Spanish and it does not belong to any of these languages.

It's an entertaining three-star novel, but I give it one more star for the setting. The Cirque de Gavarnie is a splendid cirque in the central Pyrenees, and is part of the World Heritage landscape called Pyrénées - Mont Perdu, which spans the contemporary national borders of France and Spain. The author knows how to take you there with her seductive words. Mountains, valleys, rivers, peaceful mountainous meadows, winds and storms are brought into life in your sitting-room, which is a wonderful thing for a mountain lover like me.

Cirque de Gavarnie, by Guimir (2010), via wikicommons

TBR Challenge: ‘HOT PURSUIT’, by Suzanne Brockmann

The topic of this month is Series Catch-Up (a book from a series you're behind on)

Published: Aug-2009

Genre: Romantic Suspense

My Rating: 3 stars

Part of a series: Troubleshooters #15

In July we have to look for a series in which we are behind on. The only series that I’m following right now is Troubleshooters. (Although this month I’ve started a new one, Maiden Lane.) I read some books back to back, and then I stop for a while. I write the review, perhaps three in a row but I publish them only one per month. That’s the way that works for me. I’ve waited several months after reading Dark of Night, which was rather disappointing.

But as I had to look for a book in this series catch-up, so I told myself ‘let’s read the next Troubleshooters book’.

And it was quite entertaining, in a Brockmann’s style that kept me glued to the page.

This book is mainly a suspense novel. There’s a romantic part, but not so important or perhaps it’s just not so attractive to me.

Although it looks like this is the Dan Gillman’s book, I think that the main characters are Alyssa and Sam. A NY assemblywoman called Maria Bonavita is being threatened. And as she is friends to Savannah (Out of Control’s heroine), this Maria wants Troubleshooters to teach her and her team a little bit about security and self-defence.

Everybody thinks this is going to be an easy task. That’s why Alyssa and Sam go together with their son Ashton and four Navy SEALs: asshole Dan Gillman, bigmouth Izzy Zanella, sexy Tony Vlachic and Jay López.

But as soon as they arrive to NY, they discover a heart in Maria’s desk, it looks like an animal heart, they don’t want it to be human, just a gruesome threat.

This is mainly a procedural with a lot of investigation, and quite a few red-herrings added to the lot. Sam clashes with a policeman and it's with a broken rib the rest of the book. There’s a serial killer, ‘the Dentist’, who is obsessed with Alyssa.

In the synopsis, they tell you that Alyssa is going to be kidnapped, and you wait the entire book for this to happen. An interesting way of creating suspense from the blurb, but I felt a little bit annoyed, because this is something that happens at the end of the book and it was as if the author had manipulated the readers.

The romantic part is given by Dan Gillman and his lust at first sight with Jenn, Maria’s chief-of-staff. As I have always thought that this guy is an asshole, and he shows it here with his very cold seduction of Jenn, I was not involved in their story. His attitude is more or less: don’t go for the beautiful girl, go for her ugly friend who is going to feel very grateful if a sexy muscled man wants to be with her.

Just a few of his lines to show this:

But there’s something that I’ve found when dealing with women... And it’s that the really drop-dead beautiful ones...? They are all completely insane... The end result is a woman who is at best high maintenance, and at worst a raving, irrational lunatic.

Everyone wants to get laid... You find the, I don’t know, the chunky girl with the really pretty friends. She’s low maintenance and low drama, plus she’s wired to believe that you’re too good to be true. She expects to be dumped, so when you do it, she lets go immediately.

This is a book with baby, Sam and Alyssa’s baby. I’m not very fond of that trope, but if you like it, you will feel very tender watching this baby in the arms of several sexy men. I have this idea that when a TV show includes a baby, then is the beginning of the end (Grey’s Anatomy or Big Bang Theory, for instance). I’m starting to think that the rule could be applied to long-term romance series.

I liked the suspense part, not so much the romantic one. But the reason wasn't that it was badly developed. No, it was well written and the sexy scenes? Very steamy. No, the problem I had was Dan. I don’t feel like he is a hero that ‘deserves’ a happy ending. So it was great that he didn’t get it. It was more in the line of ‘let’s give our relationship an opportunity, but not now - in the future’.

TBR Challenge: ‘THE LUCKIEST LADY IN LONDON’, by Sherry Thomas

The topic of this month is Favorite Trope (a favorite theme - amnesia? secret baby? fairy tale? friends-to-lovers? etc.)

Published: Nov-2013

Genre: Historical / Victorian

My Rating: 4 stars

Part of a series: The London Trilogy #1

Sherry Thomas at her best

In June we have to look for a novel with a favourite trope. I have several of them: beta heroes, friends to lovers, best enemies, second chance at love, amnesia, disguise....

In my database, I’ve got this book as one of those with the topics Best Enemies and Love & Friendship between Hero and Heroine, which is something quite surprising, because it looks like they have to be either friends or foes. How can they be two things at the same time?

The Luckiest Lady in London was in my kindle because Sherry Thomas is one of my favourite authors and I’m trying to read all her backlist. But at the same time, her style is so detailed, so subtle in the words and gestures of the characters that I can only enjoy them if I’m ready to read slowly. That’s the way to discover each little detail.

And one is not always the same kind of reader. Sometimes you want fast reading, but there are moments when you are ready for a slow reading. So it was waiting for me to have the good mood and now that moment has arrived.

The hero is Felix Rivendale, the marquess of Wrenworth. It’s known as The Ideal Gentleman, because everybody has a good opinion of him. Men and women respect him. He is noble, rich and of course, with amazing good looks. Still a bachelor, he thinks he will marry someday in the future, but he’s in no hurry. In a sense, he is a cheater, because he feels inside that he does not deserve that adoration. Or, at least, he doesn’t trust anyone as being sincere. Neither his mother nor his father loved him very dearly, so he understands that love is something stupid to feel. A useless feeling. Something that can only give you endless disappointment and pain.

Louisa Cantwell is young, but quite average. Not particularly beautiful, or charming or accomplished in any of those things (painting, music, embroidery) young women of good family were considered to cultivate. She comes from a good but impoverished family, so she has to marry well in order to support her sisters. She has thought for years about how to achieve this, so when she goes to London for her first –and probably only- Season, she knows she has to be charming and perfect –that’s the only way to get a husband.

She gets quite a number of beaus, but not any proposal yet when Lord Wrenworth sets his eyes on her. She knows that he is not a man for her, in the sense that he will not ask for her hand. So although she feels this powerful attraction towards him, she tries to ignore it.

But precisely that’s something that attracts Lord Wrentworth. She wants him in a very physical way, he, and not his golden image, and at the same time she rejects those desires. She is the only one who seems to see him as he is. She does not flatter him, because she is not looking for his good opinion.

Felix is so intensely attracted to her that wants her to be his mistress, with a lot of money in order to support her family. Louisa says ‘no’. If no noble gentleman wants her as a wife, then she will start looking for butchers or lawyers or any other commoner that can give her respectability and money, even if it sets her out of the ton.

Because now it’s not only a matter of physical desire and economical security. She has fallen stupidly in love with him.

She was a woman in love and she wanted nothing less than his unscrupulous and very possibly unprincipled heart, proferred to her in slavish devotion.

At the end of the season, thanks to some obscure ploys on Wrentworth part, nobody proposes to Louisa. So when Wrentworth asks her to be his wife, as she didn’t want to be his mistress, she accepts, even if she does not trust him.

Everybody considers then Louisa is the luckiest lady in London. She is not a great beauty and hasn’t got an important dowry. And nevertheless, she conquered one of the most attractive bachelors of the ton. But Louisa is not so happy, and quite unsure of her luck. She distrusts him.

The rest of the book is how they, slowly, discover their feelings, accept them and acknowledges them.

This is a character-driven story, not a plot-driven one. It’s delightful to see the feelings of the characters developing and how both of them are frank -only to a certain point, because each one of them distrust everything the other does.

There are some moments in which they sound like friends, particularly at the beginning of the story, when she tries so desperately to catch a husband and he tells her or does things that could help her –or not. But there’s humour in their dialogues, which made me smile now and then. Sometimes, it’s so subtle that I had to think for a moment if they were saying what I thought they were saying.

There’s some hostility between them, too. And distrust. A lot of it. And insincerity. But I wouldn’t consider them as enemies in the strict sense of the word. So I wouldn’t put this book exactly in those topics that attract me.

But it doesn’t matter as it is so beautifully written. There quite a few intense emotional moments and the sensual scenes were perfect, the kind of add to the story not only in the steamy way but they also have got a sense in the plot. She is quite honest in her desires, he is a little more reserved, on the one hand he wanted her as his mistress, but on the other hand, there are moments when he does not want to reveal himself as he is and therefore tries to resist the temptation Louisa represents.

I ‘only’ give it 4 stars because I grade a book comparing it with other books of the same author. The master piece of Sherry Thomas, for me, is Not Quite a Husband. It had everything I love in a romance novel and left me with an intense hangover. This Luckiest Lady goes more in the line of My Beautiful Enemy, Delicious, Ravishing the Heiress... Or His at Night and Private Arrangements, which are the other two books in this London Trilogy.

So another book from Sherry Thomas backlist that goes out. There are so few that I haven’t still read that makes me sad, as I’m not sure if she'll ever write this kind of book again.

Well, we are now in the middle of the TBR Challenge 2017 and I consider myself quite lucky, as Louisa. This year it looks like I’m choosing better books for this challenge, as I’m enjoying them a lot. I hope the second part of the year will bring me beautiful books as this one.